What are Atheists So Afraid Of?

This post by: Travis

Fear is the only word I can come up with. After reading an article like this one, in which a man is trying to use the courts to not allow his teenage son to attend a Catholic high school. The kid wants to go there, his mom wants him to go there, but the dad doesn't want him to go because the dad is an Atheist.

The most prevalent articles you find on Atheists making the news all have that one element in common. Fear. They are afraid to let their kids be exposed to the idea of God. They are afraid of having leaders in this country that believe in God, they are offended by the very idea that we believe something they don't.

Some part of me tells me that they fear the idea that their kids will start to believe if they are exposed to the idea. So what's so wrong with that? Are they afraid that their kids will change? That the child they raised will become some sort of zealot? Or is it perhaps that they are afraid their kids will find something that they don't have?

It hurts my heart to see people living with this kind of hatred and fear of belief. Even more so than those who just choose not to believe. It hurts because in the back of my mind I am always wondering what we, as Christians, did to offend. We are hardly blameless in this. It may have been someone in the person's past, or even in past generations of the family, but this kind of fervor only comes from something you are passionate about, and the ONLY way I can see being passionate about preventing people from believing in something is if that something has wronged you.

I know that there could be other reasons out there... but all I want to do is find a way of communicating faith in a new way so that people loose the stereotypes of bigotry, hate, hypocrisy and start seeing Christians as a people filled with love, and hope. Something that starts with us as individuals...

Where do we begin? How do we start healing wounds that Christianity has inflicted on people for so long?