I recently asked my friends and family on social media for questions that they would like me to answer for this blog. The question that serves as the prompt and title for this post was one of the questions posed (thanks Krista!), and I realized that I had never given this question a standalone treatment in this forum. So, today, I will answer this question. I realize that discussing my reasoning for my own personal studies will not be terribly interesting to most people, so, if you are already bored here is your chance to bail and go check Twitter. Search #TheInternetNamesAnimals and thank me later.
Ok… Great. Now, if you are still reading this then I can assume that you are either genuinely interested in my answer or you are one of those unfortunate souls whom I have a close relationship with and you are worried that at some get together in the future there may be a test. Either way, you’re here, so let’s get to it.
First, I should note for anyone who doesn’t know my backstory that I have not always been an atheist. I grew up in the Presbyterian church. In fact, my parents were co-pastors at a church for many years, so when I say I grew up in the church I mean that both figuratively and literally. I grew up inside the church. I attended Sunday School, I went through confirmation, I was in youth group, I ran the sound board for church services, I sang in praise services on occasion, I gave the senior sermon my last year of high school (on Doubting Thomas, ironically), I did after service bible study, I did Habitat for Humanity trips, my best friends growing up were often from my church group, I sat in my parent’s offices during meetings when they couldn’t find babysitters, one of my first crushes was a girl a year older than me in youth group, heck, the first time my brother ever rode a bike on his own was in the church parking lot while my parents were in a meeting. I literally grew up in the church.
But things started to change for me when I was in my late teens and early 20s. During middle school and high school I began to realize that the local Evangelical Church was becoming more and more popular. I got a chance to attend a couple services and a lock-in (overnight stay in the church… a church sleepover, as weird as that feels to type now) with friends of mine, and what I realized was that their services, their theology and their whole organizational energy was very different from what I knew. I began talking with friends over AOL Instant Messenger and private chat rooms (I’m not old, you are!) occasionally, trying to defend my church’s theology versus that of the Evangelicals. What I learned instead, though, was that I didn’t really understand my own church’s theology well enough to do this, and more than that, I didn’t really understand the Bible well enough to know what I should even be looking for in a proper theology. I knew what I had grown up with, and I knew that I needed to learn more.
This realization came at a somewhat unfortunate time in my life. As a wayward teenager, I started ticking off all of the angsty, rebellious teenager clichés. I started smoking cigarettes, I started drinking, I snuck out of my parents house when I wasn’t supposed to, and I generally took it upon myself to do whatever it was that people told me I should not do. In short, I was preoccupied with a lot of things other than theological study or self-reflection. That said, I never lost interest in theology or the Bible, and I had not yet abandoned my faith. Even in those somewhat hazy years, my shelf started filling up with books with titles such as God: The Evidence – The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World, and The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. Sound like a real page turners, right? The reason that I was buying books like this was because my family, in addition to being very rooted in the church, was also incredibly – intimidatingly – academic and intellectual. At family get-togethers we frequently joke about the pressure my grandfather and grandmother exert on their kids/grandkids to add to the family wall of diplomas and/or the shelf in their private library which contained only publications from our extended family. The fact that I somehow maintained the mistaken assumption that most grandparents were as bookish as mine until my late twenties is something I’ll have to work out with a therapist at a later date. This is all to say, when I decided that I needed to learn more about my faith, I attacked it the way that I had been taught to attack big questions, through study.
As I studied, several things became clear to me
- There was FAR more variation in Christian belief/practice than I had ever realized
- Trying to determine which set of beliefs was “right” was going to be much harder than I had been led to believe
- Most Christians have about a 1% grasp of the foundations of their own deeply held beliefs.
And,
- I really REALLY enjoyed studying the Bible and Christian history.
For your sake, as likely the only person who has read this far, I will not bore you with a full recounting of how my studies slowly led me away from my faith, that is a whole blog post of its own, and maybe I’ll do that another time, but suffice it to say that this period of my life sparked something in me that continues to this day, a serious passion for studying the Bible and Christianity. I also knew, once I had come to terms with the fact that I was no longer a Christian, that if I was going to be an atheist in my family, I damn well better be prepared to either defend my position or suffer intellectual embarrassment in front of the family bookshelf.
