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How To Deal with Atheism in Our Young People
How To Deal with Atheism in Our Young People?
While this idea began dealing with how to help “our” children, the idea expanded, not beyond our children, but to any who become atheists. Our children are not immune to the many reasons people who are not among “us” likewise experience.
The first thing we need to do is ask, “So, what happened to you that you became an atheist?” This does three things:
- Helps us understand where to begin in dealing with them.
- Forces them to defend their own position. Hopefully this will be positive for them.
- Offers an opportunity to ask afterwards, “Are you willing to consider a position other than atheism?” If not, the conversation is over on that topic. Many, however, will not want to appear close-minded because they believe being open-minded led them to atheism. Atheists are often proud of being open-minded (I’ve seen an atheist group named Open-Minded something or other). Therefore, many will say yes to consider another view.
Finding the root cause, the core of their unbelief leads to categorizing different reasons people become atheists. In no particular order, here is a list. There is overlapping, but categorizing helps me finetune my approach:
- Intellectual Philosophical Atheism – This approach comes from one educated in philosophy. A philosophical approach will include debunking the classical arguments for the existence of God and the “Problem of Evil”.
- Intellectual Scientific Atheism – This approach comes from one steeped in evolutionary Darwinism and such.
- Emotional Atheism – Many have experienced personal harm in their lives. Therefore, they are dealing with the “problem of evil”, not from a philosophical perspective, but from daily pain.
- Hypocritical Religious Atheism – This paradox in terminology comes from the too real experience of judgmentalism within churches. This can have a profound impact, leading our young people (or of any age) to conclude, “If that is what God does to you, I don’t want anything to do with your God.”
- Passive Religious Atheism – This too can happen in churches, where anyone (especially young people) to become atheists because they hear arguments for that position in the world, but don’t hear arguments at church for God’s existence.
- Cultural Atheism – With a world turning more and more to a different moral (i.e., immoral or amoral) perspective, people (mostly young people) are thinking, “If I have to believe that gay marriage, transgender living, and such are oppositional to biblical morals, then I choose not to believe in such an intolerant God.”
- Mob Mentality Atheism – There are those who just go along to get along, following what is current, popular, and gets them accepted.
- Anthropocentric Atheism – Look at the accomplishments of “Man”. Pride in mankind can lead to the question, “If we can do anything, what do we need God for?”
- Practical Atheism – These people still believe in God, but their lives are lived without thought towards serving God in humility.
No doubt there are more categories. Hopefully these will help us deal with our children dealing with real issues. When we know where to begin with someone, do we know where do we end the discussion? In other words, once we’ve discovered how they became atheists, and how we need to start the process, do we know how to move beyond the causal issues and fundamentally incomplete responses, to that which is deeper and fulfilling? The answer is found in relating each of these to the gospel. That is going to take some more work on our part, and it includes the same question we asked atheists in the beginning. We need to show what the gospel can do for them, and what the gospel has done for us. What happened us to us? Jesus happened.
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