Another Atheist

I stumbled across a video on YouTube the other day titled something like “Why I became an atheist.” This subject has been on my mind recently, so I decided to see what this girl who appears to be about 20 had to say. This video turned out to be somewhat of a “testimony” of the struggles she encountered in church life and the issues that drove her to atheism. She outlined many of the questions she had while attending and being very involved in her church and youth group. Her frustration with the lack of depth to the answers she received was apparent. She felt reprimanded or chastised by her friends in church because she was asking so many questions and told to just “have faith.” She was looked upon as a bad Christian for not just believing everything she heard without any logic or understanding. If you have never watched some of these videos I would recommend you do. There are probably thousands on YouTube. The fact is most Christians won’t do this. Most Christians never see what the “other side” thinks. Most Christians never challenge what they believe. Truth is the goal isn’t it? If truth is the goal, why do we as Christians never investigate what everyone else thinks?  Why are we content to sit in church every week, service after service telling ourselves we are right, and all those other denominations out there are wrong? Fact is, most Christians never ask the questions about why others believe differently or come to different conclusions. We were taught to sit and listen to OUR position and to ignore what others think. I remember many years ago seeing an add in the sword of the Lord newspaper for an “Independent Baptist Commentary” and I thought; why would I want a commentary that by the name on the cover tells me it has a slant? What Christians would find if they would challenge their faith is the fact that all those other denominations out there have verses in the Bible to prove why they are different. Why is this? Why can different denominations BOTH have verses that seem to clearly teach different positions? These are the questions most pastors don’t really want you asking. Why? They really don’t have answers for many of these verses. It boils down to which verses a person chooses to believe. Christianity is divided by the verses they pick and choose to put more emphasis on and the ones they choose to avoid. Like the girl who has decided to become an atheist, many people who try to use logic when they were taught to spiritualize the Bible find themselves very frustrated. It is a very hard thing to apply logic to verses that you have been taught to spiritualize your whole life. You will always find yourself at a dead-end road with someone telling you to just “have faith” and you are then expected to just believe what the pastor says. Don’t you see that you can’t use logic with verses that have been given a “spiritual” meaning? You must understand that when you took the entire earthly plan God had for Israel and spiritualized it then gave it to yourself that you can’t then go back and use logic when reading the verses? There’s no logic left in the verses because you don’t believe what they say. You believe what someone told you “they mean.” If someone tells you, they can explain what a verse “really means” you should be suspect. The Holy Spirit actually does just fine with words and language. Why might you ask are there so many verses that are not taken literally in church these days? Because the literal meaning exposes so many “Christian” doctrines as merely tradition. The girl in the YouTube video seen the facts that I truly believe many Christians see but don’t have the guts to admit. The fact that under logic, scrutiny and life experience many things we are taught just don’t seem to hold water. These are the things that can be clear when the Bible is rightly divided and believed literally. The marching orders for the body of Christ are found in the information Jesus gave to Paul. The lack of emphasis on Paul’s mystery information is the reason behind the errors in church doctrine we see today. I challenge you to read the first 3 chapters of Galatians, Ephesians and Colossians and try to figure out a way to tell me I’m wrong. Paul’s information was a secret before he revealed it, as he clearly tells you. Understanding this secret, and keeping it separate from God’s plan for Israel, is the key to Bible understanding.