There has been a lot of dialogue on the “I perceive you are very religious” post with Michael the Little Boot, who does not believe in God. In the course of it, I asked him about his life, his experiences with religion that he alludes to, and how he became an atheist. He gave, in effect, what evangelicals call his “testimony.” So that you didn’t miss it in the comment section, I thought I’d post it here. (It’s long, so I’ll continue it under “comments.”) I was struck with how closely it tracks with evangelical testimonies, only, of course, to the opposite effect.

This has many lessons for those of us who are Christians. Notice the role of the CHURCH in producing atheists. Michael grew up with a Christianity that was harsh and life denying, whose message was law, law, law. The gospel was even turned into law, and Christ was not manifested in a pervading climate of grace, mercy, and forgiveness. (Some Lutheran churches, despite their theology, create this same impression.) The church then mistreated Michael in some unspecified (though not sexual) way. Being anti-intellectual, his church apparently did nothing in the way of apologetics or even in explaining the faith in any kind of sophisticated way, so that even a lightweight Michener novel was enough to kick out all of the intellectual supports of Michael’s Christianity. Whereupon he then went to another atheist-maker, liberal Christianity, to a Christian liberal arts school that introduced him to the higher critical approach to the Bible and to the notion that all the world’s religions are essentially the same, whereupon he chucked the whole thing.

Michael asks, in return, for other readers of this blog to tell about THEIR lives and why they believe in Christianity. Take up the challenge.

My parents come from different religious backgrounds. My mother was raised Catholic, my father was raised Jewish. They later rejected both and began to float around. By the time I was born they were into Scientology. Thankfully, they gave that up, as they are not rich and could not keep up with the endless “requests” for money. After I was born we ran into a number of bad-luck issues (sister was born with spinal meningitis and almost died, father had his thumb cut off in a plumbing accident, etc.). My mother decided things were bad enough that we should start attending the local Baptist church with our neighbor. Father wasn’t down, but later relented to save his marriage (although now he considers himself born-again).

Don’t know what type of Baptist church it was (I wasn’t that savvy at the age of four); but here I was introduced to really uplifting ideas that make a child feel safe. Some of those are 1) eternal hell, full of fire and brimstone and this really scary dude called Satan; 2) that I am a wretch, and the closest I come to “righteousness” is the equivalent of a filthy sock; 3) that I have free will to choose whatever I want to do, although there is only one choice which will make me truly happy (which begs the question “How is that really a choice?”), even if I don’t “feel” happy when I make that choice; 4) original sin, or “Why I am responsible for a choice made millennia ago by people I will never meet (on Earth, anyway)”; 5) that the things my body tells me to do - other than eating, sleeping, or using the restroom - are bad, dirty activities, and really come from Satan as a result of The Fall…

[Click the “comments” to read the rest.]

Rev. William Weedon offers a great quote from C. F. W. Walther, the father of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (the reference being to an excellent devotional book drawn from Walther’s writings translated by Gerhard Grabenhofer, one of my former students!)

Each rejoices when another rejoices, and each regards himself as a greater sinner than another. He is therefore honored to receive a visit from even the humblest Christian, for he knows this individual carries within himself the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, just as Mary carried Jesus bodily in her womb. He also knows that, in his fellow Christian, Christ is making a visit. - *God Grant It!* p. 907

Notice the theology of Christ’s presence in ordinary people, which is basic to the doctrine of vocation.

In yet another in its ongoing series of idiotic cover stories, Newsweek has a big spread on the newsy topic of which was greater, Lincoln or Darwin? See, the two were born on the same day, February 12, 1809 (not even this week!), so the journalist thought it would be a good idea to compare them. The story presents them as two revolutionaries (which Lincoln wasn’t), but it just doesn’t make sense. That’s because you can only compare two things of the same kind. Two scientists would work (Darwin or Einstein?), or two statesmen (Lincoln or Washington?). But mixed comparisons (Einstein or Washington?) just don’t work!

As the saying goes, you can’t compare apples and oranges. Actually, you CAN compare apples and oranges since they are both fruits, and, as such, they have common points of comparison (taste, texture, nutrition, etc.) that you can go back and forth with. But you can’t compare apples to shopping malls or oranges to television sets. So, Newsweek, which is greater, Darwin or the first Star Wars movie? Lincoln or Bach’s Brandenburg concerto?

A new edition of Shakespeare’s complete works leaves out a poem historically attributed to him. For the ensuing controversy, see Did Shakespeare really write “A Lover’s Complaint”? - By Ron Rosenbaum.

The poem depicts a young woman mourning because she was seduced and abandoned, a poignant subject that shows its author’s moral sensitivity. But the metaphors are over-the-top and the poem is, arguably, ludicrously bad. Here are two stanzas, and you can see for yourself:

Oft did she heave her napkin to her eyne,
Which on it had conceited characters,
Laundering the silken figures in the brine
That season’d woe had pelleted in tears,
And often reading what contents it bears;
As often shrieking undistinguish’d woe,
In clamours of all size, both high and low.

Sometimes her levell’d eyes their carriage ride,
As they did battery to the spheres intend;
Sometime diverted their poor balls are tied
To the orbed earth; sometimes they do extend
Their view right on; anon their gazes lend
To every place at once, and, nowhere fix’d,
The mind and sight distractedly commix’d.

That is to say, she is crying so hard, her tears, with their brine, are laundering her handkerchief. The part about the balls tied to the orbed earth means that her eyes (eyeballs) are looking down.

My take: Historical evidence points to Shakespeare as the author. It appeared in the edition of his sonnets that appeared during his lifetime.

Just because a poem is bad does not mean it was not written by a good writer. Shakespeare, like all good writers, wrote some terrible lines in his day. “Lover’s Complaint” is no worse than “Titus Andronicus.” Writing is a craft, and craftsmen try things that work and things that don’t work, and they learn by doing. There is a lesson here for all vocations.