And how hard it is to shake it off
 |
In a comment at View From the Right, I describe an observation where I find that declaring one’s atheism, boldy and confidently, is now becoming a trend. And increasing numbers of people are doing so.
But, in the middle of this comment I write:
I've always said that one cannot make a person into a Christian. It is a calling, and even a mystery how it happens.Now, I should have been more specific.
I think that whole nations of people can be born as Christians. The truth of it is embedded in the country's rituals, celebrations, holidays, names, and in a myriad of other ways. So a young child growing in such an environment imbibes this true religion, and doesn't need to prove or disprove it. It becomes his natural way of life, from birth to death.
Atheists destroy or cloud the all-inclusive Christian environment that would have allowed children to develop into Christians, and such children then invariably grow up to be atheists or agnostics.
Just like a Christian environment produces Christians, an atheist, non-Christian environment produces atheists (just ask the children of atheists what they believe.)
So, if these atheists now wish to become Christian, their hardened, non-accepting heart has to somehow be transformed by some mystical intervention. Many times, it is some kind of unbearable hardship. Other times it is some inexplicable beauty. But, something strong (or elusively unpredictable) has to intervene for them to change.
Therefore, it is much harder to become a Christian once the faith has been abandoned, or the society no longer provides the all-encompassing environment to let Christianity thrive in people's lives.
That is why I think atheists are dangerous. They are the precursors to an atheist society. It isn't just their atheism that is at stake, but that of the whole society under which they live. And future societies too; their children, and their children's children. And not only are they precursors to it, they also make it much more difficult for their offspring and influences to turn, or return, to Christianity.
It looks like atheism is an addiction. Once down that road, it is infinitely hard to turn away from it. And this is what atheists are advocating! In some remote region of their soul, I always sense their envy, if not marvel, that people can be Christian; that Christians are relieved of this blight that they, the atheists, have somehow stumbled on, this addiction they cannot shake off.
