My Youth Pastor's Pleading Letter to Me

[Cheerful Charlie]

So, I don't know if this is the right place to post this but the church of my youth has found out about my atheism via social media and has made a spirited attempt to bring me back into the fold... bleakly I might add, but it's about as IN MY FACE as I can possibly stand.

I received one hell of an email this evening from the youth pastor who made led me to accept the Lord when I was a mentally vulnerable 12 year old.

I want to repsond in a way that will at least get him to think. He's so far gone I'm not sure that he can see reason, but if people had given up on me I wouldn't be able to live in my current state of enlightenment. He wrote a frickin' novel, but this is the jist of it... how would you respond, if at all??

(he calls me Amy, which everyone who's lazy resorts to)



I think I barfed in my mouth slightly. He's a genuine, heartfelt guy, but he's choosing to feel rather than think. How can I reason with that?? I just don't know.

Thoughts?

Read Romans 8-11

God, the great potter decides randomly that some shall be the elect and saved, and some made reprobate and doomed. Where's the great love in this? The Bible claims God is just, merciful and compassionate, explicitly. But this is not anything like merciful or compassionate, nor just. Its just crazy. Romans 11, why did the Jews not believe in Jesus? God hardened their hearts to not do so? No love here. God does not value free will. Why not make all the Jews believers? Or all humans believers since free will means nothing. This all makes no sense at all. From the beginning we are told, God predestined who was elect, who was reprobate. Where is the deep meaning in Christianity here?
It's all a big puppet show with no real meaning. Islam is just as bad. Allah leads who Allah will lead and leads astray who Allah leads astray. Why does this God who loves us, arbitrarily for no reason condemn so many, the great potter?
That's not love or intellectually believable.

Romans 11
33 O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!

In the end these problems are swept away by claiming God is incomprehensible, Reason and rationality and logic are abandoned. I myself have not been to accept this nonsense as meaningful for many years.

[Rev. Rye]

Here's a few points:

I want you to know that I'm with you on religion. Yes...you read that right. I believe religion to be man's attempt at trying to figure out something bigger than himself. I think I get religion...I get as to WHY so many people embrace it...but to me...it's LIFE-LESS. I am NOT about religion, but I am about a relationship.

You know, I've heard this line before, "Christianity is not a relationship, but a relationship with a living God." Funny thing: I have never heard anyone say this actually define what they mean by "Religion." Especially given that religion, the way I understand it, is BY DEFINITION about one's relationship with one's understanding of the divine.

I think He wants us, and has always wanted us/humanity, to be in a RELATIONSHIP with Him.

And if we don't want to be a part of the relationship and he keeps pressing it, that's technically considered stalking.

Now that "reconciliation-plan" involved people. He chose the Hebrews to be an example to the rest of creation as to what it looks like to be in a life-giving relationship with Him.

And he treated them like crap. He lets them repeatedly get conquered and let them repeatedly come close to absolute annihilation. What kind of a life-giving relationship is that? Is it like the life-giving relationship between Alex and his droogs?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v90KPJ6n4Ew

Jesus came to do what we/creation could never do...and that was to destroy the DIVISION between us and the Creator.

So, what was that about God saying, "I won't make you be in a relationship with me if you don't want to?"

He blew it out of the water when He died on the cross, and when He beat death three days later.

So, what exactly did that do? He sacrificed himself to himself so he could save people from a condition he created himself?