Some of My Best Friends Are Atheists

I tried writing this yesterday and couldn't do it.

On Sunday morning during the drive to the 11:15 AM, I mean I broke down and sobbed for five of the seven miles from my house to the new building, and hadn't even seen or had a clue what was coming.

A live version of "Friend of God" came on the radio, whacking me severely upside the head ... and nearly caused me to pull off the road and stay parked till the song was finished. Literally.

Who am I that You are mindful of me?
That You hear me when I call
Is it true that You are thinking of me?
How you Love me
It's Amazing

I am a friend of God
I am a friend of God
I am a friend of God
He calls me friend

"I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you." John 15:15 NIV

I spent the first 17 years of my life going to church 3x a week (not counting VBS and annual revivals) but can't recall ever hearing that verse, not a single time, until Pastor P quoted it during a message last year.

And it drilled a hole into everything I'd previously thought about following Christ, and what living through Him actually meant.

If there's a critical illustration of Christ's message that's been ignored for about 2000 years too long, a single verse that slams the door on arguments that Jesus Christ was a mythological figure created or re-written in the bowels of the Vatican, just one sentence that opens a unique door revealing why Christianity is a relationship and not a religion and paints an irrefutable description of God's existence all at the same time, it's John 15:15.

Mohmmad never claimed to be God, nor did Joseph Smith, nor did Chaitanya Charitamrita nor did any of the 28 Buddhas. Not even L. Ron Hubbard was so delusional to make such a claim ... because we have a very precise and appropriate term to describe contemporary personalities (like Jim Jones, Shoko Asahara and Vernie Wayne Howell (renamed David Koresh)) who'd have us believe they're divine.

That term is psychotic.

I have friends who not only don't believe in Christ but who also reject God's existence categorically.

They laugh at the idea of an old man living in the sky who throws lightning bolts down at folks who've made Him mad, a God who's a mean old codger upstairs who can't wait till we die (as though He's helpless till then?) so he can surprise those of us who didn't follow every rule and sometimes forgot to cross the "t" in every tradition ... by tossing us from the top of the pearly gates directly into hell.

Sorry, but I don't believe in a Nordic mythology-looking God with a long white beard dressed in flowing robes who lounges around in heaven all day surrounded by curly-haired babies playing harps, a God who snatches peeks between the clouds to "catch us" misbehaving (btw, God knows we're gonna sin before we do ... He's all-powerful that way, ya know?) because He's got nothing better to keep Him busy.

What I do believe in is a God who Created the universe and everything within it, a God so powerful and vast that it'd be foolish, and arrogant, for me to even imagine I could comprehend His awesomeness in any empirical way. And I believe Jesus Christ was His only Son.

Read the gospels and see for yourself if Jesus was psychotic when he preached about some whacked out ideas ... like love, forgiveness, grace and redemption.

Decide for yourself if he performed miracles out of selfishness, to make himself rich and famous or to impress his peers or attract women ... like you and I might've done if only we'd had the chance.

Read every word and tell me if really radical concepts like "Love God with all your heart" and "Love your neighbor as yourself" were taught by a man called "The Prince of Peace," or whether the gospel of Jesus Christ was merely an oral tradition that somehow "evolved" from rumors, or whether Christ's teachings could've been jotted down or edited by a committee on orders from the Pope.

(If you think the gospels were actually written by the church, doesn't it make you wonder why the church then turned around and ignored what they suposedly wrote in the first place?)

Just saying.

Spending three years preaching about God's Kingdom, urging crowds to embrace love, forgiveness, grace ... and raising people from the dead, really hacked off religious leaders of the day who didn't like seeing their boat rocked.

They rejected God, and chose their religion and all its comforts instead.

No religion teaches that God is love, or that God Himself came to earth as a human man or woman, or that their God was wrongly accused and convicted to suffer and die a gruesome, horrific death in our place so that we could have eternal life through him or her ... because their God loves people.

Or that having died, their "prophet" or God was resurrected, appeared in the flesh before hundreds of witnesses, and returned to Heaven and lives in a relationship with those who believe in Him.

And no religion on earth claims that the Creator of the universe ever called his followers His friends. None.

Wondering why? Because it didn't happen in their religion. Making claims like that would be too risky and audacious.

So why do I spend time around my atheist friends [who I know will be reading this]?

Because being around you reminds me that God is real and more vast and infinite than anything you or I can imagine, and that every word Christ said was true.