This post was taken from a comment I made on my friend Kinsey’s site. She wrote a letter addressed to God expressing some of the frustrations that I’ve felt and I’ve seen in the hearts and minds of my students. I’ve reworded it so it makes more sense as a post:
You started your post addressed to God by declaring that you meant no disrespect. First, why respect someone you don’t believe in? I think this reveals a great deal of where you’re at. There is a lingering sense of deference from childhood that keeps you respecting something that seems much less than real. You’re like the farmer’s child who wants to be an airplane pilot. You know you’re parents have put so much into the farm, but your heart is in the skies. Only the stakes are much higher and the consequences of following your heart may be more severe than most think.
Which brings me to another important part of your post: “My virginity will have been wasted all because everybody that raised me told me it was true.” I will not deny sex is an enormous part of life, but it is not bigger than life itself–it is a pleasurable sensory experience. So to plead a case of eternal proportions by bringing sex to the table seems a bit shallow. If God is true and hell is real and there exists a parallel spiritual world in which spiritual battles are constantly being waged, doesn’t an orgasm seem a bit trifle? I’m not saying this at all to belittle you or your desires, but to show its relative unimportance in light of greater things. If I am a soldier on a battlefield, the last thing I should be thinking about is my penis.
Of course, that begs the conclusion that we are involved in something bigger than our five senses. And maybe that is both the heart of the matter and our biggest problem. Anything extra-sensory is difficult to deal with, obviously, because we have no way of grasping it. I cannot pour a glass of holiness, wrap my arms around God (contrary to popular Christian music) or see His face. We are challenged, and even the Bible admits this, because those that worship God must worship Him in spirit. The core of Abraham, the core of the gospel, the core of the early church, and even the core of the Protestant Reformation was and is faith. But faith defies materialists.
Love and honor also defy materialists because they exist outside sensory perception (though some put these in the category “chemical reactions”.) The house you picture in your head that burned down last year exists nowhere but in your mind; this is a quandary for strict materialists. It isn’t real because I can’t touch it or experience it. Only you can. This is one of the primary reasons relativism has become so prevalent. Not only is this view easy (no confrontation) but it reduces truth to preference and makes life both gentle and worthless–“nothing to kill or die for” as Lenin so aptly put it.
You also take issue with Christian happiness. “I know plenty of people who aren’t religious at all, and they seem to be happy.” Well, I won’t pull the “oh, but they’re not really happy” shtick that most conventional (and often thoughtless) Christians will. Let’s look at it a different way. When I drink a half bottle of Jack Daniels, I feel pretty good. I get warm and woozy and say silly things. When I run my car off the road and crack open the skull of a ten year old with my radiator grill, I feel pretty bad. When I’m in bed with a mistress, I feel pretty good. Passion is pleasurable. When my wife walks in on us, I feel pretty bad. The ire is in the outcome. So I while I cannot say that Christians are the happiest people on the planet, I believe that their fate is going to be most pleasurable.
Blaise Pascal put forth this dilemma in the form of a “wager”. He said that if Christians are wrong, there is no God and annihilation is all that waits for us on the other side of the hospital bed, what have we lost? A few years of sexual pleasure? A conversation full of vulgarity? The taste of liquor? But if Christians are right, there is a God and we will all be judged for our actions, the atheist will deal with the consequences for eternity. Even the most reasonable man should see foolishness in such a wager.
There are plenty of other things to talk about here. Christianity is rife with hypocrisy (I’ve got a post about that coming soon) and laziness. Christians are afraid of a dangerous God. But before you drop the hot potato of belief, ask yourself this one question—a question that has both plagued and challenged me through the years. Have I lived it fully? When teens come to me and complain that there parents don’t trust them, I usually ask, “Should they?” The answer is usually no. When a person comes to me and talks about the faithlessness of God, I usually ask, “Have trusted Him fully? Stepped out in faith? Sacrificed all?” The answer is usually no.
You ended your post with a plea to God: “Do something.” How do you respond when He asks you that?
Again… this isn’t an attack. Simply an invitation to look honestly and without hypocrisy at God.
