CONVERSATIONS WITH A SKEPTIC:
“How Can I Be A Christian When Christians Have Done So Much Harm?”
Rev. Karen Pidcock-Lester
First Presbyterian Church,
Isaiah 58:1-10
Matthew 5:13-16
I John 4:8
Introduction to the Series
This summer, Carter and I have spent some time reading some recent books which have stirred up a lot of conversation in the media, specifically two books god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, by Christopher Hitchins, and Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris, both self-described atheists.
We do not recommend these books for your reading--not because they are written by atheists, and present challenges to faith: books that challenge religious faith are nothing new nor always bad. But we do not recommend these books because their claims are neither well-reasoned nor well-expressed. They are angry torrents of unrestrained venom, with arguments that are specious, full of holes and blatant misstatements.
We do not recommend these books. But if you are curious, and you read them, we urge you to balance your study by reading some books we can recommend to you: Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis, or two books by Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith, and The Case for Christ.
All that being said, let us also say that the issues these books raise about religion are valid. The questions have been asked before, and are worth asking. If we are to have a deep, mature, examined faith, rather than a glib, shallow faith, these are questions it is good to consider. We’ll look at 4 of them in the month of September.
1. How can I be a Christian when Christians have caused so much harm?
2. How can I believe in a good God when there is so much suffering in the world?
3. In a scientific world, how can I have faith?
4. How can I rely on a Bible with so many disturbing passages?
Perhaps you have already asked these questions yourself. Perhaps the questions have nagged at you and caused you to doubt your own belief.
Doubt is something we are often hesitant to voice aloud.
But if we are honest, most of us at
some time or other question our faith, and doubt. A recent book about Mother Teresa of
We do not need to run from the tough questions: God can handle them.
But neither can we use them to hide behind. It is possible to hang on to the questions and doubts, and use them like a barricade. We are afraid to remove them or go around them, because if we do, we just might have to move forward and do something, even change.
The tough questions: we need not run from them,
we cannot hide behind them…
but we can work through them, and learn to live with them.
They are as old as the Bible. And some are not going to go away.
We do not presume that in the next month, we will be able to adequately address these questions. But we do hope in our reflections to offer some tools for …
conversations with the skeptic – in our neighborhood, or in ourselves.
Let us hear the Word of God. Matthew
5:13-16
I John 4:8
Let us pray.
“In a world where religion has done so much harm, how can I have faith?
When the Church has done so much wrong, how can I be part of it?
How can I show up on Rally Day, and raise my children in the faith?”
There is absolutely no denying the fact that a lot of harm has been done through the centuries in the name of religion. We do not have to go far back in history to see the truth of this.
Christopher Hitchins tells about a
time when he appeared on a Christian radio broadcast. The talk show host challenged Hitchins to answer
what he called a ‘straight yes/no question.’ Hitchins agreed. “Imagine yourself in a strange city as the
evening was coming on,” said the host, “imagine that there was a large group of
men coming towards you. Would you feel
safer, or less safe, if you were to learn that these men were just coming from
a prayer meeting?” (what would you say?)
Hitchins replied: “Just to stay within the letter ‘B,’ I have
actually had that experience in
And that is only the letter ‘B.’
There is no denying that religious
people have inflicted grave cruelty in the name of their religion. Christians have done their share of harm. The Crusades, slavery in the
It is all too true that much too
much wrong has been done by Christians.
We must repudiate it, repent of it, and be humbled by it. There is absolutely no place, no place for
Christians to feel morally superior to non-Christians. Christianity is not a club of good guys and
beautiful people. Christian churches are
populated, have always been populated – like the
Isaiah knew it: “Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist!...you serve your own interest …and oppress all your workers…”(v 4,3)
Jesus knew it: “you liars, thieves, hypocrites!”
Religious hypocrisy is as old as the human race.
But…
The Christian faith is not about Christians.
We are not called to trust or believe in Christians.
We are called to trust and believe in Jesus Christ.
The Christian faith agrees that we are sinful people, prone to do harm;
it knows the depths to which human beings are capable of descending.
This knowledge is at the very core of the Christian faith. I am a Christian precisely because the Christian faith acknowledges the reality of who we are, and addresses it.
Any faith that does not acknowledge the human being’s capacity for evil
and address the human being’s inability to avoid sin no matter how hard we try to be good, well that faith sidesteps the fundamental question of the human condition.
