At army boot camp, young recruits, like my Number Three son, aren’t given much free time, and what they are given is restricted to just a couple activities: writing letters home and reading the Bible.
The boy has never really read the Bible beyond anything he picked up in catechism instruction, so it was an experience. He never finished it cover-to-cover during recruit training, which he said was his goal, but he did write letters home. Incessantly, it seemed, but we were very glad to have them.
Several letters focused on his search through scripture. It was a hard slog. His mistake was starting with Genesis and trying to move forward from there. Natural enough; it is at the beginning. But I think reading the biblical books in order, beginning to end, is a doomed enterprise. First you have to get past a six-day creation with no mention of dinosaurs, and then suddenly you are trapped in Exodus and if you get through that, well, Leviticus surely will end it.
I’d start with the Gospel of Mark, and then read the genuine Pauline letters. After those I’d drop back to Acts. If I had any energy left, Kings and Chronicles followed by Isaiah’s servant songs, after that, mix-and-match the prophets. But he didn’t ask me and of course he floundered.
One of his notes, though, left me flustered. How, he asked after some days of biblical reading, does someone become religious? He isn’t what you’d call “religious,” but what with me being a pastor I guess he figured I’d know. He was asking the wrong fellow.
In the first place, pastors I suspect—I am merely extrapolating from my own experience, understand, and the experiences of a half dozen colleagues and even a couple professors of religion I know—are notoriously poor at raising “religious” offspring. If I am any kind of an average example, only three of my seven are regularly inclined to attend worship. Maybe three out of seven isn’t too bad these days.
That’s in the first place. In the second place, I don’t think of myself as a “religious” person. I dislike piety and piousness and whatever it is that makes a person “religious.” I didn’t have any advice for him.
Far from being a “religious” person, I think of myself primarily as an ex-atheist. But just as there’s no such thing as an ex-alcoholic—only an always recovering alcoholic—so I am, as a rule a recovering atheist. I can recall my conversion to atheism with the same clarity of a Born Again Christian, down to the date and the hour if I search my memory. It was a visceral incident, carried later by a stern intellectualism. My hunch is I was a better atheist than Hitchins or Dawkins or some in that crowd, but I haven’t read their arguments so I can’t really say; just a feeling. But I was a pretty darn good atheist if the topic came up, always ready with quick cogent argumentative slashes. And atheism had benefits I lack now; I could sleep late on Sundays.
Naturally I didn’t have to worry about being “religious.” I do now; have for years and feel badly sometimes that I am not especially religious. It’s as if I’m missing a certain spiritual spontaneity that would mark me out as a religious person. I can’t string together all the right words.
There’s a language, a jargon, but I’m not given to dropping religious words or sentiments on people. I know pastors and lay folks to whom it comes as naturally as sunshine. “Jesus” slips off their tongues without any awkwardness, even if it takes them three syllables to pronounce it, like they do down south. “God bless you,” “Have a blessed day,” or even a small murmured “Praise God” hardly ever, almost never, erupts from my mouth, unless it’s timed for irony or it’s written somewhere in the liturgy. Being Lutheran, trust me, none of that is in our liturgy. It simply isn’t me. My religion isn’t on my sleeve. Fact is I’m not always sure where it is.
A friend tells me for him his twenty-plus-year experiment with sobriety is a day-by-day thing. I know others who just stopped drinking and have hardly thought of it since.
My recovery from atheism is in the day-by-day category. Unlike my born again-like conversion to atheism, my re-conversion to faith was a gradual drift, drifting along to the gradual place where I was surprised to find myself a believer, and even more staggered to sense a call to pastoral ministry. It has been a hoot. Given my habits of laxity and procrastination, I suspect that God made me a pastor as his way of getting me up Sundays mornings for worship. I really do not know which is more improbable: my faith or my ordination.
My faith didn’t begin in religion; it came out of left field. I was doing work for a master’s degree in history at the University of Kansas. It seems, so I learned, that real history has real consequences. One may feel and sense and judge the results of real events. This is what makes reading “alternative” histories—“what if” speculations—fun, and occasionally disturbing. It is a chancy life, a “for want of a nail” arrangement.
Historical events are open to interpretation even while the event itself is undisputed. Was it really Harry Truman’s bellicosity that launched the Cold War? Maybe, maybe not, but there you go regardless; we had a Cold War. Unbidden, then, this question began rattling around: If there were no resurrection, how’d we end up with, you know, the Church?
