A Church Girl’s Desire to Relate with Doubters, Skeptics, and Atheists

A Church Girl’s Desire to Relate with Doubters, Skeptics, and Atheists

I’ve been reading a book entitled, “The Doubter’s Club” by Preston Ulmer, and it has made me do a lot of thinking about how I relate to doubters, atheists, and the deeply wounded. I realize that many of those wounds come from the church, making faith-based dialogue something you don’t want to get into. Yet, this book has given me hope that respectful, honest dialogue is possible and even beneficial even when parties disagree. This is an area where I greatly desire to grow and make an impact both in the church and community.

I HAVE A LOT TO LEARN ABOUT HOW TO RELATE WITH THE DEEPLY WOUNDED

My now deceased husband and I adopted our son with autism at five years old. Because of his trauma he has always struggled with his faith. I understand now, but when he was a child I was often clueless about how to relate with him in his pain. One particular conversation is seared into my memory. I read the Bible to him daily, and on one particular day read Psalm 139 and told him, teary-eyed with joy, that God fashioned and knew him intimately. I assumed he would be as comforted as I to hear he wasn’t “a mistake”. However, the revelation that God made him with autism on purpose only made him angry and began his descent from singing “Jesus loves me” to “O how I hate Jesus” much to my grief and dismay.

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.

I THOUGHT I’D COME A LONG WAY, BUT…

I had a conversation on IG over a year ago with an atheist. I was as nervous as all get out because I didn’t want to do something dumb. I was proud of the fact God would entrust me with such an “assignment”. (I told you I have a long way to go.) Our discourse over a few weeks was polite and respectful on both ends. Much to my shame, when he eventually asked, “Is your god powerful?” I assumed he figured I’d never seen God’s power. Delighted to be able to proclaim God’s power, I replied, “Yes, I have found him to be so.” I never heard from him again and took his lack of response to mean, “I didn’t expect that answer, and am dumbfounded.”

However, months later (sometimes I can be dense) I remembered that some of his posts recounted (if I remember correctly) he had been molested during childhood by a trusted church member. Had I been less quick to answer and more desirous to show compassion, I would have realized where he was coming from. “If your god is so powerful, why didn’t he stop this person who called themselves a Christian from doing what they did to me?” In my zeal to proclaim Jesus to an atheist, hoping to wow him with my answers, I failed to see his pain. Even today, my lack of compassion brings me deep sadness.

I don’t believe I won any brownie points. I now realize that my selfish, arrogant motives grieved God because I failed to recognize this man and share in his pain. I failed to respond as Jesus would have, in anger and grief that someone whom he and his family trusted destroyed him in Christ’s name.

I should have grieved with this man. Yet I left him reassured that Christians are jerks and God hates him.

HOW I WISH I HAD RELATED TO THE ATHEIST

So today if I were to have another opportunity to relate with this man, I would do things differently. I would grieve with him for all that was destroyed in those hideous, reckless, thoughtless, selfish acts. I would hope to be quicker toward compassion and slower to answer with statements that would only increase the pain. I would try to see him rather than “an assignment”, Were he reading, I would say, “I’m so sorry for how I treated you. It was shameful and so wrong. Please forgive me.

Were we sitting over coffee, I would weep and rage with him over what happened and grieve how poorly I treated him.

HOW MY SON AND I RELATE NOW

My son is now thirty. He has found some comfort in walking with Christ. Yet, he still understandably struggles with his faith.

He and I continue to have faith discussions, and I now recognize he’s been through so much more than I could ever imagine. He’s a strong young man, and although we continue at times to struggle in our relationship, I’ve learned so much from him. I’ve changed so much because he is in my life, and I’m grateful.

MY DESIRE IS TO RELATE WITH YOU

if you’ve read any posts on this website, you will realize I have a long way to go in relating well to doubters, skeptics, atheists, and those deeply wounded. I’ve written to the Christian audience for a very long time, yet because of my own deeply wounded family members, and needing to work through my own pain, I really want to learn. Reading “The Doubter’s Club” has helped. It’s a start.

My husband and I also made a total life change this past year, and it has offered me the opportunity to relate with many others who are very unlike me. It’s changing my life.

My hope is to have meaningful faith discussions with you, yet I I’m not looking for notches in my Christian belt. I want to build relationships that discuss faith-based topics without discarding people when they disagree. Jesus came for the broken, and unfortunately we in the church have often failed to live that well in the world. I’m sorry. I want to change that.

