Before You Walk Away

​           Being a Christian in our modern world can be challenging.  Increasingly, Christian doctrine seems to be at odds with science and our changing social values.  Perhaps you are one of a growing number of Christians who is struggling to reconcile the faith in which you were raised with a creeping sense that all you were taught to believe is logically incoherent and cruel to individuals who are different and just want to live out their lives.  Perhaps you have reached the point where your inner sense of what must be right has led you to believe that Christianity is wrong.
                You would not be the first to walk away from your faith and you most certainly would not be the last.  But before you walk away, I would ask you to take a moment to reflect on what it was you believed before doubt crept in.  What was at the center of your faith?  Was it that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that he died on the cross to save you from your sins and that he rose from the dead and promises you eternal life in Heaven with him?  If that was not the center of your faith, then I would submit that you never really were a Christian to begin with.
                But if it was what you believed; I would ask you to consider what you are about to give up.  You are giving up the hope of living forever in Heaven.  I am assuming that you are walking from Christianity to atheism or perhaps “hopeful agnosticism” as some have phrased it.  There is nothing hopeful about agnosticism.  God is indeed merciful, but God requires that you at least believe in him and in his promises.  No reward so great has ever had a bar set so low.  Agnostics like to believe that they can simply keep their options open and that their open-mindedness will be seen as a virtue to gain admittance into whatever the afterlife may be.  For starters, that seems like an awfully risky gamble to take with one’s eternal fate.  I suspect that deep-down, most agnostics like the idea of eternal life in paradise, but they do not like the cost of admission.  More on that in a moment.
                As for atheism, to fully embrace atheism one must accept the fact that there is no uniqueness to us as individuals.  We are merely inconsequential collections of matter that will decompose and be recycled into other collections of matter.  If you are walking toward atheism, you are walking away from any meaning as an individual.  All your hopes and dreams have no meaning in the grand scheme of things.  Your grand decision to leave behind your faith was just a random firing of electronic pulses in a carbon-based lifeform that will cease to exist forever when it expires.  But perhaps you have so fully embraced evolutionary science that you have resigned yourself to this cold reality.  Of course, accepting this reality should lead one to question other aspects of one’s life.  Why does a particular song move you?  Why do you care so passionately about whether a certain sports team wins or loses?  Why do you strive toward any achievement that is as equally as meaningless as you would claim striving to please a non-existent god is?  Perhaps your reality is colder than you think.
                If your doubts started the more you learned about science, it begs the question, did you ever believe in miracles?  One cannot be a Christian without believing in miracles.  The greatest miracle of all being that Jesus rose from the dead.  Why is it that the resurrection of Jesus was never a stumbling block for you, but the assertion that God created the universe and everything in it in six days is?  Well science proves the universe evolved over billions of years; you would say.  And what does science have to say about someone rising from the dead?
                My point is that for most people, it is the Creation story and not the Resurrection story that acts as the wedge between them and their faith.  Most of us want to believe in the Resurrection – the possibility of life after death.  It is also an area in theology where Christianity has stood firm, unlike the Creation story in which Christianity has attempted to strike some middle ground between the claims of evolutionary science and the Biblical account (i.e. redefining what “days” mean, suggesting that God created through evolution, etc.).  I would venture that when Christianity attempts to bend to the theory of evolution (and I would remind you despite the insistence its adherents make to its certainty, it is still only scientifically classified as a theory and not a proven scientific law) instead of standing firm on the miraculous power of God it loses credibility.
                I choose to stand firm on the miraculous power of God.  For me, the God that had the power to carry out the Resurrection also had the power to create the universe in six days.  Why would I think otherwise?  And if you too believed in the Resurrection despite its obvious scientific impossibility, why would you doubt that God could also do the scientifically impossible regarding creation?  Do you place limits on the power of God?  If you do, then again, I would say you never really were a Christian.
