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DOES THEIR BELIEF AFFECT ME?

“For most, God is simply the personification

of chance; someone to thank when things

go their way, someone to blame when they do not.”

Wayne Adkins

Does it matter what someone else believes? I know the truth about the Bible, so what do I care if others are content to go on believing a lie? Can I really be adversely affected by their beliefs? Ask anyone from New York if they were adversely affected on Sept 11, 2001 by what a few Muslim fundamentalists believed. Ask any Planned Parenthood employee if they are affected by what Christian fundamentalists believe. Yes, it matters. Yes it does affect me. Someday, someone is going to tell my children and yours that they are going to hell. Yes, it affects me. I know that despite the economic hardship to our communities, many stores are opened late and closed early on Sundays because of what others believe. Yes, it affects me. I know that millions of dollars each year are collected from the poor and elderly, protected from taxation, and spent on missions projects in foreign countries with zero return to our economy. Yes, it affects me. I know that racial tensions will continue to be fostered by Klansmen, the Nation of Islam movement, and the rhyming reverends who all claim that their God is leading them. Yes, it affects me. I have to deal with legislators who would have our schools sponsor prayer, teach creationism, and support faith based initiatives with tax money. Yes, it affects me. It affects you too.

I take comfort in the knowledge that someday the mainstream population of the world will know the truth. It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen. In all other industrialized nations it is happening faster than in the United States. But it will happen here too. Each year science brings us new discoveries about our cosmos and about who we are, discoveries that sometimes contradict accepted beliefs. Each year will pass without the return of Jesus Christ as well. It will take time, perhaps another 2,000 years, perhaps another 10,000 years, but people will eventually realize that he is dead and he’s not coming back. Oh I am sure that there will always be that fringe element, just as there are those who believe today that Elvis is working at a Burger King in Detroit, or that the earth is flat and we faked the moon landing, but the mainstream will eventually abandon any notion of God and will be better off for it.

It won’t be easy for them. I had a preacher confess once that he had been troubled by the Biblical text from time to time, but he was caught in a dilemma. He believed, as I do, that Jesus was an actual, historical figure. This man said he was God. That would make him a liar, a lunatic, or Lord. He either lied when he said he was God because he knew he wasn’t, or he was crazy and really thought he was God, or he was who he said he was which makes him Lord. He was unwilling to risk calling Jesus Christ a liar or a lunatic and he thought that I would squirm at the prospect too. He never considered that there could be a fourth option, legend. Sure he existed just as George Washington existed. But George Washington didn’t really chop down his fathers cherry tree or throw a dollar across the Delaware. Those were legends about an actual historical figure. They never happened. Jesus may have been an actual historical figure as well. But it is safe to say that the stories in the Bible about him are nothing more than legends.

A famous missionary once said “He is no fool who gives up that which he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” The central idea is that it is nothing to give up this physical life if we gain eternity as our reward. That is true. But if there is no eternal reward, then he has given up the only life he will ever have in the hope of gaining something that does not exist. How sad it is to see a man waste his life. But to a Christian, this life is worth nothing compared to the next life. It is cheap.

What makes a man believe that life is cheap; the idea that death is not final. For the Christian, death is viewed as a transition from this life into a better one. That brings to mind one of the questions I have about the death of Jesus. A Christian can understand the argument that giving up this life is no big deal if you have an eternal one. So, why all the fuss about the great sacrifice that God made by sending Jesus to die for man, if he knew that Jesus would rise again and live forever? The idea behind a sacrifice is that you are giving something up. You can’t get it back. Isn’t that no sacrifice at all?

Death is one of the hardest things I had to deal with once I learned the truth about the Bible. I realized that my parents, my wife, my children and my friends would all die. Death would rob me of them one by one until it finally claimed me as well. What kind of life is it when you are faced with the sting of death over and over again? Then I realized that death is essential to the value of life. Without the finality of death, life is cheap. It is knowing that our time is limited and uncertain that makes life infinitely more valuable. I have found that by coming to terms with the finality of death, I have gained a new appreciation of life.

Life is good. Life is valuable because we only have it for a moment. I will spend my moment acknowledging the truth. I have found that it is much better to accept the truth than to live a lie. The truth is that life is not cheap. It is all that we have. Enjoy it. And the lie, well, you know what the lie is.

“An atheist is not a bad thing to be; a hypocrite is.”

Wayne Adkins

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