A common charge hurled my way is that I hate God. Usually this charge is then followed with wanting to know why I hate God? What caused me to turn from loving God to hating God? Surely I must have been hurt and this caused me to angrily turn from a God lover to a God hater.
No matter how many times I say, “I don’t hate God”, someone is certain that I do. Why is this?
A Christian loves Jesus. A Christian loves the triune God of the Bible. In the mind of the Christian loving God makes complete sense. In their mind there is something wrong with a person who doesn’t love the Christian God. Either they are deceived by Satan, ignorant, or have been hurt by Christians and are taking out their anger on God.
For some reason Christians simply can not wrap their mind around the notion that I do not believe God exists, not just the Christian God, but ANY God. Even when point blank told this, many of them insist that there is no such thing as an atheist. In other words, no matter what I say I am, they know differently.
Since I believe God is a fiction of the human imagination (albeit a fiction that many find great comfort and hope in), it would be certifiably insane for me to hate something or someone that does not exist.
I do not spend one moment hating God. With so many real things and people to hate why would I waste my time hating a fictitious being? This would be akin to me hating the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus. You would think I was stupid and slightly off in the head if I went around spreading my hate for Santa Claus. And rightly so.
Leaving Christianity allowed me to reconnect with the real Bruce Gerencser. For most of my adult life my self was swallowed up by Jesus, the Church, and the ministry. I lost all connection to who I really was and how I felt about anything. Feelings were suspect and a person living their life according to their feelings was a person not controlled and directed by the Holy Spirit. I definitely wanted to be Spirit-led and Spirit-filled so I did my best to die to self. (a teaching that is quite prominent in the Bible)
Emotions like anger and hate were definitely out-of-bounds. The Bible calls anger and hate sin, except when God is doing it. When God gets angry and hates it is perfectly OK because God is righteous and holy. (even if his actions are quite unholy and unrighteous)
As a card-carrying member of the Godless Society, I am now free to be authentic. I am free to be the real Bruce Gerencser, complete with emotions like anger and hate. I have learned that anger and hate have their place and that the bigger issue is how I respond when dealing with my own anger and hate.
Christians have it easy. When they become angry or hateful they just confess it as sin and start all over again. As an atheist, I don’t have a get-out-of-jail free card. I must embrace my self as is and deal with anger and hate in constructive ways. One of the reasons I blog is because it provides an outlet for anger and hatred.
I do hate. Not just institutions or organizations. I refuse to do the dance like Christians do with their hate the sinner but love the sinner routine. There are people I hate, people that I think are harmful to the human race, people of power, who ravage and destroy people and nations.
My hate list is short but I do have one. On this list are people that I would not shed a tear if the morning news reported their death. On this list are also institutions and organizations I hate. Christian TV and Radio. Fox News. (Shepard Smith excepted) I hate politicking preachers and their attempts to destroy America.
Now I don’t sit around fixated on hate. Life is too short for that, but I am a man of passion, a man who believes some things matter. When the Hitler’s and Amin’s of the world die I will gladly spit on their grave and say good riddance. I not only hate the sin but those who do it.
I am sure for some of you this post will be proof that my defection from Christianity was motivated by some hurt. I have stopped trying to convince people otherwise. My anger and hate these days is directed towards people, institutions and organizations that actually hurt people. I have no time for being angry with, or hating, a God who does not exist. There are too many REAL enemies to fight.
I totally respect you; espcially your honesty, for that is a rare quality, especially among Christians. I find that the biggest problem is that it is the Christians who are the ignorant, naive ones. They are the problem. They don’t know enough about ‘the Fall’, and its consequences, ie. the disbelief in God is the natural, fallen state of man. and as a result, they expect more of people than they should. The belief in God is a grace, a gift, not a natural, self evident truth to fallen human kind. I just got a facebook link from a ba christian cousin who doesn’t understand how someone cannot believe in God because of a beautiful sunset he saw.
They also don’t know the bible. Ecclesiastes 3 says theres a time and season for everything, including anger/hate and war. One size fits all verdicts and cookie cutter responses are symptoms of an immature mind. This abounds in Christianity. We can hate and be angry and express our hate and angry because God can, who is in us! When you reckon your self dead and alive to God, abiding in Christ, are mature in the faith, you’ll find that the hate you feel, IS God’s hate in you!!!! It is not originating with your self, it is God’s within you! Peculiar. But I wonder how genuine your care is, if you can not hate, which should be an equal reaction to certain actions.
Jessie Penn-Lewis is the best teacher I’ve ever read on “Reckoning yourself to be dead” and goes into why it doesn’t work for people, chief cause being that they don’t reckon themselves to be alive too! and they do it themselves and in their own effort, instead of by faith… there are more reasons, like maybe you weren’t born again when you tried to be for some of the innumerable possible reasons.
I am a Christain, I soooo appreciate reading this blog of yours, be honest, be you because you’re only as strong as your weakest link. Honesty can be a direct path to finding God and maybe then, you’ll be more prepared to minister to the shallow, sickly state of the Christian church who doesn’t understand because they don’t know and understand their own selves! Ironic isn’t it?
My entire life I was reared to believe in God. In His power, His glory, and His mercy, I was to walk upright believing I was part of an army that served an awesome God.
Now, I am 44 years old and I have come to realize that I have been asking God for the same things since I was a young girl. He has not blessed me in abundance. He does not speak to Him when I ask, I’ve never heard him, the Bible does not give me direction. The Bible tells me I have the right to all the promises of abundance, BUT….there is always a BUT. Why should I serve a God who does not care when I cannot find employment….why should I serve a God who allows me to suffer? According to the Bible, God knows everything. If that is so, then He knew how upset I would be now, present day and dirt poor. Things being cut off and torn down left and right…never no help. If God knows everything, then He knows I loved Him. I believed in Him and I needed Him. BUT!
Even if a person is harmed by religion or god or god’s people, which causes them to hate god, why does that make their experience automatically invalid? I think hating god is a perfectly legitimate reason to leave religion. Sometimes those emotions are the catalyst for really looking at the evidence with an open mind, too.
I don’t think it does. I never “hated” God. I hated what was done in the name of God and I have come to hate some of God’s spokesmen.