The Atheist in Me

You may have read or heard about the early Christians in Rome faced with the accusation of being atheists. Now, we laugh at that today, but it was serious. You see, the Caesar of the day claimed to be the God of the day. The Christians believed in only one God ... and that wasn't Caesar. So ... they didn't believe in God (when God was defined as Caesar).

Now, without switching topics too far, any reader of my stuff would know that I have a real issue with definitions. "Marriage" means something ... and it's not what it is being changed to today. There are a host of words that are being shifted, modified, co-opted ("take or assume for one's own use"), or just destroyed that shouldn't be. It destroys communication. Now that "marriage" is on its way out, what word do I use to refer to the union of a man and a woman for the purpose of cooperation and reproduction? No such word exists anymore. So if I'm going to communicate these days, I'm stuck with, "So, are you united with a woman (or a man if I'm talking to a woman) for the purpose of cooperation and reproduction?" Yeah, a bit too much, isn't it?

So, how do these two things -- early-Church atheists and my concern for definitions -- correspond? As it turns out, I have a bit of atheist in me as well. Now, you would think on the surface that it couldn't be a problem because I'm a Christian (See? Another word with shifting meanings.). That is, by definition I believe in God. But then we run into difficulty. What do you mean by "God"?

Well, this guy uses the term to refer to, of all things, Buddha as God. (That's odd, of course, because Buddhism technically has no god.) "What about you?" he asks. "Do you believe in God?" No, no I don't. Not that God. That's not a God. I'm a Buddhist atheist.

I work with a couple of Hindus. These people have an abundance of gods. (I found one website that offered "the top 10 Gods of Hinduism". That is, the top 10 of all of them.) Different sects have different favorites. Are they theists? You might say they are more so than I am because they believe in a lot of gods and I've only got one. But if they are, I am an atheist, because I don't believe that any of them exist.

We are told (over and over) that all gods are the same. Mostly they say this in reference to the Jewish, the Christian, and the Muslim God. All one; all the same. While I agree that the God of the Old Testament (the God of the Jews) and the God of the New Testament are the same, it isn't possible that the God of Islam is the same deity. As far as Islam is concerned, I'm an atheist. Allah doesn't exist.

By far the most popular God in America today is what I would term "God-to-me". This is a shifting (shifty?) character. For some He's a mean-spirited old man out to suck the joy out of most of what we might like to do and for others He's kind of a quiet, out-of-sight-out-of-mind fellow sitting on a cloud in heaven doing nothing much in particular. For another segment He is "me", the suggestion from some spiritual corners that argue that "the divine is in all of us" (without for a moment actually analyzing what that means"). In fact, most put their own spin on God. He's mostly sovereign for this group and hardly sovereign for that, somewhat wise for those people over there and pretty darn smart for these guys. There are even an interesting set of atheists that don't believe in God at all because they're mad at a God who didn't satisfy their personal demands. For the feminist realm God is very feminine. He's not too harsh, not too narrow, and definitely not too masculine. He's warm and affirming, not that "mean ol' God" of the Old Testament that smites a lot. As it turns out, for the bulk of these gods I'm an atheist. I don't believe in them. I don't think they exist.

It's my own fault, really. I'm stuck with the biblical God. Oh, sure ... genuine, serious, Bible-believing believers will come to conclusions that offer slight variations in this God. But the definition of God is set, even if our understanding has a few differences. He's not Caesar, Buddha, Krishna, or Allah. He's not this malleable "God-to-me". He is a real being with real characteristics defined in the real Word of God. In fact, He defines reality, not the other way around. To this God I am a theist. But that's all very narrow, isn't it? Just one God? Out of all those gods out there? In terms of the numbers of available gods, I would have to say I'm more of an atheist than a theist. But the one in Whom I do believe is good enough for me.