RFRA's golden opportunity

Last week’s storm over Indiana’s RFRA law was quite the spectacle. Who imagined a modest attempt to protect rights of conscience would cause so many folks to get their knickers in a twist? It was fascinating how opponents of the legislation assumed a position of moral high ground. Our friends, family and co-workers are sure to echo this sentiment, and we dare not waste their moral outrage, providing us with a golden opportunity to discuss core concepts and beliefs. That’s how I went from a Christian-hating atheist to a follower of Jesus.

Growing up, I wasn’t favorably disposed toward Christians, having been born and raised Jewish. The only Christians I knew of were televangelists like Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, who taught me that Christianity had more in common with the Theater of the Absurd than ultimate truth.

My family was not overly observant but cultivated a robust ethical core. When I was young my mom made me watch Roots,and I’ll never forget my horror as the slave master whipped Kunta Kinte for wanting to hang onto his African name, and thereby his dignity. At that moment I was resolved to stand with those on the margins of society.

While my belief in God disappeared after my bar mitzvah, my passion for social justice did not. In college, where I really started hating Christians, I learned that theology was the fountainhead of suffering and division, so I became the sworn enemy of organized religion and Christianity in particular.

With missionary zeal I went about destroying belief in God wherever it reared its head. If someone hinted at faith, I shamed him or her into silence with a shocked countenance as if they were a pedophile. Occasionally I dropped the Jewish “H-bomb,” the Holocaust, as the discussion-ending proof of the horrors of Christianity.

One day, a good friend and fellow atheist called to say he believed in God and Jesus as the Son of God. He might as well have said, “I believe in aliens, and, in fact, I am an alien.” Appalled, I ranted about the idiocy of Christianity for 20 minutes. After listening quietly he asked, “Thanks for sharing what you don’t believe, but can you tell me what you do believe?”

There’s nothing like a well-placed question, and this one changed my life. Being required to explain my own beliefs finally showed me how scattered and ill-conceived they really were. I realized the folly of tearing apart other people’s beliefs when I couldn’t even muster a preamble. So I retreated to my original ethical precepts: Help the weak and stand up for the marginalized. There, at least, was bedrock.

Or so I thought. Until I ran across C.S. Lewis’ argument in Mere Christianity that moral obligations are binding only if rooted in a transcendent source, else they are necessarily subjective and optional. Without God, harming people isn’t wrong because there is no such thing as wrong. I was thunderstruck to find my life’s one guiding principle was actually proof for the existence of God, and the pillars of my atheism crashed down all around me.

As our friends and family on the left foam in righteous indignation against the idea of religious liberty because of what they perceive as discrimination, let’s seize the day to draw out their working presuppositions. Let’s agree that discrimination is often wrong, but let’s add that we don’t understand why they can get so worked up about it as it relates to religious freedom. Perhaps a few will discover they really do believe in such a thing as right and wrong. And that’s not a bad place to begin another conversation altogether.