Doug Van Pelt

ENTRY #10: If It's Pitch Black, Does It Matter If You're Blind?

I admit it: I wish I was finished with this book. I want to sit down and finish it, rather than take each entry one day (or even longer) at a time. As Dana Carvey would say, though, "Not gonna do it."

In this entry, the author retells of a conversation with a secular humanist. His guest told him that church and God weren't his things. When he asked him what was, he described himself a secular humanist. His next question was a surprise:

"You must have really been hurt at some time in your life?"

The guest's answer was: "Maybe."

Wow. I can imagine that just as we accuse some people of running to religion to escape pain and hurt; that some people run from religion for the same reasons. I'll never forget the pain I brought to my 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Tesdall and my grandmother (Grandma Daisy) for trying to evangelize those around me. It was perhaps this pain that drove me from the Lord in my own life. For nine years shortly after that I was a practicing atheist, I guess. I was a forgetful/put-it-out-of-my-mind believer. Somehow I disconnected from the core of what I believed. I wanted to live how I wanted, so I did. Conflict between the two factions rarely occured in my front-and-center consciousness.

I have a friend who has gone public with his current philosophy of not believing in God. Because he's a friend, I don't want to put him on trial here. Heck, he might even read this blog on ocassion and it wouldn't be fun to cut him down in public. I wonder if pain from his experience in Christianity is at the core of what drove him away.

I was a casual friend of Roger Martinez. We sat down and broke bread (ate a meal together, not necessarily shared communion) more than once and I visited his home. We weren't buddies, but I liked him and we shared with each other some things that were private or "not for print."

One of his secrets, that I don't think he'd mind if I shared now was: "We (Vengeance Rising) want to be the Pink Floyd of the thrash metal world." They used to use live actors on stage during their local Hollywood concerts, with an actor on a cross, etc. They were working, perhaps, on how to make that visual stuff part of their touring live show, which never happened.

Anyway, this guy has publically proclaimed his dis-allegiance to the church and Christianity. He seemingly believes that all Christians are deluded into believing that there is a God. While he was certainly a fan of the intellect, and he was certainly impressive to all us "normal Joe's" with his ability to speak persuasively about the Christ and faith and encouraging us to know the Word (I remember he challened me with a statement about how, if we read about 10 chapters a day, we could go through the Bible about three times in a year). Some people I know who know him have said, "If you argue with him, you're not going to score any points by appealing to the emotions or feelings" or the sentimental side of our relationship with God. I can imagine him laughing at the notion of "God tugging at his heart," but I don't particularly think it's funny when I think about some of the pain that must've driven him from the faith. Some private things happened to him that are intensely painful. That would be enough on its own. The dissolution of a band, his record label; and, according to his own word to me, his research and searching on the subject of divine healing (and his lack of evidence to prove its modern day existence) are what drove him away.

Posted by Doug Van Pelt at January 2, 2008 08:54 AM