                But perhaps you would argue that there is so much evidence available to point to the fact that the earth is far older than the Bible claims it to be.  You would point to the fossil record and scientific dating methods.  I can point to flaws in all of that, but I would encourage you to do your own research and decide for yourself.  Look up “Answers in Genesis”, “Genesis Apologetics”, and “Is Genesis History” on YouTube and watch some of the videos.  It is the least you can do before walking away from a God who loves you and offers you eternal life.  The following is a link to a particularly compelling YouTube movie from “Is Genesis History”:
https://youtu.be/UM82qxxskZE
                It is here that I would like to make a point about searching for truth.  It is ok to have doubts.  But one must be honest in one’s pursuit of the answers.  More to the point, are you really looking for answers or are you looking for excuses to either justify your own behavior or your own desire to fit in with the culture around you?  You might never find the truth if you allow an agenda to guide you.
                It could be that you might never find exact evidence to absolutely prove the Creation Story.  But if you find enough evidence to cast some doubt on the facts surrounding evolution, shouldn’t God get the benefit of the doubt?  If there is a chance that there is a God who created you and loves you and sent his only son to die to give you eternal life, isn’t that a chance worth believing in as opposed to clinging to the chance that it is all a lie and that life is without meaning and there is no existence after death?
                Earlier I made a remark about agnostics being unwilling to pay the “cost of admission” into Heaven.  This ties into one’s motivations for seeking the truth about God.  Many Christians fall into agnosticism because they do not want to be tied to the moral code of Christianity – a code that is increasingly at odds with the evolving standards of our current culture.  Some people have genuine concerns over Christianity’s perceived harsh and intolerant view of homosexuals and those struggling with gender identity.  Others, quite frankly, just want to fit in, and these days culture is more embracing of someone who claims an open-minded “possibility of an undefined nonjudgmental higher power” than it is of someone who “clings” to traditional Christian values.
                I do not mean to diminish the strong pull of the desire to fit in.  The world can be a cold and unkind place when you feel lonely and rejected.  But that is why God has enabled us to have such a personal relationship with him.  He claims us as his children.  He sent his son to die for us.  He sent the Holy Spirit to comfort us.  If the desire for popularity or a wider circle of friends and influence  means more to you than what God is offering, then I do not know what to say to you, except that I hope you reconsider your point of view.
                And if homosexuality and gender identity are the wedges that have separated you from Christianity, I would ask you why would a God who has shown the ultimate love for us through the sacrifice of Jesus, take such a seemingly unreasonable stance against people who are just living out the feelings they think they were born with?  I would first ask if your turning away from God stems from the fact that because you view this as such a contradiction, God therefore cannot exist or if it stems from a more general unwillingness to believe in a god who would have such rules.  If you hold the latter view, then you are on some very perilous ground, for unless you are absolutely certain that God does not exist, there remains the possibility that whether or not his rules are just or unjust in your eyes, they are the rules of the creator of the universe and of the being that holds your eternal fate in his hands.  Sexual freedom might seem like a hill worth dying on when you are in the prime of your youth, but when you reach a point where you are forced to truly confront your eternal existence, you might find a new perspective.
                But is God being unreasonable when it comes to these matters?  Can you for one moment perhaps entertain the idea that a loving God perhaps has loving reasons to discourage homosexuality and the redefining of genders?  Could it be that there is a greater, better plan that he has and that homosexuality and gender confusion prevent those who engage in such lifestyles from living out that plan and reaching their full potential for both God and themselves?  Would you not concede that if God truly does exist, he knows far more than all of us?  Would you presume that the area of sexuality is the one area where you know more than him?  Have you considered that maybe when it comes to these issues of sexuality we are collectively behaving like the rebellious teenager who constantly rolls their eyes at their parents, only to find out that their parents knew best after all.  Was there ever anything you were so certain you were right about, only to find out that your parents actually were right after all?
                And just like the parent of a teenager, God loves us despite our constant rebellions and insufferable know-it-all attitudes.  But just like a teenager, if we choose to run away, we put ourselves at great risk.  We find that being all on our own is not all we thought it would be.  We find that even though we gave up Christian values, people still have other reasons to judge us and we still do not fit in as much as we had hoped.  We find the pleasures of pursuing the lifestyle of our choice ultimately pale against the gnawing dread of the possibility of what awaits when this life ends.
