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An Open Letter to My Friend Andrew

Michelle Lesley

Dear Andrew-

Thank you so much for being a faithful reader here at the blog. I really appreciate that you take the time to read and respond to my articles, and I hope you’ll continue to hang around in the future.

As you have noticed, I am now approving comments before they are posted. Just wanted to let you know that, while I appreciate your faithfulness, I will not be approving any more comments, including yours, which are disrespectful or insulting. Since you’ve been here for a while, I’m sure it has not escaped your attention that I have allowed and responded to comments in which people have respectfully disagreed with, and even critiqued, things I have written.

I don’t have any problem with people disagreeing with me and desiring to have a polite conversation about it. Should you ever find yourself in that demeanor and frame of mind, I would be glad to chat. However, your current technique seems to be one of being as inflammatory as possible in hopes of drawing me into an emotionally charged argument. Sorry, but I’m not going there.

Why have I allowed your comments up until now? Because you kept coming back And every time you come back, my kind and gracious Savior, who chooses to love you despite your hatred for Him, shows Himself to you a little bit more through what you read. Every time, He gives you another chance to turn away from your anger, hurt, and disbelief, and to trust Him. And you can trust Him, Andrew. Because He is trustworthy. He proved it by giving His life for you.

I’m not going to argue with you because I can’t argue you into giving your life to Christ. This isn’t about me changing your mind. It’s about the Holy Spirit changing your heart. And, if you’ll take a step back and look at things, maybe you’ll see, like I do, that He’s already at work on you. How?

Have you ever wondered why you keep coming back here? This is a blog written by a Christian for Christians, particularly, Christian women. Why would a male who’s a staunch atheist have any interest in that? The gist of your comments is that you hate God, hate the Bible, hate Christians, and especially hate me, yet you read and comment on everything that I post. Clearly, you’re not going to change my mind, I’m not trying to change your mind, and I’m not giving you what you want by arguing with you. Yet, you keep coming back. Why do you suppose that is?

Andrew, I love you the same way Jesus does. And furthermore, I like you. You’re feisty and passionate, two things I admire in people. I addressed this open letter to you as a “friend,” and I meant that. But, as your friend, I need to tell you something:

You can hate Jesus all you want to, but that doesn’t make Him wrong.

On the day you die, you will stand in front of Him and give an account of your life, and at that point, none of your opinions or arguments will matter. All that will matter was that, in life, you realized you had offended a holy God with your sin, and humbled yourself and asked Him to forgive you, trusting in Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection to pay the penalty for your sin. That’s all that will matter.

I really hope you’ll come to that point in your life. I’ve been praying for you, my Sunday School class has been praying for you, and I would ask every Christian reading this to pray for you also. If you do get to that point and need some help or have some questions, well, you know where to find me.

Michelle

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14 thoughts on “An Open Letter to My Friend Andrew”

  2. Dear Michelle,

    Thank you. Thank you for taking the time to write, and in such a gracious way; more than you (or even I) may feel I deserve. I’ve tried not to be inflammatory, but I’ll admit to ‘provocative’!

    First, may I say I don’t hate you. I have two close personal friends whose theology is for all intents and purposes identical to yours, and we respectfully agree to differ. And, it’s a perhaps regrettable feature of the Internet that we (as humans) say things there which we might not say face to face. And what angers me is what it appears you believe.

    I’m here for two reasons. One is simple – I’m an atheist; I know all the atheist standpoints backwards; I agree 100% with just about all of them, and new insights are becoming rare. It’s more stimulating and challenging to take up the debate with the ‘opposition’ both because trying to understand the other’s point of view is a Good Thing in itself, and because I might learn something I don’t know.

    The other reason is more complicated and is probably the real reason I’m here. It’s because what I see as your extremist beliefs could one day threaten me if they took hold – in other words, if they were to become widespread enough for fundamentalists to gain political power and legislate away, in your country and in mine, some of the hard-won social freedoms and the technological and medical advances we have made and may still make. Simply as Exhibits A and B, I give you Todd Akin and Ken Cucinelli. Across the Muslim world your fellow Abrahamic monotheists are turning the clock back in the name of God. Your God, give or take a Prophet or two.

