Atheist Understanding of the Gospel Surpasses Pastor’s

Not everyone with the title “pastor” behind their name is trustworthy. That should be obvious, but many fall victim to the “appeal to authority” problem, where someone appearing as an authority has their beliefs accepted without challenge.

As an example, consider the following discussion between an atheist and a pastor; the atheist at least understands what the Gospel is, while the so-called pastor has no idea.

I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.

Atheist Hitchen’s correctly identifies the Gospel (see Paul in 1 Corinthians 15); compare Hitchen’s clear understanding of the Gospel with Unitarian minister Marilyn Sewell’s bizarity:

The way I believe in the resurrection is I believe that one can go from a death in this life, in the sense of being dead to the world and dead to other people, and can be resurrected to new life. When I preach about Easter and the resurrection, it’s in a metaphorical sense.

…I have my grandmother’s Bible and I still read it, but I don’t take it as literal truth. I take it as metaphorical truth. The stories, the narrative, are what’s important.

I don’t know whether or not God exists in the first place, let me just say that.

God is a mystery to me. I choose to believe because—and this is a very practical thing for me—I seem to live with more integrity when I find myself accountable to something larger than myself. That thing larger than myself, I call God, but it’s a metaphor. That God is an emptiness out of which everything comes. Perhaps I would say “reality” or “what is” because we’re trying to describe the infinite with language of the finite. My faith is that I put all that I am and all that I have on the line for that which I do not know.

In short, just because some calls themselves a “Christian” and maybe even “pastor” doesn’t mean anything; many churches won’t need new pastors after the rapture.

Be careful, and heed the Bible’s call to check things out for yourself. Be a Berean.

Filed Under: Christian Living

Recommended Citation:
Yeager, Darrin "Atheist Understanding of the Gospel Surpasses Pastor’s" (2023-11-23 14:45),
https://www.dyeager.org/post/atheists-understanding-gospel-surpasses-pastors.html
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