Concerning Atheism

So I woke up this morning to the news that three young Muslims were killed in Chapel Hill this morning. I braced for the usual, expecting it to be an act of radicalized Christians (How freaking messed up are we as a faith when we start EXPECTING that sort of thing) when the big news circulating was that the Killer was an Atheist, and the spin was that the killer often advocated violence against believers in various internet forums.

That version of the story becomes less believable as time goes on, the usual internet hysteria doing its thing, and now it seems that while, yes, the killer was atheist, the killing was over a parking spot, and it is hard to be certain there was a religious motivation at all.

Really. A Parking Spot. What the hell, America?

Of course, commentators haven't let anything as silly as facts detract from the opportunity to point some fingers at prominent atheists. Again, what does it say about us as a faith that we get excited when the crazy killer wasn't one of ours, and that we are then so eager to go to others and say; "Hey! You've got crazies too!"

I've read a couple of blogs on the subject and, in general, those same prominent atheists are taking it in stride, with almost no apologism, a simple, "yeah, we condemn it." Take note, Christians, because that is something we REALLY could be doing better.

Originally I was just going to not comment and go on to the next question, as this is an issue that, for once, doesn't really have anything to do with my faith and so I could let others handle it. But I have already started getting the messages from some colleagues asking me if I still stand by "my atheists" as I refer to them here in the blog, so desperately wanting that killing in Chapel Hill to be the smoking gun that shows the true face of Atheism.

My time on ANF has given me the opportunity to interact with many atheists. Some I get along with famously, others I tend to squabble with. (Hi, Robert!) But the general common thread between them, and other atheists I have known in my life, has been that they are, in general, caring and respectable people who, as it happens, do not have a faith system governing their life.

This actually gives them some advantages in the whole "be a good person" department. They do not have a faith history of violence to look back on, don't care if an ancient book dictates murder (except insofar as it might lead to them or others getting murdered) and never seem to feel the need to spin old quotes out of context in order to justify their less admirable human urges. They're every bit as beholden to sin as anyone else, but they don't have a tradition of millennia of less than saintly "heroes" spinning justifications to help them out with rationalizing the sin as moral action.

We do.

So I would recommend treating the tragic deaths of Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha as that... tragic deaths. The atheist community is actually working on holding themselves accountable beyond what I think is actually necessary, which is highly, highly commendable. But while they work on getting their house in order, I think we Christians are called to pray for the deceased, their families, but also to look inward at ourselves and our own reactions to this crisis.

Because if our reaction is to gleefully direct attention towards the lack of faith of the accused, then these murders somehow manage to reflect worse on Christians than they do on Atheists, AND WE WEREN'T EVEN DIRECTLY INVOLVED.

Come on, believers, we need to do better. We need to BE better.