I appreciate the fact that you understand that there is such a thing as cultural Christianity, Jason. That makes my point easy – there are two kinds of Christians, those who are in a relationship with God through the person of Jesus Christ by the infilling of the Holy Spirit and those who are not. The latter are cultural Christians. I would also say they were Christians in name only and not in fact. If that’s the case, then it’s much easier to walk away from Christianity and a church.
It is less easy to walk away from God when you are in a personal relationship with him. People still do that, usually because they are angry with him for some personal tragedy or because they have sin habits they want to keep. But they don’t deny his existence. They just don’t like him.
My question is this: Have you tried to find answers to the things that trouble you about the Bible, God and Christianity from both the non-Christian AND the Christians sides? I ask that because it has been my experience that many atheists who used to attend church usually go looking for things that feed their doubt, not their faith. It’s like they really want to walk away and, therefore, only want to find information to “justify” or “legitimate” their choice.
I think it’s healthy to have doubts. But I also think it’s important to be honest about them. As somebody who has been responding to atheists’ challenges for over a decade, I can tell you that there are valid, intelligent, logical answers to all of them. In fact, their challenges have increased my trust in God, not decreased it.
With regards to your family, you need to be honest with them. With regards to your future children and how you raise them, I always find it interesting when people say they should be raised to make their own informed decisions about religious beliefs. Would you do that with regard to spelling and math? Would you let them think that it’s okay to believe that 2 + 2 = 5 or that they can spell words however they want even if nobody can understand what they have written?
What we believe about God is the most important thing in our lives. Everything else is based on it. Therefore, it’s important that we know what the truth about him is and that we share that truth with our children. Religion is as much about facts as arithmetic and grammar are. It isn’t simply a matter of opinion or feelings. All you have to do is read the threads here to grasp that fact. Everyone writes about religious beliefs as if they are right or wrong – and they are right to do so!
As for the issue of hell, here’s the thing: If the man who raped and murdered your mother and sister went before a judge and that judge said, “I am a loving judge. Therefore, I am not going to punish you”, would you be happy with that? I doubt it. I think you would be outraged that justice wasn’t done. Yet that is what people think God should do. They think that, if he’s loving, he should let everybody get away with everything they do, no matter how bad and that nobody should end up in hell. God knows who has a heart for him and who doesn’t. He is always fair and will always reveal himself to anybody who truly wants to know him. So nobody who shouldn’t be in hell will end up there.
And the bottom line is this: If somebody wants nothing to do with God in this life, God will simply give him what he wants in the next – a life separated from God. That’s what hell is. So I don’t know why atheists crab so much about hell. It will give them exactly what they want – life without God.
As for being good apart from God, yes, it’s possible to do good things, but it isn’t possible to BE good. We are all born with sin natures. There is no doctrine in the Bible that has more empirical evidence to back it up. None of us can change our sin natures no matter how hard we try. That’s why Christ came – to atone for our sins and give us HIS righteousness, something he has because he was not only 100 per cent man, he was 100 per cent God and, therefore, sin-free.
That’s why people who don’t accept him won’t spend eternity with God in the next life. Without accepting Christ’s atonement for their sin, they cannot enter heaven. But, as I said, God will make sure that someone who wants to know Jesus will get the chance to do so no matter where they live or when they lived or what they have done with their lives up until that point.
When a person enters into a relationship with the Lord, his spirit, dead in sin, is brought alive. He is filled with the Holy Spirit who helps him to clean up his act. It’s a life-long process. I can tell you that I didn’t even know what sin was until I became a Christian and the Holy Spirit started pointing out the things that are an affront to God.
Nor could I make myself the person I wanted to be in my own puny power. With the power of God in the person of the Holy Spirit, I’m making headway. The goal is to become more like Jesus as time goes on, something that won’t be fully realized in this life, but in the next.
I stick with God because I know he loves me. He proved that on the cross of Christ. I stick with God because I love him, not because I’m afraid of going to hell. We all have a choice with regard to him. You have the right to exercise yours.
If you are interested in reading some things to feed your faith instead of your doubts, I recommend the following websites:
Apologetics315
Stand to Reason
Reasonable Faith
I also recommend these authors:
Ravi Zacharias (see his Jesus Among the Gods)
Paul Copan (Is God a Moral Monster?)
Gary Habermas (the world’s foremost expert on the resurrection)
Lee Strobel (his whole series of books and videos including The Case for Faith, The Case for Christ, The Case for the Resurrection, etc.)
J. Warner Wallace (Cold Case Christianity).
