TXatheist went to church yesterday - this is why:
Posted in Ir (Helen) | Comments OffThe announcement I saw in the local paper was why I came. Here’s a paragraph that made me want to go to this church of all the ones advertising the easter service.
“Many atheists who have labored tirelessly to disprove Christ’s resurrection have either come to the conclusion that the resurrection did happen and Jesus Christ is who he says he is, or like Nietzsche, they’ve gone insane out of frustration and bitterness”.
I’ve yet to meet an atheist like this so I thought I’d go and let Mike know that there is no need to think atheists are crazy or actually believe the resurrection story.
I couldn’t go to Off The Map’s conference Inside the Missional Matrix, but to be honest, I wasn’t sure if I’d really ‘fit’ anyway. I don’t know exactly what ‘missional’ means (I hadn’t heard that word until I got involved with Off The Map and started reading things that emerging Christians write), but it sounds a bit close to ‘missions’ and ‘missionary’ which are all about converting people to Christianity, which isn’t at all where I’m at these days.
On the other hand I knew there would be some neat people there so I would have liked to go and hang out with them.
The podcasts from the talks were put up impressively quickly (the conference ended on Saturday afternoon and they were up later that day). I decided to listen to them so I could see what ‘missional’ was all about.
I’m particularly interested to hear from the atheists here, but Christians feel free to jump in too, if you have comments: would you listen to podcasts from a conference about being ‘missional’ or would the theme put you off? If you do listen to any of them, I’d be interested in your thoughts - were they what you expected or not?
By the way, one of the podcasts is of Jim interviewing ‘a missionally minded atheist, Eliza in fact, so even if you’re not interested in the rest, you might like to listen to that one.
Posted in Ir (Helen) | 11 Comments »Mike Clawson recently sent me a link to Michael’s story - Michael is a friend of his. Thanks Mike!
Michael’s story of why he walked away from church might have a familiar ring to some of you.
Michael was raised in church. At the age of nine or ten his Sunday School class was studying the ten plagues. He decided to read the Bible for himself and see what it had to say. He was shocked to read that God’s plan from the outset was to harden Pharaoh’s heart so Pharoah wouldn’t respond to the plagues by letting the Israelites go.
As Michael writes on his blog:
Well that is completely different than what my Sunday School teacher taught me! Here you have, in the very Bible that they are supposedly teaching from, the truth of what really happened.
God and Moses schemed to go to the Pharaoh and ask for the people to be set free. But God is telling Moses up front that God will “harden Pharaoh’s heart” so that he will not let the people go.
This changes the whole story!
Instead of a God who has to show his might to convince the Pharaoh of his greatness, you have a God who is purposefully making the Pharaoh not listen, just so God can come along and inflict great pain and suffering on the people of Egypt.That’s not loving, caring or kind.
That’s manipulative, conniving and megalomaniacal.If you continue reading the story of the Ten Plagues, you will see that after each plague, Pharaoh gives in and wants to let the people go. But God comes along and “hardens his heart”, so that Pharaoh says no and God gets to inflict more plagues upon innocent people. All of this unneeded pain and suffering, just so people will remember how “great” God is (Jos 2:9-11; 9:9; Isa 4:8; 6:6).
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