Atheist says validating unbelief isn't enough

As I read a Salon article written by a white male atheist criticizing other white male atheists, I had to laugh. White men, who are often unfairly demonized these days, are even piled on for not doing enough to attract more people to godlessness.

C.J. Werleman, author of God Hates You. Hate Him Back: Making Sense of the Bible, takes his fellow white “upwardly middle-class” unbelieving brothers to task for failing “to articulate an identifiable moral cause,” which risks atheism’s demise or could render it a passing fad. As religion gives people a moral narrative to address concerns like the terrible economy, bloodshed in the Middle East, “the sins of unfettered capitalism,” etc., atheism, as presented by men like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens, does not.

Validating unbelief isn’t enough, Werleman says. The more than 2,000 U.S. atheist groups and organizations “are almost wholly silent on the moral issues that affect Americans the most.” The atheist movement also needs to go beyond “extolling the advancement of science and offering platitudes toward protecting the separation of church and state” and take up social issues like the environment, race- and sex-based grievances, and ending poverty.

Even atheists realize humans are moral creatures, but it’s Christians who understand the nature and Giver of that morality. God’s truth is a balm to the believer, even in the midst of pain and suffering, because we trust Him. All things, the apostle Paul tells us, work together for good to those who love God. While atheists might call that simple-minded, circular nonsense, we call it Truth.

Some unbelievers blame Christians and “the church” for why they reject the faith. Christians aren’t sinless. We behave badly. The difference is Christ in us gives us the power to resist the sin that once enslaved us. While congregants in a particular church might drive us into the sanctuary of another, they won’t—can’t—drive us from Christ. Unbelievers don’t have this light of truth. When I hear about Christians doing bad things, my faith in Christ doesn’t falter. From my favorite book of the Bible:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.”

The first chapter of John moves me in a way no other passage does. I believe. Christ came to seek and to save, and I can count myself among the undeserving sinners He died for. What could atheism ever present to compare to this profound truth? Validating unbelief really isn’t enough.