    Hence my remark about burqas. I find your attitude towards women amazing, and I wanted to point out how regressive it is by comparing your attitude to women with Islamists’ attitude towards women. An exaggeration in order to make a point, but a point nonetheless. You say I hate the Bible, that I hate God, and so on: but I could as easily say that the gist of your blog is that you hate equality, you hate progress, and that even if you don’t hate individual gays you at least hate what they do, even though it’s absolutely none of your business. My first comment was on your blog on the SCOTUS ruling on gay marriage. I’m straight, and happily married with a growing family, and in my country and yours more and more people are wondering what the controversy over gay marriage actually is, and rightly so. But I fear that you and yours would overturn legislation allowing (say) gay marriage if you had the chance, simply because your interpretation of your holy book tells you to. It’s important that you conservatives never have the chance to impose biblically-based strictures on people like me who do not choose to be bound by them.

    A final, but related, point. I asked you twice whether you believed that abused wives (mainly, but could be husbands as well) should stay in clearly violent marriages. You chose not to reply (OK; that was probably because you didn’t want to get drawn into any discussion, I understand that; but I’d like to ask you again). You see, it looks to me as if you will stand by what you think the Bible tells you, irrespective of how much avoidable human misery results. Sorry, but human happiness and safety is more important. We adopted one of our children: her birth father was able to go on kicking her and her two baby brothers around like footballs for years, while their mother was trapped in the marriage and God watched with folded arms as those poor children suffered.

    I think I’m running out of space, so I’ll post this now. I’d be interested to know how your ladies react! I wish you, and them, well.

    Andrew

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  3. No problem Michelle, I know just what it’s like! Families come first every time. I’m looking forward to your response when you have time to write.

    I wonder if I could ask / explain one thing however. I find that believers are very enthusiastic about backing up their arguments with scriptural quotations, as if such citations prove the correctness of the point they’re making. They are often surprised when I try to point out that, with me, such quotes add no weight or authority to an argument because I’m not a believer! I find it rather like being told that in my day to day life I can’t do X, because it contravenes the laws of a country I’m not from, let alone in. I hope you’ll appreciate that that’s not said in an attempt to constrain your reply – even though it may seem as if it is!

    Andrew

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    1. I think that’s a great question, and one that Christians should take to heart and do a better job of understanding as they speak with people who aren’t Christians.

      I can’t speak for all Christians on this, so I’ll just speak for myself. When I am talking to another Christian and I explain/teach Scripture to her, I do so expecting that she will agree with and obey it, because as Christians, our final authority is God’s word. That’s sort of one of the “stipulations in our contract,” if you will. In fact, if I’m talking to someone who understands what Scripture says and chooses to reject it in favor of her own opinions, that’s a red flag to me that I am probably talking to someone who isn’t really a Christian, despite the fact that she professes to be one.

      When I speak with atheists or any other person who isn’t a Christian, and I use Scripture, I use it to explain where I’m coming from and what I believe as a Christian. While *I* believe that God’s word is binding and true as it pertains to all humankind, I do not approach any conversation with a non-Christian with the expectation that he will consider himself to be under the authority of, understand, or believe any aspect of Scripture.

      Why? Because the Bible says (and my personal experience agrees) that’s how people who aren’t Christians respond to God and His word. 1 Corinthians 2:14 says (again, just explaining what I believe): “The natural person [somebody who isn’t a Christian] does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” I get that all of this Bible stuff sounds ridiculous to you. If I weren’t a Christian, I’d feel the same way.

      So, speaking for myself, I expect Christians to act and believe like Christians, and I expect that people who aren’t Christians will act and believe like they aren’t Christians.

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  4. Hi Andrew-

    Thanks for taking the time to write back. I was so pleased to receive your thoughtful and cordial response. I, myself, have gotten fired up in the past about various issues, and have commented on them in the heat of the moment, so I do understand where you’re coming from when it comes to issues you feel strongly about.

    I appreciate your desire to “understand the other’s point of view” and “learn something I don’t know.” I completely agree that both of these are “good things,” and look forward to better understanding your point of view as we converse. I think it will be beneficial to both of us if we view one another as someone we can learn from rather than someone we can convince to change his/her mind. Although I offered an impassioned, personal plea to you in my open letter above (mostly because I thought you might not come back after reading it), I can put that form of discourse aside and do my best to simply and dispassionately present the facts from my side of the fence as you can from yours. Perhaps we can both come at the discussion with the mindset that neither of us will change the other’s mind and that we will simply state our respective cases and answer any questions the other person has. Would that be ok with you?