This rising conviction that the disciples encountered something entirely inexplicable led to my belief that Jesus had been raised and the Church, such as she is, is the explosive residue of a real event. Ah, but what if the Church interpretation is wrong? Did the disciples figure things out accurately? I tested this frankly hoping to find something to shake it, reading The Passover Plot among other things. I still enjoy a good book focused on debunking the resurrection of Jesus—and maybe for the same reason—but the explanations typically end up more convoluted than the simplest account: A dead Jesus showed himself live before his followers.
That’s how I ended up worshiping “Whoever It Was Who Raised Our Lord Jesus from Death.” A rather long name, I know, so I’ll just go with God. Mine was not a particularly religious experience, to be sure. But maybe I shouldn’t worry so much about “getting” religion. Maybe being an ex-atheist—today—is enough.
A pastor of the North American Lutheran Church, Russell E. Saltzman lives in Kansas City, Missouri. His previous On the Square articles can be found here.
RESOURCES
The Passover Plot
Comments:
He explains that he became a Christian after pondering, "If there were no resurrection, how’d we end up with, you know, the Church? "
Pastor if there WERE a resurrection, why do we still have, you know, Jews?
The vast majority of people who lived through this time obviously didn't see any resurrection. The Romans didn't mention it, either. Why do you put so much trust in the fringe minority who claim they did?
Further, there's more than one church. If Joseph Smith didn't actually find Golden Tablets bearing God's third testament, why do we have a Mormon church? Answer that, and you've answered your own question.
Irregardless of what you believe, I find the article refreshing becase Russell stood up in the community pulpit and gave an account about his personal faith journey.
Thank you Russell.
My take is that atheists will in one breath loudly proclaim that it's possible to be good without God, but in the next one redefine goodness as a biological construct evolved as a result of natural selection. They say it's a great wrong to put evil men in hell, but think it's a fairy story for good people to go to heaven. They may make valid points about religion's hypocracies and issues, but they embrace worse.
It's not so much that men can be good without God: to paraphrase MacIan from The Ball and the Cross, the Catholics in the middle ages talked so much about pagans being good without God that the world got sick of it. But they tend to break up the thing they defend.
What is it that you seek? To make Catholics or other believers feel stupid? Are you just in a perpetually foul mood? Can't you go post on Will Wilkinson's blog or Scienceblogs, etc. with the other enlightened people? In short, what do you want? A civilized, snark-free discussion? Lead by example.
I like the term "ex-atheist".
I think all believers must contend with the unbeliever who still inhabits the old carcass. And recognition of that fact goes a long way towards keeping us from being "religious"...and a long ways to keeping us in faith.
Thanks, very much.
" What is it that [atheists] seek?"
I think I seek the same thing as everyone else. I want the freedom to live my life as I see fit. I want to make society better for everyone. And I want a double cheeseburger with ketchup, mayo and onion.
"To make Catholics or other believers feel stupid?"
I don't go searching for religious sites to attack. I found this site through Google news, which shows me recent internet stories about atheism. I'm here because the pastor compared atheism to alcoholism and I want to defend myself.
I also value truth. I think falsehood is a sort of prison for people, that wrong ideas we have (and we ALL have some) harm us and limit our growth. Correcting obvious errors (like the pastor's reasoning that the existence of a church proves that its beliefs are true) is, to me, an act of emancipation. The truth will set you free -- feel free to quote me on that. :-)
Everyone is welcome to choose whatever beliefs suit them. But facts and logic are resources all humans share. When someone makes a false claim, or uses bad logic, in a public discussion I think they are harming all of us, and I'm compelled to speak against that. That applies to unproved religious beliefs, junk science, Holocaust denial, and almost anything politicians say.
Had pastor Salzman said, "I believe in the resurrection because I have faith", I wouldn't have argued. I'm here because he tried to pass of an opinion as a logical conclusion from fact.
"In short, what do you want? A civilized, snark-free discussion? Lead by example. "
My response was exactly as snarky as pastor Salzaman's essay. Dustin's comment, though pointed, was respectful and reasonable, so I responded in kind. Even atheists respect the Golden Rule. If we seem hostile, try this: assume we have a good reason to be upset, then try to guess what it is.
