HAPPY WITH ATHEISM OR CHRISTIANITY?

“Ron, I am very happy with my atheism.” That’s what he told me. My good friend is a man of 80 plus years of age and is a person whom I respect very much. He is a good man, a principled man, a morally and ethically admirable man. We were engaged in a brief e-conversation and at the start we already understood each other’s foundational positions, his being non-faith and mine being faith in Jesus Christ. Then we exchanged bio backgrounds and I was surprised to learn the extent of his childhood and youthful exposure to Christianity. He explained to me when he had stopped believing and the sense of relief he had when he decided it was not a rational world.

I am sure that he anticipated a tsunami of Christian apologetics so before I responded to some remarks he had made, he wrote, “Ron, I am very happy with my atheism, because among other things it has freed me from sin… my understanding of sin is that it is a transgression against the will of God. So f there is no god, then there is also no sin and for me there is no sin. Why would I want to bear the burden of sin again at my time of life? Ron, my dear friend, I am quite happy to delegate that to you. I wish you well with your beliefs and I am happy for you. I have got used to accepting that we do not live in a rational world.”

I wrote, “And with your most recent paragraph, I will curtail my comments… I admit I was preparing to reply to some of your leading thoughts but in a manner of a conversation between friends on opposite sides of a theological divide. I respect you too much to violate your trust in me. I won't seek to persuade you any further. Be assured Ray, that I value our friendship and regard you highly as a principled gentleman.”

So I am happy with my faith in Christ and he is happy with his atheism. Both positions cannot and will not ultimately be correct. If I am wrong and there really is no god, I will have spent my life talking to people about something that was not true and even that will not matter when I am gone. My brief life will have been all there is for me and those who loved me. My story will have ended there. If my friend has been wrong and god really is there, the god described in the Bible and displayed in the person of Jesus Christ, my friend’s non-belief will be a decisive factor. That is, if you accept the faith-salvation-damnation-eternity formulations surrounding the persons of God and Jesus Christ. One of us stands to lose so much more than the other.