A Sad “Ah-ha” Moment
20 Aug 2010 Leave a Comment
I listened to a few debates this afternoon while at work, a ‘Does God Exist’ debate with John W. Loftus as well as a Unbelievable! program with the same. I also listened to a Dr. Bart Ehrman debate over the topic of Suffering with a Dr. Michael Brown. What makes these two men, Loftus and Erhman, so noteworthy? Well, both me were at one time, Believers, but now profess to be atheist (Ehrman professes himself to be a ‘Liberal Agnostic’) which they don’t believe in God for their various reasons which I will give a brief explanation:
- Ehrman doesn’t believe in God due to all the suffering He has caused throughout the world in real-time (just pick a disaster) and especially as written in the bible about Job.
- Loftus doesn’t believe because he doesn’t believe it’s scientific.
Ok, that’s the short of it. Now, let’s get to the meat of this post: I propose that these two former Believers didn’t stop believing because of the reasons given (listen to their debates Loftus and Ehrman) in their writings and debates, no, I believe they stopped believing due to the down right insensitivity of the fellow believers given their particular situations.
In the case of Dr. Ehrman: Dr. Ehrman’s father was dying of cancer (if I’m not mistaken) and someone from his church anointed him with oil, prayed over him and told him and Dr. Ehrman that he would be healed…he died. That infuriated Dr. Ehrman because in his estimation, his father was given a simple answer…in my estimation, a simple and false answer. Why didn’t God heal Mr. Ehrman? I don’t know. What should have happened is someone from the church or friends from the church just should have suffered with him rather than try to us the bible as a Merck PDR. In my humble opinion, this did a great deal in pushing Dr. Ehrman from the faith.
John W. Loftus: Mr. Loftus was a Pastor and apparently in a weak marriage and combine that with an aggressive woman…Mr. Loftus succumbed to the temptation. Later, after confessing the sin the woman accused him of rape and the faithful in the church took after him like sharks to bloody, raw meat. Was this handled correctly? Probably not. But again, in my humble opinion, Mr. Loftus was sacrificed with no grace.
I’ve seen this sort of thing happen in churches where there wasn’t really any open sin to speak of but there was an air of arrogance and judgment, as a result, grace was in short supply. In the end, grace is much like the air we breathe, not enough and we just die off.
