Being Non-Literalist Doesn't Make You Athiest

In the United Church of Canada there is a range of how literally we approach images of God in the Scriptures.  We are a "Big Tent" Faith Group with people holding a variety of interpretations and views of our Scriptures and Christian Traditions.

 

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What we hold in common is that we hold these things as important, that we respect them and each other, and make them the foundation of the community we wish to share.  The United Church was founded on the idea that what we hold in common is more important than our differences.  We do not strive to all conform to an authoritarian doctrine handed down by leadership, but value our diversity and find in it the strength and resources to grow in our faith and meet the challenges of a changing world.

There are many of us who have a more literary and less literal understanding of the anthropomorphic images of God in Scripture.  We see them as more metaphorical and less  scientific in nature.  The concept of "God" is how we express what we find as legitimate, true, and worthy.  It is often a personification meant to express how we believe the, “world works”, what is valuable and laudable, what should be defended and what should be discouraged. God is a representation of what we believe is truly legitimate, noble, powerful and worthy; what we see as real and fundamental in the universe, and our place and role in it. It is the portrayal of these abstract qualities in a human like form.

The various writers of our Scriptures stretch over a long range of time, they come from different communities,  and used differing forms and genres of literature to express their understanding of God, what they found as legitimate and true.  These writers and their communities had differing views on the primary nature and qualities of God.  We who follow the Christian tradition, affirm Jesus' vision of God as primarily loving, compassionate, and generous.  No matter the degree at which you take as literal various images of God in the Bible, if you believe in this characterization of God and strive to emulate these qualities, I count you as my "sibling" in Christ.  In my mind, if you see these qualities as what is legitimate and true, then we worship the same God.

Let us now turn to atheism.  The eminent Christian scholar and writer Marcus Borg relates a story in one of his books about an encounter with a student who told him that he, "didn't believe in God".  Borg asked the student to tell him about the God he didn't believe in.  When the student was done, Borg replied, "I don't believe in that God either".

I would contend that most people who call themselves atheists are not rejecting God, but a literalist, conservative, "Fundamentalist" interpretation of God, like the one popularised by television Evangelists, that characterizes God as primarily a legalist, who is mainly concerned with rules and punishment, and has an unnatural obsession with human being's, sex lives, whether they drink alcohol, and if they use curse words.  The narrative around this image of God claims that he finds all of mankind sinful, unworthy and deserving of eternal punishment from birth.  I put "Fundamentalist" in quotations because this non-metaphorical interpretation of Christianity is historically recent and evolved as a reaction to the importance placed on literal facts with the Enlightenment Era and the Scientific Revolution.  I also take great issue with this narrative being portrayed as having anything in common with the fundamentals of Jesus' teaching.  The sad thing is that many who say they, "don't believe in God", have let the purveyors of this interpretation define for them who God is, unaware that it does not reflect mainstream Christian thought.

The word "Atheist" comes from the Greek, a- "without" + theos "a god".  If we define "God" as being what we consider as legitimate, true, and meaningful, this word almost becomes meaningless.  Everyone holds some notion of what they find to be legitimate and true, whether that corresponds with Jesus' image of what that is or not.

Of late, there has been some discussion about atheism in the United Church and whether an ordained minister can proclaim themselves as atheist and remain part of the church.  Personally I feel that this has been presented in a way that was meant to be confrontational and sensationalist, promoting divisiveness and disharmony in order to gain personal attention through notoriety, and is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to believe in God and of atheism.  As I said earlier, having a non-literal understanding of Biblical images of God does not mean that you do not believe in God, or that you are an atheist.