a bi-partisan conversation

Last night I attended an event on campus sponsored by CACE, Wheaton’s Center for Applied Christian Ethics. Called “Christian Moral Engagement in Politics: a Bi-partisan Conversation,” it was a discussion with a former Republican senator and a former Democratic congressman, moderated by Michael Gerson, former Bush presidential speech writer and Wheaton alum. Here’s a paraphrase of some of the more interesting questions and responses:

Why did you enter politics?
R: I had no previous interest in politics. But I happened to attend a prayer breakfast where Charles Colson was the speaker, and when he spoke I sensed the calling of God. I knew without a doubt that God was calling me to enter politics.
D: I was inspired by my father, who was a public servant on local boards and councils all his life. I was also inspired by JFK, and I became involved in the Civil Rights movement.

An atheist devotion: further up and further in

For your daily devotions, complete with Bible verse and plenty of C.S. Lewis references. Enjoy.

1 Corinthians 13:11-12

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

C.S. Lewis talks a lot about this idea of seeing dimly as in a mirror. The idea is that heaven is more real than the world we know now: the world we live in is only a reflection of the true reality, which is found in Heaven. All the goodness and beauty on Earth are only a reflection of the real goodness and beauty of God. In other words, Heaven contains the Platonic Forms for everything good on Earth. God is the Form.
At the very end of The Chronicles of Narnia, the world is ended and the characters enter the heavenly Narnia, to find that the old Narnia they knew in this life was “only a shadow or copy of the real Narnia which has always been here”. They spend their time going “further up and further in,” discovering more and more of the “true” Narnia. The heavenly Narnia is also described as being “like an onion: except that as you go in and in, each circle is larger than the last.”

When I became an atheist, I discovered that the universe was that onion. I became a man and put childish ways behind me. I saw the universe face to face, with no intermediary. It was as if previously there had been a thin, fuzzy film over everything I saw or sensed or felt– not the result of sin or distance from God, but the result of painting a veneer of God on the surface of everything. All that was stripped away when I began to see the world as the thing itself and not a reflection or footprint. Every sound, every sensation and feeling and morsel of knowledge, was magnified.

In The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis illustrates the ‘realness’ of heaven this way: when the people from Hell/Purgatory visit Heaven, even the blades of grass are so real and hard and solid that they cut into the feet of the visitors, who were not accustomed to the realness of heaven.

When I became an atheist, every pain and joy and sorrow was magnified as well, and I felt the breadth of what it meant to be alive in the universe, unshielded and unbuffered.
Adam and Eve must have had a similar experience when they left Eden. The world outside the garden was a more accurate depiction of reality than they had known, yet because it cut their feet, they pined for the place they had left, like the visitors to Heaven who just wanted to get back on the bus to Hell.

I, too, wanted to get back on the bus at first: to be back in a place of comfort and familiarity, where I could pray and put my trust in God and look to him for everything. But I recognized the pain for what it was: reality. Realness is not in the future, or in some eternal heavenly Form. Reality is now, and if you’re looking for it elsewhere, you’re missing it. There is no limit to the wonder and breathtaking detail of this world, unless you decide that there is. If you put all your hope in a future world and cover up the wonder before your eyes with a film, a filter, then it will be limited, and you will never see the full extent of it.

How many people really drink up the full extent of reality? It is more than we can imbibe, yet some look at the filmy breadth before them and say, “everything is meaningless”. Let us put childish ways behind us, peel away the narrow filter, and go further up and further in.

I saw Richard Dawkins. Holy crap.

“Is Richard Dawkins your C.S. Lewis?”  My Christian friend, who had never even heard of Dawkins before, asked me that when I said I was going to go see Dawkins in Chicago.  C.S. Lewis is the unofficial patron saint of Wheaton College, and it’s practically a requirement for every student to own a full library of his books and quote him as often as possible in conversation.  So yes, Dawkins is my C.S. Lewis.

This afternoon my friend and I drove to the University of Chicago, where Richard Dawkins was speaking. I wasn’t too hopeful about getting in, since there were only 200 seats, and we were late on account of traffic and having gotten lost. Sure enough, I spent the entire hour of his lecture standing outside the building listening through an open window with about 20 others. And it was totally worth it. To my starved existence, it was priceless just to be able to laugh at jokes about religion with other atheists. Even if I hadn’t been able to hear Dawkins’ voice, I would have stood outside that building for hours. I was ecstatic, staring raptly at the dead worm on the windowsill, listening to Dawkins read the preface to the British paperback edition of The God Delusion, wondering at the atmosphere of open inquiry and the lovely late-summery evening as darkness fell.