Humanism, which believes in the nobility of the human spirit, has simply not noticed that no one, no one escapes the ways of sin and evil. Neither religious – nor non-religious – people. The purges of atheists Lenin, Stalin, and Chairman Mao rival any purges of popes and priests.
As far back as the scriptures, there has always existed a cultural Christianity which follows the form of faith, but not the substance, and so is a perversion of Christ’s teachings. Someone has said, “There are ten church members by inheritance for every one by conviction.” After all, “going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to the garage makes you a car.”
We cannot judge the Christian faith by the actions of those who are not living it.
We must judge the Christian faith by the One, the only one who has lived it: Jesus Christ.
Christ did no one harm.
Christ lived with a sacrificial love, and a capacity to forgive that was beyond the limits of the human spirit.
And those who truly follow him, those who are authentic rather than cultural Christians, will exhibit some reflection – however cloudy – of his life. To be sure, no one will follow him without fail. George Bernard Shaw said “Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it.”
Of course, no one has ever truly lived the Christian faith.
But some have tried it.
Some have tried to follow Christ, and they have lived not by the human spirit, but by the Holy Spirit. Their light has shined before all. Radiantly.
Ask the young girls in
ask the untouchables in
ask the men and women in the South who rode the buses with the Freedom Riders during the Civil Rights movement, joined in the cause by ordinary church people they’d never met but who showed up from far away to seek justice…
ask the families on the
ask the boys and girls in
ask them if religion poisons everything.
Ask the husband who has been having an affair for 5 years and has kept an apartment and secret life for 3 years, paying for it with $50,000 from his children’s college account -- in his shame and self-loathing, he cannot believe that his wife does not curse him. She is a believer, he is not. She is not a doormat. She is angry and hurt, but she is trying to respond with the grace of God. He is overwhelmed by her efforts to understand and forgive. She says to him, “It would be the most natural thing in the world for me to hate you. The fact that I have no desire to destroy you proves to me the existence of God. The desire to find the grace to forgive – that can’t be coming from me,” she says, “That has to be coming from the Holy Spirit.”
Ask the despised, the forsaken, the abandoned, the lost, the insignificant, the powerless through centuries of history who have received help, hope, grace because “believers have acted against the pride of life to honor Christ…” (Mark Noll, quoted in Strobel, The Case for Faith, p. 220), A radiant, unearthly light has shined through them.
Yes, Christians will and do fall short –
but because no one lives the Christian faith perfectly, does this mean no one is to enjoy the gift of faith at all?
Think for a moment, if you will, about sex. Our sexuality is a gift. It is part of who we are. Some abuse the gift and cause tremendous harm. But because of this, are we to reject our sexual selves altogether? No. We seek to live out the gift in the way God intends, and so to enjoy it as God designs.
Just as our sexuality is woven into our inmost selves, so the impulse towards the divine is woven into our being. “Each of us carries around inside himself…a certain emptiness – a sense that something is missing, a restlessness …” (Frederick Buechner, “Message in the Stars” The Magnificent Defeat, p. 48) Augustine called it a “God-shaped hole.” Scriptures say “God has implanted eternity in the human heart…”
In Christ, God comes to us to fill that emptiness, that God-shaped hole, to satisfy that longing in the human spirit which has existed since the dawn of human life and reconnect us with our Creator.
Some have abused the gift of Christ, and done much harm. But does this mean that no one is ever to enjoy the gift of being filled with Christ’s life?
Are we never to know that completeness of being lost in wonder, love and praise before our Maker…
never to know the joy of being beloved of God…
never to know the peace of trusting the world to God’s keeping?
Are we condemned to always drag around our past mistakes and patterns,
never to feel the cleansing of grace washing over us, never to breathe in the sweetness of a fresh start?
Are human beings the only hope for the forsaken and persecuted of the earth?
Are we forever limited by our feeble human abilities, never to encounter something higher, nobler, wiser, more powerful than ourselves?
Are we never to know the promise of a different life, a different realm?
By
no means!
Though some have defiled the Christian faith, we must press on, seeking to live it as God intends…
and so enjoy and share the gift of life in Christ.
How
can we have faith when Christians have done so much wrong in the world?
Because our faith lies not in Christians.
Our faith lies in Jesus Christ.
And there is nothing wrong with him.