IN ORDER TO BETTER RELATE

Would you be willing to critique this and any other post you wish? Not to bash me to pieces, please, but to begin dialogue that matters.

What do you think?

Robin

So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It's your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it. Colossians 3:12-14 (MSG)

So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.

Colossians 3:12-14 (MSG)

What Do You Mean, ‘God Loves You?’

What Do You Mean, ‘God Loves You?’

Blog post from the podcast transcript of episode 002

During the first episode of the podcast, I often referred to God’s love for you as one of our core beliefs. Yet it dawned on me that many of you may struggle with the idea that God loves you, much less wants a relationship with you. The pain of life and the traumas of existence have left you feeling both unloved and unheard.

WHAT WE MEAN WHEN WE TALK ABOUT GOD’S LOVE

When looking at God’s love, surprisingly we can go back to the very first pages of the Old Testament where we are given a glimpse of God’s thoughts and longings as he designed the first man and woman.

I understand some of you may hold to beliefs other than a literal creation. I respect you in your opinion, but please follow me a few moments as though listening to a story. I’m going somewhere you may not expect.

Yahweh-The-Lord-The-God-of-compassion-and-mercy-I-am-slow-to-anger-and-filled-with-unfailing-love-and-faithfulness.-Exodus-34_6-NLT.jpg

God’s love was portrayed in his choices toward humanity

Nothing was left out as God carefully took earth and sculpted the man’s body from the pattern of his own being, both in image and likeness. As he finished, he placed his mouth over man’s lifeless lips and exhaled God-life into his lungs, and man became a living soul. Later, so the man would have someone like himself, God formed the woman from Adam’s side, for his delight, their mutual enjoyment, and for procreating and ruling his new earth. God stepped back and for a moment viewed his new designs as though looking at a finished masterpiece. The Bible states that “God saw all that he had made and it was very good.”

Questions to ponder as you consider this scene from Genesis one and two:

  1. Are you an artist or designer? Maybe a baker or possibly a writer? Maybe a new mom or dad? If so, what did it feel like when that which was only in your imagination became real?
  2. Relate this to how God must have felt in that moment and those first days of Adam and Eve’s lives. Could there be similarities?
  3. How could the choices God made as he fashioned the man and woman show his love for them?

However, the Bible states that he only spoke the rest of creation into being, period. Only the man and woman were created in his image, and only they received God’s breathe of life making them living souls.

Further questions to ponder:

  1. Even if you believe otherwise if you were God why would you go to all the effort to make something so like you and so different from everything else you had made?
  2. Could it be that all humanity was made with a special place in God’s heart? Could it be that they were made for a different purpose and plan from the rest of creation?
  3. Could it be that God created humanity, including you, in a way to be able to relate and enjoy a relationship filled with his love?

God’s love chose to allow us to choose

With Adam and Eve in mind, God’s love created a garden, unlike anything we’ve ever seen, and placed them in it. He filled it with only good things.

For their protection, he gave them one rule and warning not to eat from the tree called “The Knowledge of Good and Evil.” My paraphrase: I’ve given you every good tree to eat and enjoy, and every flowering plant. But that tree – it’s bad and eating its fruit will kill you.

I imagine some of you are now asking, “If that tree was so bad, why would a loving God include it in his garden? Great question!

It would have been easier and less painful for God had he just programmed humanity like robots to return his love train them to obey his one command. God had every opportunity to do so.

Questions to consider:

  1. In wanting a healthy loving relationship, can you deny the other party the ability to choose or reject you? What is it called when relationships are forced?
  2. Could it be that God’s love provided the forbidden tree to offer the man and woman the freedom of choice?
  3. Could it be that God did so not to force them to love and obey him as God but to offer the man and woman (and therefore all of us) a chosen relationship with him?
  4. However, what is the possible result when offering someone the ability to choose? Have you ever been in the position of being the one rejected? Can you use this experience to relate to how God must have felt as he placed that tree in the garden, knowing what they would choose?

Their choice

Within a short time, the man and woman were shown the beauty and desirability of the forbidden tree by a talking snake and chose to eat from it because they came to believe that a proper choice required them to know all the options. They were told and chose to believe the tree they’d been forbidden to eat from offered things their good God had forgotten to provide.

Before they ate the fruit from this tree, all they’d experienced was God’s goodness. Yet as soon as they ate the forbidden fruit, their newfound knowledge of evil caused them to immediately begin to experience evil and everything that comes with it. Death. Destruction. Pain. Heartache. Brokenness.

