On finding faith as Christian

Moving from atheism to Christianity is rarely a single step. It wasn't for me. I had to lose my small world view, delimited by the horizons of my understandings and perceptions, and open out to a world much bigger, richer and more varied than that of an atheist. It all reminds me of Marvin the Paranoid Android in The Hitch Hiker's Guide to The Galaxy. He tells Arthur Dent he can read his mind, 'It amazes me how you can live in anything so small.' It is amazing, and unnecessary, that an atheist can live in such a small world.

Of course, it does involve endlessly shutting windows, curtains and doors, in case new thoughts slip in and disturb the sanctity of the empty mind. I've said it before, but just why someone should believe that their perceptions and their cogitations are everything that happens, is beyond me. Its unprovable. I just can't think that small any more.

Several months went by between losing my atheist faith to finding God in Christ. It was not a journey I wanted to set out on, and it was certainly not the destination I was going towards willingly. But, it was a journey. To mix in more metaphors, being an atheist was like being in the Truman Show. once you know the show is a tiny show and its a fake, you just want to get out and get on. But, where is out and what is on?

Out there there are a lot of people trying to make sense of the real, big world beyond the tiny confines of atheism. But, who is pointing the right way and what are they on? There is no way anyone can logically sit down and demolish or absolutely compare any two religions, even new ones. After all, all our religions are pre-history, but they aren't prehistoric.

I once asked a pagan student how he defined paganism and lived as a pagan when paganism was banished from the UK centuries ago. He said, its difficult, but I try. At least the Scottish Catholic can go to the Isle of Barra and see a fragmentary community that traces its lineage right to St Barr in the 500's.

I see no way that anyone can say one religion is better than another, for to do so is to diminish and reduce it to rationalism, which is a useful technique, but insufficient to explain people's credos and ontologies. But, having leapt away from atheism, at least I was no longer angered and driven to hatred of all religious people. That was a great relief. I wonder if other uber-atheists can ever become calm people when put face to face with someone who disagrees with them.

Every religion claims to be unique and different. This is, of course, true. Every religion can appear attractive on the surface. Every religion attracts converts, and loses adherents too. As does atheism, our state religion in the UK.

The question is partly what attracted me to Christianity over all the others I considered in those months: Islam, Hunduism, paganism and no doubt others I have forgotten about. There was, what I can only explain as a lightness and freedom in Christianity that I did not find elsewhere. I felt Hinduism was confusing. Judaism was small and restricting. Islam was mediaeval and rule-based. Paganism was dark and weird.

I could do without confusion, restrictions, rules and weirdness. What I wanted was a solid place to stand. To find somewhere where I would feel the safety that atheism had once given me. Something that felt sound, intellectually, but was not restricted by narrow 19th century European rationalist thinking.

But, this makes it sound like a rational decision. It was that, but not only that. The loss of atheism had removed this barrier. I could now embrace how I felt, perceived and responded to the call of God. This is the completeness which religion brings over atheism. Atheism is a 2D world - at best - delimited by objective thought and comprehension. Religion is that, plus it is the rest of our being too. Where atheism is body and mind, religion is body, mind, spirit and soul. Religion appeals to the entire man, not just his reasoning.

For if life is just reasoning, what of those with dementia, mental illness and born retarded. Are they unfit to live as they cannot truly perceive things as they are. If these people slip into religiosity, are they lesser beings to be persecuted, tortured and killed. And, if sane people become religious, are they necessarily now insane and unfit for office in state, university or schools? Many uber-atheists would say: yes.

No. When you embrace religiosity as attempts to understand yourself with respect to the universal and the eternal, you are seeking to make sense of the entirety of your existence and being. To do less is to want to only read comic books, listen to Radio 1 and surf the Internet when there is a vast heritage of novels, music and experiences to be had away from your bedroom.

I cannot persuade anyone to give their life to following The LORD Jesus Christ, the carpenter from Nazareth, who preached for just three years, who made such astounding claims, who was tortured to death, and who is recorded in Roman and Jewish chronicles as having risen from the death, and whose followers were all willing (as many still are) to die for him (not to be confused with 'to kill for him').

But I would wish to persuade atheists to lift their eyes from their Dawkins tomes and see the world is greater than this short-lived man perceives it to be. His every book is the same: welcome to my world, come in, mind your head, find a space, sorry the room is so small, sit down and listen to me, the guru, talk about how I am right and everyone else out there is wrong.

You see, Dawkins is a bubble. He will go pop. He will die. He will be gone. And when he does go, in the words of Mr Potato Head in Toy Story: move along, citizens, nothing to see here, nothing to see. On that, Mr Dawkins, we are all agreed.

Are you really going to put your faith in a man whose gospel is, 'there is nothing else other than you and when you are dead that is it' over a man who said 'in my Father's house there are many rooms, if it were not so I would have told you so, and I go now to prepare a place for you.' I have my place, you, potentially have yours. But you need to join me on my journey to meet The Christ who has the keys to your room.