    Another thing that would help me out (and anyone who comes along later and reads this) is if we could deal with one issue at a time. Following is my response to the issues you’ve raised in your comment, but, after that, if we could take one topic at a time, it would help my senile old brain to focus better :0)

    Ok, on to addressing your concerns:

    1. “Extremist” Christian viewpoints being codified into law. (Can we please refrain from using words like “extremist”? That’s essentially an ad hominem attack, and not conducive to friendly dialogue.)

    First of all, I don’t think you have anything to worry about. I don’t claim to be a prophet, but without direct and miraculous intervention from the hand of God, I don’t see how biblical Christianity could possibly take over the government or society in the U.S. (Probably not your country either, but I don’t know which country you live in.) No one with beliefs as staunch as mine (and please understand that I’m just using myself as a frame of reference here, not trying to be prideful), expressed openly, will be elected President. It simply will not happen due to the current social climate here and the plurality of ideology among our populace. There aren’t enough voters who would unite under a candidate like that. I think the past two elections of President Obama make that pretty clear. “My side” couldn’t even garner enough votes to put a milquetoasty conservative in office.

    The same goes for our legislature. I don’t know that we have any senators and representatives that are as conservative as I am (although I’m not familiar with all of them, so I suppose there could be a handful), but even if there are, any legislation they introduce will continue to be vetoed by the President and voted down or changed by legislators who are less conservative/more liberal. And, of course, the Supreme Court will continue to strike down the majority of conservative laws and court decisions that arrive on its docket.

    Although I vehemently disagree with it, I fully expect that homosexual “marriage” will one day become the law of the land here. I also expect that the grassroots marginalization and “persecution-lite” that we’re beginning to see against Christians in the U.S. will continue to increase until it eventually (probably not in my lifetime, but in the decades to come) becomes as strenuous as it is today in places like North Korea and the Middle East. That’s the direction my country is going right now, and I don’t see that changing in the future.

    Another thing you mention is: “It’s important that you conservatives never have the chance to impose biblically-based strictures on people like me who do not choose to be bound by them.”

    First, if your concern is truly legislation, why are you wasting your time arguing with me? I’m an American. You’re not. You don’t have to live under American law. Wouldn’t your time and energy be better spent trying to influence the lawmakers in your own country?

    Second, I’d like to make it clear that, in America, it is not Christians who are barging into people’s lives and seeking to force unwanted change on people. Quite the opposite is happening. Since you seem to be an educated person, I’m sure you know that the United States was founded mainly by Christians, and, up until about the 1940s or ‘50s, our laws have generally been based upon Christian principles by the mutual consent and desire of the majority of our citizens. Things began to change sometime around the 1960s when more liberal people decided they wanted to alter or abandon those principles. For the most part the people you are concerned about, like me, want to preserve the ideals this country was founded on and has lived under for the last 300+ years. It is the liberals who are forcing the unwanted change on conservatives and Christians, not the other way around.

    I find it interesting that you state that it is “none of my business” what homosexuals do, and I would simply ask, “Why?” Why is it none of my business? Just because you say so? You have stated that you’re not a homosexual, so it’s not like you’re defending your own community. So, with all due respect, what standing or authority do you have to say that this issue is none of my business?

    To clarify, when I wrote the article you referenced about the impending SCOTUS decisions, it was not an article critiquing my neighbors Joe and Fred and their personal sexual escapades, so your argument that “what homosexuals do is none of my business” was not on point. It was, first, an article speaking to a matter of law and public policy, which is certainly my business as a citizen of the United States, and even more so my business as a Christian, because these sorts of laws will, and have already begun to negatively impact the Christian community, including members of my own family.
    Second, it was an article about sin, the gospel, evangelism, and a Christ-like response to the SCOTUS rulings, all of which, as a Christian writing to other Christians, are my business. I would also like to point out that, with regard to that particular article, all I asked fellow Christians to do was to pray. I didn’t call for any rallies, picketing, making phone calls, sending e-mails, or any other sort of political or social action. I called the members of my community to prayer, and as a Christian, that is definitely my business.

    So, I guess my question for you would be: as someone who sort of “crashed” (although you’re certainly welcome to be here) my blog, isn’t a Christian, isn’t a homosexual, isn’t an American citizen, and doesn’t have to live under American law, how is it your business to tell me this issue isn’t any of my business?