                There are four possibilities when you die.  The first is that you have spent your life failing to follow the true god.  Upon death you will face whatever punishment that god has for unbelievers.  The second is that there is no god.  If that is the case, then nothing you have done in this life matters.  You will not feel a sense of satisfaction for having gotten away with not following the rules of various religions nor will you feel a sense of regret over pleasures that were forgone in the name of obeying a god.  You will simply cease to exist.  The third possibility is that there really is some universal, undefined, higher power that will welcome all of us into a wonderful eternity regardless of what we have done or believed while living out our lives.  This is wishful thinking at its most ambitious.  The fourth possibility is that you have followed the true god and upon death you will receive the reward for those who believe.  The reward varies depending on the religion.
                As you review these possibilities you will see that the only one that really matters is failing to choose to follow the true god.  If there is no god, it does not matter what you do.  Likewise, if there is an all-accepting higher power, it does not matter what you believe or if you believe in anything at all.  But if there is a specific god with specific requirements for entering eternal life, there is nothing more important in this life than meeting those requirements.  Sexuality is not more important.  Fitting in is not more important.  The theories of human scientists are not more important.  Nothing is more important than doing what is necessary to please the god that holds your fate in his hands.
                But you might say that doing what is right is more important.  After all, Muslims think that killing unbelievers is what is necessary to please their god.  If Allah truly is god, then what they are doing is right.  If they are worshipping the wrong god, then they are wrong.  If there is no god, then it does not matter because if there is no god, nothing we do in this life matters.  If there is an all-accepting higher power, what they do does not matter either because there are no eternal consequences for their misguided violence.  They will be excused for their mistaken beliefs and receive the same eternal fate as everyone else.
                The human sensibility of what is “wrong” is the lie at the very heart of the Fall of Man.  God defines what is right and what is wrong.  His definition is not arbitrary or capricious.  It stems from his omniscience.  Because he knows everything, he knows the outcome of every action, therefore he knows which actions bring good results and which actions bring harmful or evil results.  Adam and Eve sought this knowledge when they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  But what they were really doing was attempting to establish their own authority to decide what was right or wrong, apart from God’s will.  God said that it was wrong to eat from the tree, but Eve, with some persuasion from Satan via the serpent, justified the action as right in her own eyes and overrode the command of God.  Likewise, Adam listened to Eve’s persuasion over the command of God and justified the action as right in his mind.
                Does this sound familiar?  In our current culture we are faced with commands from God.  We are also confronted with persuasive voices, tugging on our own notions of what is “right”.  Adam and Eve lost their place in paradise for following what they thought was “right”.  Are you so convinced in your perception of what is “right” that you would turn away from eternal paradise?
                God asks so little from us.  For Adam and Eve, he simply asked that out of all the plentiful trees in the beautiful paradise of Eden that they stay away from one tree.  He asked them to trust him when he said that tree would bring them harm.  He is asking you to trust him.  Trust that he loves you and wants the best for you.  His rules might not make sense to you, just as Adam and Eve could not conceive how the fruit from one tree could be so dangerous.  All God wants is your trust and your love.  He sent his son Jesus to die to wipe away all of your mistakes and all of the times that you might have struggled to trust him and follow his rules – rules that he put in place to help you lead a happy and fulfilling life.  Jesus died to save us from facing the separation from God that Adam and Eve faced when they followed their own ideas of what was right instead of following God.  Adam and Eve were forced to walk away from the paradise of Eden.  God has placed an eternal paradise before you if you would just trust in him.  I would ask you to consider trusting him before you walk away.
One final note – many Christians lose faith after suffering a great tragedy in their lives.  They cannot reconcile how a good and all-powerful God could allow such terrible things to happen in the world.  Perhaps that is the case with you.  The following is a link to an earlier post I wrote about my own experience with tragedy: http://jjbpost.com/blog/when-your-stars-fall-from-the-sky  I hope it brings you some comfort and perspective.  Perhaps the best answer to this question can be found in C.S. Lewis’s book The Problem of Pain.  If you are struggling with your faith for any reason, my hope is that you will hold on a bit longer and seek out reasons to believe.  The hope and peace of Christ are far greater than any promises this world has to offer.