An Atheist's Gentle Sentiment

16

Parts I & II

I would never have expected to read what I read. 

If you had asked me what I thought a particular atheist would have said in his response to one of the most probing questions he could ever have been asked, I could have given you a hundred answers and not the right one, not the one he gave.

I have revisited this account many times through the years. I first wrote of it after revisiting it as the amazin’ blonde and I took off down the runway at the Atlanta airport for one of our many excursions down to our land of pine trees and red clay. As soon as we boarded the plane, I reached for the book that tells this story, one I almost always carry with me on any trip: Lee Stroebel’s The Case For Faith.

In a way, it’s kind of my little Bible.

It goes where I go.

By the time the plane had jettisoned to the runway for take-off, I had come to the section of the book where Stroebel–the journalist who, himself, was once an infidel–interviews a current atheist whose path in life curiously mirrored Stroebel’s own. Stroebel and Charles Templeton were the same in many ways, only different.

Strobel began his journey as an atheist and converted to Christianity.

Charles Templeton began as a Christian and finished his journey as an espoused atheist.

In fact, Mr. Templeton was an evangelical preacher for many years.

So much alike, so different.

By the time Stroebel walked into the quaint little professor-like apartment, his journey to faith likely had been completed. But, still, he knew that Mr. Templeton’s story would tell him a great deal about his own journey, and yours and mine, too.

Stoebel finds Templeton in that modest high-rise apartment in downtown Toronto, and the two scholars spend several hours conversing in as congenial a way as if they were talking about grandkids or the Toronto Bluejays. It was soft, gentle, emotional, personal, convicting, and, in the end, very sad.

Even though their 180-degree journeys were mostly complete--and the aged Templeton's forever--and though they found themselves on opposite sides of the fence now, you could feel, even in reading the account, the camaraderie between the two. 

There would be one probing question after another from the journalist, and then there would be candid answers for why his Canadian friend had rejected his faith.

The answers were not argumentative. Nor does Mr. Templeton try to convert Stroebel to his way of thinking. Ah, no, he would not even if he could've. I think he would have led him slowly—for his steps were now very slow—back to the door where he had come in and bid him an abrupt goodbye before he would convert him away from Christ.

After a couple of hours of intriguing discussion, Stroebel has one question he knows he has to ask. You’ve been there where you just cannot walk away from a conversation without asking that one question that is weighing on your mind. It’s one you are afraid to ask, perhaps because you might be afraid of the answer, or because you do not want to push someone that far into a corner where they have to retrieve a long-hidden thought they had tucked away safely.

But such questions usually need to be asked. This one had to be.

“What about Jesus?” Stroebel asks gently, after a long silence. "What do you think about Jesus now?"

The answer is surprising. It will be worth the wait.

Next week.

God bless! ~ Coach

The Atheist’s Gentle Sentiment

(Part 2 of 2)

“What about Jesus?” Stroebel asks gently, after a long silence. "What do you think about Jesus?" The answer is surprising.

That’s how we concluded our previous “front-porch” visit.

In his book The Case for Faith, journalist Lee Stroebel finally comes to that question in his affable interview with the eighty-three-year-old Charles Stapleton, one of the rare men to turn from evangelism to atheism.

               We originally entitled the first segment “The Atheist’s Surprising Admission,” but we changed the title by the time we got to this part of the story. Admission doesn’t seem to fit the case best, for what he says isn't forced out of him at all. He offers his view of Jesus Christ freely, his answer flowing from his heart as effortlessly as it had when he was preaching Jesus years before. It was natural, it was honest.

               Templeton’s answer is greater than surprising, too. Yes, it is surprising, but more, it is gentle.

The better title, I think, is the one you now see, “The Atheist’s Gentle Sentiment,” for Mr. Templeton’s answer is truly a gentle, heartfelt response that clearly erupts from a tired and confused heart.

               Perhaps there’s a lesson in all of this regarding our own Christianity. We can not stand in agreement with someone, even an atheist, and still show the proper respect and have true Christian affection for the one sitting across from us. Sometimes we forget that requirement of being a Christian. Jesus looked at the rich young ruler who would walk away from Him unconverted, and “loved him.”

               Back to Stroebel’s question: I’ve always thought it is one of the greatest questions to roll off of the human tongue, “What about Jesus?”

It is one we all have to answer, not so much with our lips but with our lives.

Mr. Templeton answers without hesitation. He speaks for a while as favorably about the man Jesus as you or I would about one of our best friends.

In the midst of his careful, measured answers, his demeanor changes.

“His body softened,” Stroebel writes, and the elderly gentleman lets down his guard and opens up about the Jesus he once served. He says that Jesus was a moral genius, that he was the wisest of all men, and, as if it were an honor for him to say it, he calls Him “the greatest human being who has ever lived.”  

High praise for one in whom Templeton no longer believes.

“’I was taken aback,” Stroebel says, and he engages Stapleton further:

“You sound as if you really care about him,” he suggests.

That’s when Templeton utters words that still ring in Stroebel’s mind.

“Well, yes,” Templeton replies, “He’s the most important thing in my life.”

Then—almost as if those dark storm clouds that had long gathered deep within the atheist’s soul begin to part, and the sun that shines through once more—he adds:

“I adore him.”

That was the first shot heard around the world. It takes Stroebel back, but he waits quietly as Templeton gathers his thoughts.

Slowing down with emotions building up, his voice cracks.

Time crawls for both the journalist and his new friend. They had come to a defining moment, and they both knew it. Stroebel wonders what could come next, what more could come beyond that honest assessment of, “I adore him.”

But there was more, and it was as shocking a thing as Stroebel may have ever heard.

Humbly, and quietly, his face softer than perhaps it had been for years, Templeton, almost in a whisper, says, “I miss him.”

Tears begin to flood down the face of the sad atheist, and he turns his head away, his shoulders bobbing as he wept.

Time stands still.

Perhaps he had just made the greatest confession that could be made to attest to the glory of Jesus, and that by an espoused atheist. But Mr. Templeton can go no further. How could he? He had said it all, though still a step away from faith.

I wonder how many times those tender words echoed through Stroebel’s head as he left that Toronto high-rise and made his flight back home to Chicago. The words have echoed through my own ever since I read them on that flight home that day from Atlanta:

“I miss him.”

Surely, I thought, looking down at the soft, gentle clouds below, it is the greatest confession an atheist has ever made.