Can an Agnostic Call Himself a Christian?

I read a piece today by a man who says he isn't sure he believes in God, but he likes Christians so much he calls himself one. 

I've been where he is. My walk with God began with a weird prayer,

The signs are there, though the journey
getting to them can be downright uncomfortable.

• "God, I don't know if I even believe you exist, but you make all kinds of sense. So I'm in! I'll read the books, go to church and do all that stuff so I can find out who they say you are, but at some point I'm going to have to meet You in person. You have to show me Yourself. I'm betting my life here that you're real."

And you know what. I've met Him.  Not in the Mosaic, fire-on-the-mountain sense, but over the years, through a whole series of unmistakable signs along the way, He has shown me that He is there and that He is watching my way.

Many Christians are horrified by people like the man above.  How dare he doubt God?  These religious absolutists are so busy being morally certain that they are right that many times, they never quite meet the God they talk so much about and their religion does them little if any good. There's a whole church in Kansas like that. They picket soldiers funerals and taunt gay people. They are so wrapped up in their own righteousness that they've never met the God of the Golden Rule.

I was an agnostic when I found God. I didn't change that much in the days after I was baptised. I was still skeptical. I was anything but morally certain.  But I bought myself a pocket Bible and read it every day walking back and forth to classes at school. 

And I did change. I became a better person and it was none of my doing. I didn't grit my teeth and try to be a good person. I just kept trying to find out who this God person really was and the more I got to know Him, the more it changed me. 

My friend is on the right track though many Christians would find that hard to believe.  There's some evidence that God actually prefers an honest skeptic to a close-minded religious bigot that thinks he can read God's mind.

In the end, it's not membership in the church that will save you. The church is just where you go to hang with people who believe like you do and want to work with you to do the kind of good deeds you will find yourself compelled to do when you spend time with God.  Churches are like God's aid stations where the wounded soul may go to be patched up.  But we don't fight the war on evil in the aid station. We get back out there and do some good.

It's a fascinating journey - trying to find God.  I highly recommend it to anyone looking for what British author Douglas Addams called "The answer to the universal question about life, the universe and everything else."  When you look for God, He will find you and in time, he will even answer the universal question for you. It make take several million years, but he gives you eternal life to boot. 

How cool is that?

Tom

What God Hates?

© 2012 by Tom King

Every once in a while, I read an angry post by an offended Christian that lists all the things God supposedly hates – things like agnostics, atheists, gay people and Democrats.  I do sympathize with the person’s desire to tell all the folk in those groups to go straight to hell. They really do say some nasty things to and about Christians, so I suppose it’s natural to want to tell them where to get off.  That is, after all, the point of these kinds of posts whether they actually use the 'H-E–Double Hockey Sticks' word or not.  

The trouble is that, as Christians, we are under orders from Christ, Himself, to treat others the way we want to be treated. What I understand from that is that we may not respond in-kind to nastiness.

I’d like to address one particular point I found in one of these angry missives. The writer said God hates atheists and agnostics.  As a former agnostic myself, I speak with some experience of agnosticism, when I say, “God never hated me.”  On the contrary, I was an agnostic simply because I had not yet met God, so agnosticism was an appropriate belief system for me.  I used to get into it with atheists as often as I did with Christians over the existence of God.  You can’t prove he doesn’t exist I told the atheists.  You can’t prove he does I told the Christians.  And that’s where I drifted until the day I met God for myself.

So, I'd go a little easy on the atheists and agnostics if I were making lists, which I occasionally do. I would argue with my well-meaning friend that God doesn't hate anyone. He gave his son for everyone. He even goes so far as to give us the very impulse to seek Him. That does not come from us. It is hard-wired into our DNA. God also gives us the ability to respond to love and to give love ourselves from the moment we draw breath.  This impulse to love and seek God is at war with our sinful nature - the product of a long history of human abuse of free will. 

In my own experience when I was an agnostic, I was searching high and low for God. And it wasn''t God blocking my path to Him.  It was well-meaning churchmen and women who thought they were doing God a favor by portraying him as an angry, judgmental, send-em-off-to-hellfire deity who would cast you into hell and torture you forever if you habitually skip Sunday School.They had fallen prey to the temptation to use fear to rally the troops. As an experienced troop rallyer, I can tell you that fear is a poor motivational tool.  When God sends an angel to help, the first thing the angel always says is "Fear not."  I assume from that that God doesn't use fear to frighten people into submission.  And, by "fear", I don't mean respect or awe. I mean the afraid for your life kind of fear.

When I finally met God himself, I cast aside my agnosticism quite easily, because it no longer served me. I had finally met the Father I was looking for and that made all the different. A list of all the things God "hates" probably isn't going to save a single soul. A list of the things God loves might be a more effective tool. For instance, how about this list?

1. God loves a cheerful giver.
2. God loves one who would give his life for another.
3. God loves a kind word and a cheerful heart.
4. God loves a patient man.
5. God loves the world so much he sent his own Son to save us.
6. God loves us so much he wants us to live forever.
7. God loves beauty and truth.
8. God loves unconditionally. He loves us even when we reject him.
9. God makes everything come out for the best if we'll let him.
10. God loves us so much he wants to give us the wealth of the whole vast universe.

In the end, I believe we should always be kind to others if we must make lists. You never know who is a tender heart, all wrapped up in a protective coat of agnosticism or atheism, but who is really, down deep, just searching desperately for the real God – the loving Father no one has ever introduced him to.