Today, a Canadian Christian woman named Jane sent me the following email:
I don’t know what happened in your life to cause you to become a non-believer, but your rant is unacceptable.
God has a reason for everything – believe me, I’ve been tested many times. But, whatever His reason, I continue to have faith. I don’t know of a better plan.
You don’t need to spout off your hate because you feel that, at some point in your life, he “let you down”.
Best I can tell, Jane read one post, Evangelical NFL Analyst Dan Orlovsky’s Prayer for Damar Hamlin Should Be Offensive to Christians and Atheists Alike, before firing off an email to me. She later viewed the front page for an indeterminate amount of time. Jane made no attempt to learn about who I am. She didn’t read any of my autobiographical material. Has Jane done so she would have had all her questions answered. Would she still have emailed me anyway?
Jane’s email sounds like a scolding. How dare I spout off in an “unacceptable” manner. What that unacceptable manner is, Jane doesn’t say.
I really wish the Janes of the world would at least read the About page and peruse the posts on the Why? page before emailing me. Is it too much to ask that people at least make a good-faith effort to understand my story before pissing in my cornflakes? The writer of the book of Proverbs had this to say: Answering before listening is both stupid and rude. I will leave it to “God” to speak to Jane’s heart.
Jane says “God has a reason for everything.” She provides no evidence for this claim other than personal experience. Surely she knows that anecdotal stories prove nothing. Before I would buy Jane’s claim, she would have to show that God even exists; that that deity is the God of the Bible; that this God actually has a reason for everything. If the Bible reflects the acts of God, can we say he is reasonable? Further, look at all the suffering, pain, and death children and adults alike face. How is what we see “reasonable”? Jane could argue that the Bible says “God’s ways are not our ways,” but this does not absolve God of moral culpability. Based on the Bible and what we can observe, Richard Dawkins was right when he said:
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
I have no doubt that Jane is a better person than the God she worships. I say this for argumentative purposes. As an atheist, I believe the Christian deity is a myth.
Perhaps Jane would argue that we suffer because of a “sin.” Here’s the problem with this line of thinking. Jane emphatically states that her peculiar version of God has a reason for everything. Would that not mean, then, that God has a “reason” for our sin? I am sure Jane believes God is in control of everything; that he is the sovereign ruler over all; that he even knows how many hairs are on our heads. Thus, following this sort of thinking to its logical conclusion, God is the creator of sin and is responsible for our sinful behavior. You can’t have it both ways. If God is in control and has a reason for everything, “sin” rests on the doorstep of the Almighty.
Jane, as many Christians do, wrongly says that I hate God. First, I am an atheist. It would be silly for me to “hate” a being that I think is a mythical character. I don’t hate God, nor do I hate anyone, for that matter. I reserve my hate for institutions and beliefs that harm people. That’s why I have spent the past fifteen years sharing my story and critiquing Evangelical Christianity and the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church movement. That’s why I continue to publish the Black Collar Crime Series. It is to these things I give my “hatred.” (I am using the word hatred in the sense of my passion for writing about these issues.)
I hope Jane will, in the future, “think” before sending an email to a complete stranger. Questions are always welcome. But scolding me and judging me without bothering to learn who and what I am? Why, that might get you what regular readers affectionately call “the Bruce Gerencser treatment.” 🙂
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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