After the Q&A session began, we were able to get inside for our first glimpse. I think all of the questions were from atheists– at least, I don’t remember any argumentative theistic questions, which was refreshing. My Christian friend thought that Dawkins never actually answered questions straightforwardly, but I thought his answers were very sophisticated and only changed the subject slightly to make the discussion more relevant and intelligent.

Afterwards we stood in line to get my copy of TGD signed, discussing (aka debating) what we thought of Dawkins. A fellow atheist came to my rescue, which I really appreciated. My friend was taking the whole thing very seriously and picking apart everything Dawkins had said, but I was too thrilled to care, really. While Dawkins signed my book, I told him I’d recently become an atheist but was still attending the Christian university where Billy Graham had attended. He said “good for you” with this extremely bewildered look on his face that said “are you mad?”

I am still completely on an euphoric high. It was exactly what I needed.

Wheatonism

I went to the Health Center on campus. At the end of my appointment, the doctor put a hand on my shoulder and prayed for me. She said that’s how she likes to end every appointment. I thought: whoa, that is really creepy.
That’s the kind of thing I would have really loved as a Christian– any bit of Christianization that makes everyday activities different from the rest of the world. It’s kind of the point of a Christian college, and people drink it up here. (I mean, if there’s a Christian way to sneeze or a Christian way to open a door, people do it.) But as an atheist, I’m sorry, the praying doctor is just creepy.

Monday morning griping

Things just haven’t been going well this morning, and it’s partly because of some stupid mistakes that I made. This is one thing that’s been harder to deal with as an atheist– when things go wrong, especially when it’s my fault. I hear Christian voices echoing in my head that I’m a sinner with a sinful nature, etc.

I might be overdramatic. But when I really get down, it’s just a little bit harder to pick back up. Christianity gave just a small catalyst in the form of “God loves you” or something else equally mushy but nonetheless effective, that made it easier to bounce back from a mistake or a disappointment.

Has anyone else felt this way? I suppose it’s probably just another symptom of learning to face the real world with no cushions. Now that I think about it, becoming an atheist has been an opening up of all my senses and feeling everything more “real-ly,” so it should be the same for small and inconsequential things like having a bad day.

How do you get that voice out of your head that tells you you’re a sinner? It seldom appears, but I wish I could get rid of it for good.

questions or answers?

A friend of mine who knows that I’m an atheist kept asking me what I think is the purpose of life. Because I chose to became an atheist, I must have an answer, especially since I rejected Christianity’s answer. This really frustrated me. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to be seeking at our stage in life? What’s the point of being young and in college if you can’t ask questions about the meaning of life without knowing what the answer is?

He kept pressuring me: “I think you would be happier if you felt like your life had a purpose.” Whoa, there. I’m not even going to touch that. (However, this friend was “very surprised” to hear that I am happier now as an atheist than I ever have been.)

Christians are obsessed with answers. Most of the professors I’ve had seem really intent on imparting their own answers to students and not giving us the opportunity to think for ourselves. In the 4 required bible/theology classes I took, I had 4 professors who each had completely different views and tried to convince us that his was the right one. e.g., “I really believe that infant baptism is essential”; a semester later, in another class, “I really believe that only adults should be baptized”. And so on. If we say, “well, Professor X says otherwise,” Professor Y will say, “well, I think that’s wrong.” Every professor wants to be the influencing factor on their students’ views. (I don’t know what it’s generally like in other schools, but I took a few summer classes at a regular university where this was definitely not the case.)

Akinola speaks in chapel

Yesterday’s protest didn’t make a huge splash on campus, although people are talking about it. Today the college president, who was scheduled to speak on chapel, yielded his time to archbishop Akinola. The president’s introduction of Akinola was very affectionate, which was to be expected as President Litfin is extremely conservative: he thinks Wheaton should be churning out more missionaries and does not think the church should accommodate homosexuality at all. So Litfin waxed eloquent about how we should learn from Akinola, and then Akinola waxed eloquent about what a wonderful institution Wheaton is and how lucky we are to be surrounded by Christians.

Akinola’s main message was this: “Bad company corrupts good character” (1 Corinthians 15:33). He had the audience recite this passage aloud several times. You don’t know what’s out there in the world, he said. “Thank God we are all Christians” here on this campus. When you leave to go into the world you will encounter “the evil, the wicked”. It will be so horrible you won’t know what to do… I can’t remember the conclusion of his message because I tuned out at this point.

What I read between the lines was Akinola trying to justify his stance on homosexuality and other issues. He would regard gays as “bad company” and say Christians shouldn’t associate with them because they will be tainted by their evilness. (This supports the report of Akinola jumping back in disgust the one time he shook a gay person’s hand.)

