The Atheist Christian

The other night I was watching the film “The Ides of March”(which I felt was bit labored and sort a waste of an amazing cast of actors) and something caught my attention which was sort of washed over by the film. In one instance, Governor Mike Morris (played by George Clooney) is in the middle of a Presidential Primary in a very tight race to win the state of Ohio. In a telling speech he professes he does not believe in God, and claims his allegiance is to the United States Constitution and that alone. I wondered if this allegiance and his disbelief in God had any correlation? I also wondered then about how many allegiances I have to things other than God? My country, my family, my species, and so on....this got me thinking.....

So what then I ask you, is the point in believing in God if you hold to other allegiances other than him? And another even more important question; can Atheists and Christians then have the same allegiances’? If you look at this by definition only, meaning that an Atheist is someone who rejects any belief in God, and a Christian then by definition is someone who professes to the existence of, and believes in the teachings of Jesus Christ; it seems they cannot be similar at all. But look deeper, and ponder if a belief in God really does anything at all?

Think about it, you hear people profess a belief in God in the media all the time. In fact watch any awards show and no doubt you’ll hear someone say “I want to thank God”, and sometimes it’s for winning an award for something that a kid would need his parents’ permission for in order  to purchase at Wal-Mart.

I come to the conclusion then that a belief in God is sometimes no better than denying him altogether, and even a public professing of one’s belief in God says nothing about the character, moral nature or spiritual aptitude of the individual. The point here is that even an Atheist has the ability to publiclly speak the words “I believe in God”, even if they chose not to. (But they could) Atheists don’t however; have the ability to have the Holy Spirit living inside them to produce good works as fruit, set forth by Jesus. This is of course until they decide to accept the free gift of Christ, which is sufficient for any person. Therefore any allegiance to anything other than God is the work of an Atheist, not a Christian, and if anyone claims to believe in God and shows his allegiance elsewhere, is this an Atheist Christian?

For even though we as Christians will stumble and fall often, we must continually go back and try to live out God’s word, taking direction from his perfect plan. Going further this means we who have an allegiance to the King, must find truth in His word, and this alone. If not, we are showing allegiance to the something other than Christ….and try to guess what that is. So don’t forget that talk is cheap, and so then it is written…

James 2: 17

"Faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself."

By: Joe Sanders