To Jeff, sorry, but scholarship has at least one Jewish burial ossuary containing the remains of a victim of crucifixion, indicating that at least in Palestine, at least upon some occasions, the bodies of some victims were collected, entombed, and the bones later retrieved for burial.
Chuck Davis speculates on my "low" view of scripture. It exactly is my view of scripture that led me to resign from the ELCA clergy roster and join the clergy roll of the North American Lutheran Church, costing me a parish and an income in the process. I'm not whining; just saying. But Mr. Davis, you really did little to ease the uninitiated into reading the scripture. Has no one ever once asked you about dinosaurs and Eden?
What would make the Jews disappear? Belief in the resurrection? Clearly, not all believe.
Bill Thacker: "The vast majority of people who lived through this time obviously didn't see any resurrection. The Romans didn't mention it, either. Why do you put so much trust in the fringe minority who claim they did?"
Nobody "saw" the resurrection and only a few had the evidence before them to put it together. That's clear in the Gospels. So why does non-believers not recording the fact surprise?
Your beliefs seem to be short a few facts. But that's not surprising, you're just a human being like we are.
I think the piece you are missing is that this man, Jesus, was publicly executed. Why would his followers put their lives at risk claiming Jesus had risen? And not just in Israel but throughout the Roman Empire and to the East. No armies, no closed community, just men claiming they were sent. The evidence, sketchy though it is, suggests that all but one of the apostles died a martyr's death. Who benefited from the claim? I suspect those are some of the questions that woke the Pastor from his atheism. Though you have the same evidence we have, I imagine you've reached different conclusions.
The disciples encountered something "entirely inexplicable," therefore a human being was "raised from the dead"? So this is what one considers part of objective historical inquiry in Kansas? Blimey!
Are you being purposely obtuse in proclaiming to have had an intellectual approach to religious faith? Because any honest intellectual inquiry into religious faith will pare it down to what it is: faith. There is no other justification for believing.
Tim
So, I'll be the one to challenge that you ever had any intellectual basis for your atheistic stance. [Please note that I didn't say atheism because there is no "ism" that accounts for one's conclusion from assessing the lack of evidence that deities are fictional.] I do see vacillation and you seem to admit that you aren't very pious but what exactly do you think qualifies your comment that you were a "pretty darn good atheist"? My experience is that atheists are primarily followers of rational inquiry and evidence based conclusions are the only way to go, but you for some reason or lack of it abandoned rational inquiry for feel goodism, re: your recommendation for how to read the bible and recognition that it just doesn't make any narrative sense. The all powerful creator of the universe just had to do the things 'It' did the way 'It' did because there was no other way for an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being to do it! And if you will believe that, then maybe you will give offerings and tithes to support the guys who insist all of this is true because they say so...isn't this the real truth about your religion and all of the others? Methinks that you are an atheist, you just can't admit it.
You obviously never really thought about these issues, and I doubt you were an atheist for intellectual reasons. It always amazes me that people that claim to have been atheists end up with no arguments or examples of their atheism, and that they were ignorant of writings and arguments common to all active atheists.
Maybe you were an atheist, you claim it so for now I'll accept it. But you were ignorant then and now of why Christianity is nonsense. And if the simple existence of the church is sufficient to justify the resurrection, they why aren't you Muslim? Why aren't you Buddhist? These things have followers and stories, so by your logic the events behind them happened too. Of course you don't, because that standard of evidence leads to believing all kinds of nonsense. You've just limited yourself to one kind of nonsense.
And to end on a comical note...say Jesus was resurrected. By aliens with super-advanced technology. And these aliens just picked him at random for experimentation purposes. Then where is the basis for a religion?
Perhaps it’s time you did a bit of research before including Buddhism into your arguments.
Buddhists are more correctly referred to as followers of Buddha-Dharma. Shakyamuni Buddha (Siddhrtha Gautama) was a man, albeit an ‘awakened’ man. That said, all people have the inherent qualities to become a Buddha (many have and are today, although you won’t find them deriding individuals on web sites ridiculing others beliefs).
Whether you call it a religion or philosophy or faith; Christianity, Islam or Buddhist, it’s really all one and the same. We, as in humanity, need to realize this FACT and understand we are all striving for the same goal: peace and happiness.
