What Would Change An Atheist’s Mind?

 Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.

This is my favorite video with atheist and activist Vyckie Garrison. In this 8 minute clip, Vyckie shares what would change her mind about God’s existence or God’s love. Notice how important the issue of the authoritarianism of the Christian God is for her. I think this video, more than any other, shows the link between fundamentalism and atheism.  It seems from her story that it would be fair to think that abusive authority can destroy our capacity to even imagine the existence of a good hierarchy. For many of us, Christians or not, authority makes us think of Dwight Schrute from The Officee, authority makes us immediately think of power trips and discipline and control. I believe this is because we’ve confused authority with authoritarianism. But more on that in a moment.

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When I asked Vyckie if it’s possible to imagine hierarchy without abuse, she says virtually “No.” Notice how God has been used in Vyckie’s life as the “heavy”, even the bully to demand obedience when children get out of line. This is something to keep in mind when we try to motivate our children to obey. There are better motivators than fear. That’s what Scripture says, too.

Perfect love casts out all fear. 1 John 4:18

For clarity, I want to share my view on authority. First, the idea of obedience to any authority is a terribly scary idea to support for anyone who has been abused by the powerful. Both Vyckie and I have experienced that. The words of Henri J. M. Nouwen gleaned from his seven month stay with the Trappist monks in Genesee monastery speak well to the link between obedience and trust.

You need a lot of trust to give yourself fully to someone else, certainly to someone to whom you owe obedience.  Many people adapt very quickly but are not really obedient.  They simply don’t want to make waves and instead go along with the trend. . . If I were able to trust more, to open myself more easily, to be more vulnerable, then obedience would not be so hard.  I would be able to disagree without fear of rejection, to protest without resentment, to express different viewpoints without self-righteousness.” (The Genesee Diary, p 119).

I believe that trust is impossible for most atheists to give to God because they have developed a long list of reasons to distrust any deity, in Vyckie’s case, she believed that God would rather her sacrifice her health, her life, her reason, her intuition and even her peace if she would claim to follow him. No wonder she thought of God as a bully.  But for those of us to have seen God to be trustworthy, what does that call out of us?

Second, I believe Vyckie may be conflating authoritarianism with authority or hierarchy. Authoritarianism, as I understand it, says “Trust me, period, no matter what” which involves a mindless, resigned acquiescence or what some falsely teach as biblical submission. Authoritarianism creates what psychologists call “emotional fusion” a requirement that you ape me or else I’m threatened.  In contrast, authority says, “Trust me because I have given you sound, cogent, reliable, time-tested, intuitive reasons, through my relationship with you, to trust me.” Authority wants us to be distinct, with our own ideas and threshold of belief. Authority never effaces the individual. As Esther Meek points out in her epistemological tome Loving to Know, “The best authorities will appeal to us across the whole spectrum of human experience and knowing. They will rely on rational, testable, and practical reasons.”  I believe this is what Scripture gives us, testable reasons for knowing God is good.

I said to Vyckie, “If God is good, he has to have interdependence.” I want to unpack this a little bit with you. I’m talking about the historical doctrine of the Trinity (God is one “what” or substance, but three “who’s” or persons). The Trinity is an easily overlooked or mystifying concept, but we see the Trinity as an answer to the problem of the one and the many working in Scripture. The Trinity is the answer to what we read about, the mutuality at work in God’s web of dependence on his three persons. Now I realize Vyckie was speaking more of a web of connection between a god and his creatures, but before I speak to that, I want to give some Scriptural reasons to believe God is interdependent within his divinity.

Reason 1 – Jesus says he does nothing unless the Father tells him.

Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner. John 5:19

Jesus’ submission to the Father is rather well-known, and since it was also used to manipulate women like Vyckie to be in eternal submission to their husbands I want to point out the Father’s dependence also, on the Son.  Without the Son’s willingness to die on the cross, the Father’s plan of salvation was sunk. The Father depended on the Son to save the world. Jesus said about his decision to give up his life.

No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. John 10:18

And later we see Jesus being given authority.

All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Matthew 28:18

Likewise, Jesus and the Father depend on the Spirit to comfort and guide all followers of Jesus now that Jesus has ascended into heaven.

I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth. John 14:16-17

Jesus initiated an idea, the Father made it happen and the Spirit became the delivery.  A sort of heavenly FedEx system of mutuality.

Now, to turn to Vyckie’s concern that an all-powerful God existing in a hierarchy over and above humans is just impossible without abuse, I want to point out one of my favorite moments in Jesus life, a passage that birthed the first Christian sect to honor the equality of all humans, the Friends, or Quakers, the denomination in which I was raised (My Quaker Roots). In this passage in John, Jesus shows us the dignity he confers on those who love him.

No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. John 15:15

This passage shows me that God, who is a being more enduring, stronger, more beautiful, and more wise than I, chose to call me his friend, a relationship that I understand as an equal eye-to-eye engagement. Philippians 2 explains how God made himself accessible so we would not be overwhelmed by his power. Perhaps the best picture of Jesus’ humility is that of him washing his disciples feet.  While I’m afraid the picture has become slightly overused, even sentimentalized,  it still speaks to tremendous equalizing. Today it would be like the guy in first class washing the feet of the guy in the last seat in coach, then inviting him to share in the mimosa and multi-course meal up front.

The servant life of Jesus and his final sacrifice seems to me what a good God of superior power would do if he claims to love his creation with an everlasting love. Jesus’ requirement than all his followers (men and women, husbands to wives, wives to husbands) emulate him and serve one another, wash each other’s feet (John 13:14), is why the authority of God isn’t a hurdle for me in my faith. The idea that God is above all and yet within us is an idea that some poets and Christian mystics do a better to job explaining than some theologians. Take Hildebert of Lavardin, the 11th century Christian poet explaining . . .

God is over all things,

under all things,

outside all,

within, but not enclosed,

without, but not excluded,

above, but not raised up,

below, but not depressed,

wholly above, presiding,

wholly without, embracing,

wholly within, filling.

Finally, a word on the idea that Christians believe children are inherently evil. For a philosophically sound, psychologically tenable, and theologically accurate view of original sin please see: Do You Believe in Original Sin? It’s an excellent place to start understanding how Christians can believe children are innocent and still culpable.

One last note, the book Vyckie was reading on the web of connection is The Skeptical Feminist.

As always, all respectful comments (from any faith or non-faith background) welcome.