In a broader context, Akinola is espousing the Christian view that draws a very deep line between “Christian” and “other”.  I’d say that many people at Wheaton have been trying to get rid of that attitude, which has occasionally been comforting.  But it is a deeply held view among conservatives that Christians should not be part of secular society, and even progressive individuals here believe firmly that a Christian can’t have a deep friendship with a non-Christian, for example.  The Christian who is willing to approach non-Christians as their equal instead of as a target of evangelism is very rare indeed.

Finally, Akinola said that our task as students here is to become “deeply rooted in the love of Jesus Christ,” so that we can be equipped to deal with the evils of the world.  Such blatant hypocrisy just boggles the mind, but no doubt in Akinola’s twisted logic, refusing to engage with unbelievers and gays is showing the love of Jesus.

the church and homosexuality

This summer, a student at my school committed suicide. He was gay, and struggling with that because the church, and our school, teaches that homosexuality is wrong.

This college has seen the homosexuality debate pretty closely; we were visited by Soulforce last spring, our psychology department does research on successful de-gayification, and there have been some well-placed pep talks by a few prominent ex-gay faculty members. Like most evangelicals, they still hold fast to the position that homosexuality is sinful; students who admit to being gay are required to have counseling.

Some evangelicals are starting to realize that homosexuality is not a sin. I really believe that the rest of them will catch on eventually and that the majority of the church will concede at some point in the future, and that thought really saddens me. It bothers me more than if I thought Christians were going to keep being stupid about homosexuality forever, because it’s one thing to be decades behind on issues likes environmentalism and global warming, but homosexuality is about people. Every year more people lose their lives because they are told that who they are is sinful.

What is going to happen when, 50 years from now, the church recognizes that they were wrong? What are they going to do about the lives they took? It’s one thing for the church to change their minds about something like environmentalism. They can start hugging trees now and nobody cares about the forests that died while they were busy scoffing at environmentalists. But what about the unnecessary deaths of gay people? Will Christians be able to accept responsibility for their lives, and tell their loved ones that they died because the church was wrong?

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Related news: tomorrow, Anglican archbishop of Nigeria Peter Akinola is speaking at Wheaton College. There are protests planned against Akinola, who is anti-gay and is leading the movement to split the worldwide Anglican church over the issue of homosexuality. According to our college newspaper:

Akinola will preach at a 10:30 a.m. worship service Sunday in Edman Chapel to members from 20 Anglican churches and will speak in chapel the following day.

And my favorite part:

Akinola was invited to speak in Edman as part of a worship service designed to celebrate global church unity.

Information on the protest is here.

alone on a campus of 2,500

There are some times when I feel absolutely delighted to be an atheist hidden among thousands of Christians. This is not one of those times.

I walked across campus today after a conversation that signaled the end of another friendship. Thinking, this is what it feels like to be alone. It sucks.

Though I’m still in the closet, I’m no longer pretending to be a Christian. That means I don’t take part in a large percentage of what goes on on campus. I can feel people mentally shrinking away from me, even people who were perfectly fine with my questioning of Christianity a year ago.

I have nothing against Christianity and Christians. I’m not trying to deconvert people. I just don’t understand why a single atheist among Christians is so threatening to them.

Thy will be done

I read this in an article at the Christianity Today website (which I read regularly) on praying more effectively. It’s a fantastic example of typical vacuous Christian logic:

I spent endless hours in the hospital waiting room while Mom sat on a cold metal hospital table just beyond the waiting room doors. In those hours I prayed—or at least I tried to.

I didn’t quite know what to say: “God, please take these growths away from my mother”? But what if he didn’t? Or how about, “God, please don’t let there be any cancer cells”? But what if there were? Or, “God, just let this be treatable”? But what if it wasn’t? So here’s what I prayed: “God, I don’t want to go through this. And I don’t want Mom to go through this. Yet you must have Mom and our family here for a reason. Help us depend on you during this difficult time. Now, God, I really don’t want to lose her. But since I truly want your will above my own, I leave my mother in your loving hands—as difficult as that is to do. Amen.”

One of the first answers to that prayer was a peaceful calm in myself and in both my parents. The second answer was the good report from the doctors: The growths were benign. But even if they hadn’t been, my trust in God had been challenged to mature as a result of the prayer I’d learned to pray for Mom.

The logic of that is wonderfully transparent: uh, what if God doesn’t give me what I pray for? I’d better ask for something that will have to be answered, so no matter what happens, I can say that God answered my prayer! But what use is God if you can’t petition him for anything specific? What use are specific prayers if, when your prayer is not answered, you conclude reluctantly that what you’d asked for was not God’s will? Of course there’s a psychological benefit to prayer, as there is to meditation and many types of wishful thinking. But if all prayer gives you is a sense of peace and acceptance, God isn’t even necessary.

Christians will never tire of giving God more opportunities to be right. That’s why they have to create questions with no wrong answer. That’s the beauty of “Thy will be done”. It creates a world where God can never be wrong.