Are you a Christian Atheist?

Christian Atheists exist, even though the term seems to be an oxymoron. A Christian Atheist, Craig Groeschel defines in his book by the same title, is someone that believes in God but lives as if He doesn't exist. Does that sound like you? Over the next several posts, I am going to explore this concept and present information from that book along with my personal observations and conclusions.

To start things off, let's look closer at exactly what Craig means by a Christian Atheist. How many times have you felt God leading you to do something and you decided not to do it because... (fill in the blank). I have heard it said many times that whatever you put before God becomes a god to you and takes priority in your life. Money, power, and position have all been used as examples of those gods, but I believe that self should be considered as one of the main things that take us away from the Lord being our main focus. Whenever we have a notion that "if doing this my way fails, then I will try it God's way", we are putting our self ahead of God and thereby negating our belief that God is superior to us.

That is in reality how a Christian Atheist thinks. "I believe in God, but His existence is not vital to my day-to-day life. So why bother taking so much time and effort to include Him when I can do well without Him?" As Craig notes in the pre-introduction 'Letter to the Reader': "Sadly, Christian Atheism is everywhere. There has to be a better way to live." With that said, he then challenges the reader to address the hypocrisy of saying you believe in God, but live like He doesn't exist.

In his introduction, Craig starts off by acknowledging he is a Christian Atheist. He then goes on and gives a brief outline of his life and his spiritual walk. Since this is not a book review, but a series of articles about the phenomenon that I feel is permeating churches across this country today, I am only going to draw examples from this to explore how we can identify such behavior in ourselves. By his own admission, Craig says, "At the age of 25, I was a full-time pastor and a part-time follower of Christ." How does this sort of thing happen? We all have our own scenarios that bring us to realize that we are failing to maintain the same level of passion that we once had for serving Jesus.

So how do we get that spiritual fire back? What areas do we need to gain a realization of our deception? Over the next several weeks, I am going to use Craig's chapter topics to present a mix of his thoughts and mine as I explore this topic. Please join me as we journey through how we can recognize where we are, readdress our priorities, and return to our first love and avoid getting entangled in Christian Atheism.