MaryBeth LaMont

Did you know in order to be a Christian, one has to be an atheist? A church leader in the Second Century, Justin Martyr, declared in his First Apology, “’We confess that we are atheists, so far as gods of this sort are concerned, but not with respect to the Most True God.” For Justin there was one, albeit qualified sense in which Christians are, and must be atheists.

The gods of whom Justin spoke, of course, were the Roman household gods and the seven major Roman Gods, among them Jupiter, Apollo, Neptune, and Minerva. For a Roman to have faith in the one God, the God of Jesus Christ, one had to abandon these gods and disbelieve in them so one could follow the Christian God.

On the surface this all sounds fairly tame. We picture gods as being represented in small statues, or works of art. They are represented as images and not real. No one in today’s modern cultures would put their faith and trust in them we fool ourselves into thinking. But alas, Martin Luther once said a god is anyone or anything in which we put our ultimate faith and trust. That is, we make into gods so many material things in this life into which we pour such energy and passion.

What might make the list of being a god in your life? What past-time, what possession, what, part of your lifestyle might occupy a place of ultimate concern in your life? Maybe it is your career. Maybe it is your own ability and efforts, that is, your pride. Even family can be something idolatrous as often we hide behind family as a reason to not do many things we are called to do.

Quite likely you have never thought of any of these or some other major concern functioning as a god in your life. You would have condemned such as sinful, ridiculous, and not at all some object of faith. Yet, put your life into a pie diagram and see which triangle is the largest in terms of just the amount of time and effort you put into it. Or look at your bank statements and see where much of your money is directed.

Justin Martyr is correct. In order to place our trust and faith in Jesus Christ and the God revealed in and through Jesus, we need to put aside the trust we have in so much that is material and not worthy of our faith. While many times it seems not that hard to trust Jesus and confess Jesus as Lord, we miss how hard it is to put aside our belief in so much that is unable to justify such belief. Yes, Jesus is important to us, but……..
The very instant we add the word but, we are confessing some form of belief in some other god.

We are called to work on our faith, we are called to do things that might make it grow over the years. Part of that work and part of that growth is to become atheistic in so much we once invested our trust. To be a Christian, is also to be an atheist, casting aside much that is false belief so we are open to believe and serve the God revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Not many pastors would say to their flock what I’m about to say: “Work a little at becoming an atheist.”