We should all become Atheists again.
In the first and second centuries of Christianity, people in a construct of pluralism couldn't understand the idea of worshiping an imageless God, or only one God. If you believed in only one God, and one without a statue at that, you were insulting all other gods, so you were an atheist.
Today, Christians are called many things, but never Atheists. But maybe we should be.
We live in an environment and world and culture much like the culture surrounding early Christians. There is no shortage of gods.
But what makes the idea of being called an Atheist like a badge of honor is not simply believing in only the Trinitarian God, but what the early believers being called Atheists were known for.
In the fourth century of Christianity, Julian the Emperor wrote:
"Atheism has been specially advanced through the loving service rendered to strangers, and through their care for the burial of the dead. It is a scandal that there is not a single Jew who is a beggar, and that the godless Galileans care not only for their own poor but for ours as well; while those who belong to us look in vain for the help that we should render them."
He is talking about Christians.
Tertullian, a mid-second century theologian comments in his writing about how Pagans would comment on how Christians loved each other.
So I propose a return to Atheism like the first centuries of Christianity.
Is it possible that no believer be a beggar, or that those having accepted Jesus would help not only "their own" but also those in disagreement with them? This was early Christianity; this was early Atheism.
It is brilliant to read of the early acts of Christians, seeing that even centuries after Pentecost they were still living out what had begun with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit as described in Acts 2.
It may seem funny to us that they were called Atheist, because we have our idea of what that is, and what we call people specifically associates them with a set of actions or ideas. But early on, Atheism was Christianity, and the Atheism described by early accounts, both secular and Christian, are that Atheists loved each other and served and left no need unmet.
So I supposed I'd rather be called an Atheist in the vein of the first centuries than a Christian in the light of recent decades.
What do you think?
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