Skip church
Atheist billboards show up in Lynchburg
If you drove on U.S. Route 460 during the month of December, you might have seen beautiful mountains, farms and even billboards encouraging people to skip church on Christmas.
According to the website for American Atheists, the purpose of these billboards is to critique “the hypocrisy of all religions.”
One billboard stated, “Make Christmas Great Again: Skip Church!” and the other shows a text conversation between two teenagers where one says her parents will “get over” her not believing in Christianity.
“It is important for people to know religion has nothing to do with being a good person,” David Silverman, president of American Atheists said on the website.
“More and more Americans are leaving religion, but we still have work to do when it comes to fighting the stigma many atheists face.”
I do not think these billboards are an example of intolerance, but a means to showcase how severely Christians are failing to live out what Christ has commanded.
The idea that the actions of a few should not influence the view on the majority can no longer excuse the American church.
Christians, especially in America, are regarded as hypocritical and passive, and sadly these negative connotations associated with modern Christianity are not rare occurrences anymore.
Larry Alex Taunton, executive director of the Fixed Point Foundation, wrote an article for The Atlantic about how his experience of interviewing atheist college students concerning the reason that led them to become atheists.
The results shocked him.
“Most of our participants had not chosen their worldview from ideologically neutral positions at all, but in reaction to Christianity. Not Islam. Not Buddhism. Christianity,” Taunton wrote.
“These students were, above all else, idealists who longed for authenticity, and having failed to find it in their churches, they settled for a non-belief that, while less grand in its promises, felt more genuine and attainable.”
A survey done by the Public Religion Research Institute shows that nearly 40 percent of youth are atheist or non-religious.
America’s youth are rejecting the church, and it seems the main reason is due to the insincerity they see displayed in their Christian peers.
The billboards are just one example of how the hypocrisy found in the church can cause some to reject Christianity altogether.
If the majority of Christians start living authentic lives, there would be a drastic shift of society’s opinions in what it means to believe in God.
I am not claiming that all Christians are passive in living out their faith or that all atheists are willing and open to hear the gospel, yet this trend, if gone unchecked, will cause even more people to “skip church.”