Atheist Christians
Imagine a lost island which has evolved a minor civilisation completely un-influenced by the outside world. To run a society smoothly, the people have grown a way of living – a moral code. This would naturally, organically include things like it being wrong to steal. Experience might have shown that promiscuity leads not only to the spread of venereal diseases but also to interpersonal trauma when somebody cheats on their partner. So there is an ethic for not committing adultery. The people are sufficiently developed to have spotted the fact that giving love to each other actually promotes quality of life all-round, so in their scriptures there are notions of offering the other cheek, or helping the poor and sick. And so on and so on – all the same Christian values as we have, but for one difference – they don’t have a god. So are they Christians? There are atheists who practice love in the here and now – because, after all love is real, but they have never seen any hide nor hair of a paranormal super-being which helps them out now or then, or punishes them. If there’s never been any evidence of such a being, why would they ever think such a thing existed? But they know inside their hearts that they can give love in the real world, and that it has tangible benefits for people and all life, so that’s where they got their very common sense approach to their own spirituality and moral code. And of course, if it turns out there was a God after all who had been watching this loving civilisation for millennia, then he’s bound to repay them all for their perfectly good lives, by offering them all places in heaven after death. So the only thing they did different was missing out on the praising the God above. But hang on…what does God get out of it when we sing hallelujah? Is he really that egotistical, that he looks down on throngs of singing worshippers, and says to himself – “ah, that’s better, I feel great now they’re all telling me how wonderful I am.” Isn’t He supposed to be a giving God – not taking. If he exists, he wants the best for us, and doesn’t it therefore mean he will forego the worship, in the hope that we would better spend that singing time actually giving tangible love in our world to the people around us? Wouldn’t it be a better service to God if on a Sunday or whatever we chose to crochet some blankets for Oxfam, or stick envelopes down for Amnesty? We don’t actually know there’s a God (As Bernard Shaw said “he should have given us more evidence”) but we do know there is suffering in our real world and we know our love inside us can reduce suffering if so chose to exert ourselves to that end.
Atheist Christians. But then, maybe that’s the sort of suggestion which is likely to cause an uproar. Ironic that too. After all, people who follow Christ are following a Jewish revolutionary. He turned the religious world on its head when he suggested that maybe instead of taking an eye for an eye, we should forgive and love each other, which would be a more sensible, and actually courageous way to bring the world towards peace. So Christians follow a revolutionary, but maybe they’ll dismiss the revolutionary concept of Atheist Christians? Maybe this is a little revolutionary.