By: Jana Greene
One of the simplest arguments for believing in a Supreme Being is this:
If you – an atheist – are correct that there is no God and I – being a Christian – am wrong about it….I have lost nothing by believing.
But if you are wrong and I am right? You have lost everything, eternally.
Recently, I have noticed advertisements on the Internet geared toward dissuading children from believing in God. With catchy dot-com names and colorful logos, these sites implore kids to wonder, “Aren’t you getting a little old to believe in imaginary friends?”
Again…if you as the humanist are leading a child to this conclusion correctly – it seems harmless enough.
But if you are wrong, your pursuit in sharing the un-gospel with little ones is downright diabolical. Rather than nurturing that child’s natural belief in having been created for a purpose, you are attempting to cauterize his or her spiritual DNA. Jesus makes no bones about the seriousness of leading children away from him.
Children have a natural proclivity to believe in what we adults forget how to know. Not because the supernatural ceases to be true as we get older, but because we become jaded and self-important. We’ve been lied to and what we know to be true, we have all figured out. Telling a child not to believe in God to appease adults who think they know better…adults who have forgotten that believing is so much better than simply knowing.
I wouldn’t want to believe in a God small enough for human science to explain. That’s the bottom line.
To the purveyors of atheism (junior edition) I ask: would you ask a child to ponder outgrowing love or forgiveness? Of course not. The manifestations of those forces keep mankind from imploding – so destructive are our impulses at the opposite end of the spectrum.
Rather than trying to convince the children to be closed-minded adults, let them do what comes naturally to them – believe with simple faith. Child-like faith.
You might even want to try it on for size.
“…For an answer Jesus called over a child, whom he stood in the middle of the room, and said, “I’m telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you’re not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God’s kingdom. What’s more, when you receive the childlike on my account, it’s the same as receiving me.” Matthew 18:25 (MSG)
Musings of a Gypsy Soul 
You do lose something. You lose time and money to name two things, believing in mythology and basing your entire life around it.
Faith is throwing away your critical thinking skills.
Your idea to teach children nonsense is also not without possible repercussions, especially when you’re teaching them hell doctrine and other fear based garbage, meant to terrify them into believing and never questioning your religion.
So yes, there is a cost.
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Hmmm. God is Love, in Spirit. I’ve lost nothing if I’ve base my life on love. Not a single thing. Nor have I left the world a worse place for having loved in the tradition of Christ.
And who said anything about NOT questioning one’s faith? My pastor told me once, “Throw everything you think you know about your ‘religion’ out the window and focus on Jesus.” I think you MUST question, it’s essential to coming by faith. Not the way the world necessarily sees faith, but that heart-changing, gut-wrenching, all-encompassing change that takes place deep in your hidden heart.
Kids are the most questioning people on the planet and God wants us to come to him as little children. I think He definitely gets it. I think He knows that we are curious and that’s okay.
Each child must navigate his or her own spiritual minefield…nobody is ‘born’ a Christian, it must be a choice, or it means nothing. We agree that fear-based doctrine is harmful. Who wants to be scared into faith? No thank you. We are thinkers, yes. But that’s not all there is to us. Would you agree? We are hearts and spirits and minds. Critical thinking includes considering all angles, even the one in which ‘mythology’ is Truth. I love the adage “Religion is a guy in church thinking about fishing. Relationship is a guy out fishing thinking about God.”
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“I’ve lost nothing if I’ve base my life on love. Not a single thing. ”
So you would consider basing your life around a lie a good use of your time?
“Nor have I left the world a worse place for having loved in the tradition of Christ.”
I don’t know you personally so I can’t say. Some might disagree with you though.
“My pastor told me once, “Throw everything you think you know about your ‘religion’ out the window and focus on Jesus.”
So…throw everything you know about your religion out the window but focus on the center…of your religion?
Huh?
“Not the way the world necessarily sees faith, but that heart-changing, gut-wrenching, all-encompassing change that takes place deep in your hidden heart.”
Sounds extremely spooky but not a very reliable method of forming beliefs.
“Kids are the most questioning people on the planet and God wants us to come to him as little children. I think He definitely gets it. I think He knows that we are curious and that’s okay.”
Children do question, and they’re easily deceived, which is why religions target them. They also tend to cling to those beliefs into adulthood.
“We agree that fear-based doctrine is harmful. Who wants to be scared into faith? ”
Do you believe in some sort of hell?
Yes or No.
“We are hearts and spirits and minds. Critical thinking includes considering all angles, even the one in which ‘mythology’ is Truth.”
Not sure what a spirit is. I agree we have a brain and a body. I don’t think we have a disembodied mind.
And yes, I’ve considered it and found it lacking in evidence and reality.
That’s a neat adage though. 🙂
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Perhaps I should clarify, re: throwing out religion and embracing Jesus. The church(es) have managed in many ways to make a mess of the gospel, in my opinion. Denominations are a good example. Why are there so many? Man has made God about man. How many ways can we put God in a box? How many rules can we make that people are bound to fail? If you read the teachings of Jesus, He was a revolutionary, a radical thinker. Radically loving. Many church doctrines look NOTHING like His teachings at all, and have been twisted (again, in my opinion, just from my searching and reading the gospels.) One of the things the modern church has managed to do is beat people over the heads with Bibles whilst forgetting that the Spirit (there’s that word again;)) is life itself. I’m talking about a literal Spirit of absolute Love. I absolutely believe we are body, mind and spirit, and I’ll go you one further. I believe the Spirit is the strongest, hungriest, and most eternal of all of those parts. Your spirit is your “God particle” – it makes you YOU. It is eternal.
Can I prove that to you? No, I know it it my heart of hearts. Do I need to prove it to you? No. Because you cannot prove something that is true in the Spirit to a mind that is closed off to the possibility of there even BEING a spirit. It’s like proving to you that I am having thoughts about chocolate by showing you my big toe. Yes, my mind and body are related and intertwined, but not exactly the same thing. Different parts of me.
I come from a recovery background….I’m a recovering alcoholic. Being my own Highest Power didn’t really pan out for me, and that’s when I called God to the mat and when He revealed Himself to be real to me in earnest.
Hell is separation from God, who is love. So a lot of people are already in it, walking around here on this big, blue marble. That’s my take on that.
I’ve seen supernatural things, and have not found them lacking in evidence or reality at all! Spooky? Sometimes. Glorious and erethral? Oh, yes. (I’m a natural-born skeptic, too. Believe it or not.)
That’s been my experience, and I cannot deny something that has proven itself to be true to me.
Can you prove that love exists? Can you bottle it, break down its chemical make-up (yes, I know you can manufacture serotonin, etc. That’s not what I’m talking about.) No. But you can see the manifestations of it all over the place. Ditto evil. Manifested everywhere.
It’s enough to make your brain hurt. If you try to process it only with your brain 😉 The spirit of a person is not their disembodied mind at all.
“Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning.” – C.S. Lewis.
You seem super intelligent, and I appreciate the conversation. And I have no interest in arguing for the sake of argument at all! It’s always nice to have civil discourse, and I mean no disrespect whatsoever.
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