Love covers a multitude of sins

Love means even God feels the pain of our choices

The tree was no threat to anyone if left alone. The talking snake was inconsequential as long as it was ignored and they followed God’s loving warning. However, as soon as they disregarded God’s warning and chose their own way, defiance against God caused evil to enter the world, and marred all of God’s creation through its natural consequences. Evil entered humanity’s core and destroyed their desire for God. Like an addict looking for a fix, feeding their passions became their goal as they died inside to all that was holy and good.

We make the same choices daily to disregard God’s warnings and do as we please, with the same effects.

Going our own way as Adam and Eve once did leads us down a road away from knowing, seeing, and being loved by the God who made us. And since all goodness still comes from God, the only way to experience goodness void of the effects of evil is to return to him. For apart from God there is no good thing.

Questions to ponder:

  1. How would you feel if you designed and created a magnificent piece of art, or built a building beyond anything made before, and someone came along and marred it beyond recognition? What would you want to do to them?
  2. Can you use your feelings to relate to how God had every right to feel when Adam and Eve’s choice brought pain and suffering into his pristine, spotless, pain and shame-free world?

Some of you may be asking, “Is that why God gave up on us?” No, friend. God never gave up.

God’s love chose to forgive and restore their relationship

Moments after their devastating choice, God stepped in and decreed that one day a champion would come and set all things right. And no matter how the world or God’s people treated him, throughout the rest of the Old Testament God continued to proclaim the champion was still coming to bring forgiveness and restoration of relationship with God.

And in the proper time, Jesus, God’s son, someone born like us but without rebellion came to fight on our behalf. He came to bring life and light into a very dark world. He lived as God’s representative full of love and faithfulness. He dwelled among his people as God had always wanted. He then gave his life for all who knew they needed rescuing so that we can experience what it’s like to be known, seen, and loved by the God who made us for this very purpose.

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6:23 (NLT)

God’s love longs for you to choose him by reaching out for his Son Jesus. He still offers each of us the choice to choose or reject him with all its consequences. Love must give us a choice.

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted,

The Soul Cries Core Values

Love, Commitment, and Relationship bringing Hope. God loves you unconditionally and longs for you to experience the beauty of a committed relationship with him through his Son Jesus. The totality of his Word and the life of his Son is the fullest expression of his passionate love for you.

But he waits until you desire the same with him. Healthy, loving relationships always set boundaries. No one wants to share their intimacy with a third party, and so God won’t be used or taken for granted. Nor will he share you with the evil and rebellion that mar his world daily through our rebellious choices against him.

However, if you at some point wish to begin a loving relationship with God, your commitment to seek him above all else will unleash powerful lavish gifts for you to experience with him. And some of his greatest gifts will be to empower, strengthen, and give you hope as he walks with you through this world’s pain.

May I please pray for you?

Dear Lord, I come to you on behalf of this dear one. You see their pain and you care about every tear they’ve cried silently in the darkness of their own space. You see their hopelessness and longing to be embraced right where they are. I ask in Jesus’ name that you meet them where they stand, with whatever questions they have, and let them know that you are real and that you love them beyond compare. Please powerfully express your love to them right now in a way they will comprehend. Thank you, in Jesus’ name, amen.

Your next steps

Ready to take steps toward experiencing God’s love in a relationship with him?

Are you willing to look further into the matter? If so, then a simple conversation with God may go something like this, “God, if you’re real, give me a reason to live and I’ll serve you.” Many years ago my husband prayed such a prayer as he contemplated suicide. He later stated that instantly he was filled with peace and knew God was real and had heard his cry. It radically changed his life forever.

And so you know, one of our free resources, a very short Bible study about building healthy relationships with God and people (with short Bible passages and questions similar to the ones you found here) can be obtained for free through a subscription to the monthly newsletter. Head over to the home page to click the link entitled Resources.

You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending. CS Lewis

Want to dialogue further about your questions and doubts?

If you aren’t yet ready to commit to anything with God but would like to discuss your questions and doubts, there are several ways in which we can dialogue. Throughout the website, there are ways to contact me through email. You also may leave a comment at the end of this post and I can get back to you. I’d love to begin a chat about any questions and doubts. It’s a safe place here. We will offer the truth, but we force no one. God gave us all the gift of choice, and we honor that.

You will always be respected and honored, because God’s love for you is as real today as it was when he made you.