So, this brief background provides some context about why I study the Bible on a personal level but there is more to my interest than just the desire to not be the family dunce. If not looking like an idiot was my only motivation I would not still take the time to study. I am, afterall, at an age where I no longer particularly care about suffering personal embarrassment (← the last two sentences are total lies, but judging from the way other people write I have concluded that this is something I’m supposed to say now that I’m in my thirties so people think I’m well adjusted).
The rest of the story about what I take from studying the Bible is this: the Bible provides me with context.
The history of Western Civilization does not make sense outside of the context of Biblical interpretation and Christianity. Think of anything. Any topic pertinent to the “Western” world as we understand it today and somewhere along the line that topic was influenced by Christianity and Biblical interpretation, and this goes beyond the obvious topics like gay marriage or abortion. The history of science and the development of the scientific method? Impacted by Christian theological positions. Support or opposition to environmentalism? Impacted by Christian theological positions. Development of social safety net programs like welfare or social security? Impacted by Christian theological positions. Support AND opposition to these same social safety net programs? Impacted by Christian theological positions. The popularity of tulips as a decorative flower? Influenced by Christian theological positions. Utah’s status as one of the 50 recognized states in the US? Impacted by Christian theological traditions. Common idioms in the English language? impacted by Christian theological traditions….
Every one of these phrases entered the English language as a result of one particular Bible translation published originally in 1611, the King James Bible:
- A labor of love
- The ends of the earth
- The root of the matter
- The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak (a special shoutout to Zapp Brannigan for his version of this in season 3 episode one of Futurama)
- Fell by the wayside
- Holier than thou
- Money is the root of all evil
- Vengeance is Mine
- The skin of my teeth
- Put words in my mouth
- How the Mighty are fallen
- Fight the good fight
- Fell flat on his face
- The writing on the wall
- A house divided against itself cannot stand
- A man after my own heart
- Eat, drink and be merry
So, you see, from the important to the mundane, the Bible and Christian influence is everywhere.
What I came to realize in studying the Bible, was that whether I believed in God or not, I live in a world where these things were, and in many cases still are, much more influential than most people realize. Even the creation of the US government as a distinctly secular institution only makes sense within the context of non-secular governments in Europe and the long history of wars between competing religious factions.
Finally, shortly after leaving my faith I made the decision to be an outspoken atheist. Outspoken atheists, if you haven’t noticed, don’t always make a great name for themselves (Christopher Hitchens was an irredeemable asshole and this is a hill I will die on). One of the things that I decided early on was that I was not going to be a walking, talking internet troll. At one point, early in my atheism, I had a bit more of an edge, but these days what I really want to do is just be able to meet people where they are at. If someone wants to talk about the Bible, I want to be able to do that intelligently. If someone wants to ask my opinion about a question regarding Christian history, I want to be able to provide them with the best answer possible. If someone has a belief that I believe to be dangerous or problematic, I want to be able to speak their language and challenge that belief in a way that communicates the complexity of theological interpretation without forcing someone into being defensive by challenging their entire religious foundation. On the rare occasions when I see someone intentionally hurting others with their beliefs (e.g. the street preacher who visited Iowa State when I was there who just screamed at young women for “dressing like whores” for an entire day), I want to be able to disabuse anyone with the misfortune of hearing that individual of the notion that they have any clue what they are talking about.*
*side note, when I confronted this street preacher about his absurd interpretations of scripture, he told me that he knew what he was talking about because he had read the New Testament in its original Hebrew… I would have been impressed if the New Testament was…. you know…. actually written in Hebrew instead of Greek. He was eventually escorted off campus thanks in part to a large Christian student group.
So, what studying the Bible does for me is it allows me to more thoroughly understand my place in history, my place in my particular cultural context, and my place in my own family. It also opens doors for dialogue that would be closed to someone who lacked my background knowledge of the Bible and Christianity.
Plus, it’s just fun….
That won’t be on the test.
Christjahn 