Christian blogger TE Hanna has a post that I want to share with you. It’s called, “4 Ways Atheists Have Made Me a Better Christian.”
See what you’ve done, atheists. You’re not supposed to make Christians “better”.
Don’t you feel like a failure?
His four betters are a little vague, but Hanna tries to explain himself:
- It’s ok not to have all the answers.
His four explanations for Christian enhancement could probably be narrowed down to three reasons, as asking the hard questions and not having all the answers is about the same thing written in similar language.
In the “Ask the Hard Questions” bullet point, Hanna writes:
The hard questions, when faced, actually force us to look for answers, force us to dig deeper, force us to cultivate a theological grounding which can only make us more intellectual honest and spiritually deep.
If anyone is intellectually honest about faith, they would retire belief.
It’s not that atheism is superior. It’s just that saying you can’t answer the questions, and the answers you do have include belief in an un-seen deity who really isn’t all that great takes “intellectual honesty” and throws it out of a moving car whilst laughing.
While I like that Hanna has counted four ways that atheism has made him a better Christian, I failed to see any improvement based on the reasons.
How is Hanna asking the “hard questions” if he accepts a genocidal mystery being who sent himself to die for you to save you from an unreasonably unjust crime of being in the lineage of two people who disobeyed in a middle eastern jungle?
Hanna and other Christians may be asking all the hard questions, but are they listening to all the hard answers?
He’s right. It’s okay not to have all the answers. And while talk is cheap, Christians must act in a secular fashion to receive acceptance so I fail to see how that’s important.
And, yes, love wins. I’m sure if I met Hanna, I’d love him. I already have a fondness for the guy, and I don’t know him.
He appears to be doing good work for his cause. And I hope his followers are benefiting.
But if those are his four reasons for being a better Christian through his conversations with atheists, I fail to see anything that sets him apart from most Christian messages without having met atheists.