My Brand of a(pseudo)theism

I love to read and Amazon.com, I’m sure, loves me for it. Each time I go to their website, they have recommendations for me. Since I read a lot of religious and theological books, one of their recommendations caught my eye. It was a book that was written by a “former Christian” pastor, now atheist, on why he had given up his belief in God. Then I noticed that there was at least another former Christian pastor who had also made the same claim and written a book about it.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that there is something about what these persons have done that compels me. Like them, I’ve grown disenchanted with religion. I am really fatigued with the religious enterprise that much of my experience of the church has become. I’ve given up on believing in a god that either is good, but not powerful or is powerful, but not good or is neither powerful, nor good. I just can no longer follow a passionless, uninvolved, perpetually silent god who allegedly cared and interacted with human beings twenty centuries ago, but who seems an awful lot like an imaginary friend nowadays. In fact, I can’t even believe in that god anymore.

I am sick of a religious belief system that majors in shame and offers an anemic collection of “positive thinking,” temporary emotional “worship experiences,” and superficial churchy relationships as a remedy. I reject grace that aims at justifying, but not removing my sin and leaves me unchanged and powerless in the face of temptation.

I decided to share this development with God about my new disbelief. In the midst of this time of prayer, I came to discover that I think God agrees with me. In fact in 1st Timothy 3:5 we are warned about people who have a “form of religion” but who aren’t experiencing its power. I honestly believe that God’s Spirit is bearing witness with my own, that what I’ve been lacking is the genuine power of God that resurrected Jesus Christ from the dead, to resurrect me from my own death and sin!

These guys beat me to the book deal, so I guess I won’t get rich with the shock value of publishing my claim. I found myself praying for these former pastors, now atheists. I applaud their rejection of an idol god and an ineffective religious world view. I hope that they and others somehow become confronted, as I have, with the real God Who is neither silent nor uninvolved. I pray that the Pentecostal power of the genuine Holy Spirit of God falls upon them and us and produces in us a current and transforming relationship which forgives our sin and justifies and truly redeems us sinners!

I praise the living, passionate, interested, powerful, loving God for this development in me and I pledge my belief in Him and my commitment to live in relationship with Him made possible by the death and resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ. Praise God!