He Called Me an Atheist
Years ago, a neighbor asked whether I went to church, which, in that part of suburban Texas at least, was a pretty typical way for people to open a conversation.
I said, “Nope.”
That seemed to settle it for him. In his mind, there were really only two categories: you went to church, or you were an atheist. Since I’d already said I didn’t spend Sunday mornings sitting in a pew, he decided I must be an atheist.
I told him, “I know a multitude of gods. The last thing those guys need is belief. Gives them airs, honestly. Insufferable as they are, they’d be far worse if they knew I believed in them.”
He stared at me for a moment. I don’t think this was exactly one of the available answers on his theological flowchart.
For many people, atheism means rejecting God. The trouble starts with the word God, because most people use it as if it points to one universally understood being, and, really, it doesn’t. They usually mean the deity recognized by their religion, described through their scripture, filtered through their denomination, and interpreted by whoever happens to be standing behind the pulpit that morning.
Reject that particular construction, and they tend to assume you’ve rejected all spiritual intelligence. If you don’t believe in their god as they define him, then, apparently, you must believe in nothing.
That’s not theology. It’s more like a failure of imagination.
I’ve always used the word atheist a little differently. To me, an atheist can be someone who rejects religion as an authority over spiritual reality. Organized religion qualifies, of course, but I’ll include disorganized religion as well. Human beings can turn almost anything into a religion, even when they insist they haven’t.
Give people a teacher, a sacred book, a few rules, and a reason to feel morally superior, and they’ll probably have a religion running by Tuesday afternoon. By Friday, someone will likely have been declared a heretic, and by the following week they’ll be arguing over who properly inherited the teacher’s coffee cup.
Religion is a human structure. Gods are something else entirely.
Religion tries to explain gods, regulate contact with them, and claim authority over what they want. It creates doctrines, moral codes, approved rituals, official interpretations, and penalties for anyone who asks inconvenient questions. In a lot of cases, it takes a spiritual intelligence and turns that intelligence into the chief executive of a very human institution.
Then the institution starts speaking on the god’s behalf, which has always seemed a little too convenient.
That has always struck me as a little too convenient.
Religion tells you which foods offend the god, which clothing the god prefers, which words the god dislikes, and which people the god has supposedly chosen to condemn. Then another religion comes along and gives its god a different set of preferences. A third insists the first two gods do not exist. Meanwhile, the gods themselves often seem to be noticeably absent from the committee meetings where all these decisions get made.
