Regis Nicoll Christian Blog and Commentary

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The Making of an Apostate

Dear Swillpit,

Interesting, how humans can go through life without giving much serious thought to their faith. Oh yes, they may believe in a supreme Being and an afterlife. They may be members of a church, even leaders or clergy. They may have mouthed their allegiance to our Adversary. But beyond the sanctuary walls, they live as if he and his teachings are largely irrelevant. You have your demonic forebears to thank for this.

After generations assailing their spiritual yearnings, we learned that allowing them a small space for religion is better than allowing no space at all. Surprised?

I know it sounds strange, but the more adamantly they reject religion, the more it occupies their thoughts and conversations. In fact, a hardened atheist is apt to spend more of his mental energies pondering “God” and religion than the most ardent believer.

Remember Siggy Freud, how he was obsessed with the question of “God” till the end of his life. It was even the subject of his last book. Today, dear Dickie Dawkins is following suit. His chart-busting book, The God Delusion, marks the apogee of a career built around the question. It is a cruel irony that the more they insist the matter settled, the more their thoughts are haunted with it, and their lives are directed by it.

That’s because the Enemy has stacked the deck. He fashioned them to run optimally when they are filled with him. If they try to run on anything less, sooner or later, they will experience an itch they can’t scratch, an unease that won’t subside, or … an irrepressible need to rant about a Being that does not exist (funny, how the irrationality of that rarely occurs to them!).

It is the natural consequence of maintaining the swirl of contradictions that their unbelief imposes upon them—like the insistence of universal human rights in a universe bereft of a rights-Giver. For the tortured soul who values intellectual integrity, keeping the throng of conflicting notions spinning in mid-air requires constant effort that, for some, just becomes too much.

Oh, how many we have lost in their twilight years! Who could have imagined that the most celebrated atheist of his time, Tony Flew, would have abandoned a lifetime of disbelief? I fear the same fate awaits our dear Dickie.

Yet those who religiously attend their God in the church hour can, with scant coaxing from us, leave him there. You see, Swillpit, religion is like a vaccine: a little dose can inoculate a patient from its totalizing effects. A trifling measure is all it takes to dull their spiritual senses, making God’s whisperings fade in the cacophony of voices in the world outside.

Content that their spiritual house is in order, they easily drift into lifestyles, and even attitudes, that are practicably indistinguishable from their unbelieving neighbors. And as their neighbors look on, they are left to conclude that a faith that makes no difference in lives of the faithful is one that has no moral authority.

There, my boy, is our silver lining: For should we, hell forbid, lose the immunized believer to his Maker, he has made the job of winning others much the easier for us. Indeed, his kind has done as much (maybe more) to fill our banquet hall as Nietzsche, Freud, or Dawkins. If it weren’t for him, I fear we would be in a famine down here.

As I hope you recall from Tempters Training, we can’t eradicate their transcendent longing, but we can divert their attentions to other objects, like Reason, Nature, or Progress. However, over the course of human history, it has proven to be much more useful and easily accomplished to allow them short rein in their devotion to God. The key is to work with, rather than against, their natural leanings.

One of our top Tempters put it this way: “It’s like the two strategies in pitching baseball: In the first, you get the batter to think your going to throw one kind of pitch, and throw something else. For instance, if he’s looking for a fastball, you throw a change-up. In the second, you find out what kind of pitch the batter likes, and throw it ‘almost there.’ If he likes it low, you pitch it a little too low. If he likes it inside, you pitch it a little too inside. That’s what I do with my playthings—pitch it ‘almost there.'”

Here’s how it works, Swillpit... Continue reading here.