Cody
Williams
My Views
The Atheist
We had a three hour drive ahead of us, just me and him, one of the smartest men I've ever met, and a world of subjects to talk about. He, an atheist and me a Christian. At the end of our journey I'm not sure I changed his thinking, but he sure did help me clear up some stuff concerning my faith in Christ and belief in God. Not that I walked away weaker in my faith. I believe now that I know more about what the message of Christ is and I have a closer connection to my redeemer: my creator, and know more about why I was created.
The thing that struck me the most about our conversation is that much of what he knew and rejected as being Christianity is not at all what I had come to see, not at all what my faith is based on. Before I get into those, however, what he rejected most, the absolute existence of a supreme ‘being’ if you will, an organized ‘Way’ that shapes the natural universe and set life in motion and regulates our very existence, I know to be real only because I've experienced it. We live in it. Each day the sun rises. Each day I eat. That Way, God if you want to call it that, Christ, who is a part of everything I am is very real but in few ways resemble what this generally perceptive atheist rejects, rightfully, and oddly what most of the worlds religious folks have come to worship.
A bearded white haired God sitting on a throne in the heavens meting out eternal judgment for or against humans who either repent from ‘sin’ or live their lives in sin is a creation of artists and the minds of men who use those notions to exert 'power and control' over other people. My atheist friend sees that.
Heaven or hell spent in eternity, after we die, for either doing right on earth, or doing wrong on earth, too is a creation of man. Christ said we enter The Kingdom while still on earth. Paul wrote that it happens, we enter it, in the “twinkling of an eye.” Hell is simply where we are before we reach that understanding. What most religious folks are doing is trying to make sense out of the Hell they currently live in. So they convince themselves that after this life there has to be some place better, "somewhere over the rainbow," where their suffering will end.
Selfishness is the only sin and everything we consider as sin starts first with the act of pleasing the Self. Take away selfishness and you have no sin, and just as important no fear, worry or guilt. You live in the moment. The here and now. The "hereafter." Christ said “deny thy self” if you are to follow him. By getting rid of the self, the ego, you allow for the inflowing of the “spirit of God,” the Way to dwell in you and you become one with all those who share that spirit, and One with Christ. “Just as I am one with the Father,” he said in the 17th chapter of John. Buddhists call this his nature.
Having set in motion our existence, loving each other is the only way to insure that we stay here, collectively, as people existing on the planet. So, serving each other is the only true Way. Jesus said, “I am the Way, the truth and the light.” He lived and died serving. That is the way.
What I was shown talking to my atheist friend was that the world's religions and non believers alike are divided not by their gods, but by their superstitions: The words we use, stories told of the the past and the future. Nobel laureate Toni Morrison wrote in her book Jazz, "It's hard to match the superstitious for great expectations." These erroneous beliefs people mistake as bringing them closer to God, yet in actuality they drive them away. These superstitions serve the ego. In their suffering some people seek to ease that pain, ironically by not loving or serving, but by distancing themselves from those of us bound with them to each other, in life by our need to continue to exist which can only be done through love. Carl Jung called this dichotomous interplay the "divine drama:" love versus the self serving ego, good versus evil.
God is love.
Even atheists love.
(c) copyright 2004 Cody Williams
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