    2. Domestic Violence:

    Interestingly (and as you can see from the Sunday School lesson I posted this past Sunday), I had just finished writing the part of my lesson about domestic violence when I read your response. I want you to know that, even though I had finished writing that part of the lesson, I made sure to go back (and also to strenuously emphasize to my ladies during class) to make certain there was no way anyone could draw the conclusion from the Bible or anything I said that God condones domestic violence. So, I appreciate that you brought that issue up again. It helped me do a better job as a teacher.

    I think I know where the confusion about my stance on this may have come in. The time I remember you asking me about domestic violence (I don’t doubt that you asked me more than once; I just have a bad memory and don’t remember the other instance(s).), I believe was in response to a statement in an article of a wife saying something along the lines of, “My husband doesn’t treat me right,” or “I don’t like the way my husband treats me,” or something like that. (Sorry, I don’t remember the exact wording or even the title of the article. Like I said, bad memory :0)

    When I wrote that, domestic violence was nowhere near my heart or mind, and I didn’t make that clear enough. I’m sorry about that. The kind of woman I had in mind was one who selfishly whines and picks at every little thing her husband does wrong no matter how hard he tries: “I got my hair cut and he didn’t notice,” “He got me flowers for Valentine’s day, but not a card,” “He didn’t ask me how my day was today,” instead of realizing that her husband is human, he’s going to mess up from time to time, and she’s going to need to be forgiving instead of running off to another man thinking this one will be perfect.

    Of course I would never suggest that a woman who is being abused by her husband should stay under the same roof with him, nor should she stay if her children are being abused. I told my ladies that on Sunday, and I also told them that if any of them ever felt like they were in danger to tell me or our pastor, and we would find a way to keep them safe. It is the church’s responsibility to intervene, protect, and help in any way we can in situations like this, especially if the husband or wife or both are members of the church, and that includes involving the police in whatever way is appropriate to the situation.

    Anyone who would take the biblical passages on submission and use them to justify domestic violence is twisting God’s word in a despicable way and probably isn’t really a genuine Christian. There is far more teaching in the Bible (particularly in Ephesians 5:22ff) about how husbands should be Christlike and sacrifice themselves and their personal desires for their wives than there actually is about submission on the wife’s part. And, in my opinion, what the Christian husband has to live up to is far more difficult and weighty than the submission God has called Christian wives to. It’s not a responsibility I’d want, I can tell you that for sure.

    3. Finally, I wanted to thank you for adopting your little girl and rescuing her from a horrible situation. My husband and I are friends with two couples who have fostered several children and subsequently adopted them. In both cases, some of their children came to them because they were abused. Although we are not in a position to adopt right now, I have nothing but the highest admiration for adoptive families and birth parents who choose adoption. You and your wife have done a noble and loving thing. Thank you.

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  5. Dear Michelle,

    Well I can safely say our minds are similar in one respect at least – the inability to deal with more than one issue at once 🙂 .

    Very happy to take things one by one. In fact a previous debate I had fell apart because I was being asked things by four or five Christians at once, and they and later I got a bit fed up with the tangles resulting. So if it’s OK with you I’ll choose a topic from the ones we’ve aired and see where we go. It may take me a few days as our adopted daughter does keep us on our toes (understatement), brave and wonderful child though she is. It’s mainly late at night before I get time to think about topics wider beyond the anger / fallout displayed at tonight’s bedtime, and often I just don’t have the mental energy.

    Some basics about me; I’m British, brought up (even though my parents weren’t churchgoers) very much in the Church of England Anglican tradition – KJV, 1662 Prayer Book, late evening sunshine through ancient stained glass windows, all that. Reading first Camus’ ‘Caligula’ and then Dawkins’ ‘The Selfish Gene’ changed that forever, although the cultural side remains; I’m rarely happier than when singing, say, Spanish renaissance church music in one of the choirs I’m in. (If you’re genuinely open to how ‘my side’ thinks and why, I can’t recommend that Dawkins book highly enough.)

    I’ll leave it there for now, but many thanks – truly – for your reply, which I’ll give careful thought to.

    Andrew

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    1. Hey- something else we have in common! I’m a choir gal too, from childhood. In fact, I spent my first year of college as a vocal performance major. I love singing in choir at church (my husband is a minister of music), but I dearly miss singing in a more formal choir such as a university choir.

      To be honest, it does not surprise me that you chose atheism over Church of England, if my impression of the Church of England is accurate, which it may not be. I freely admit I have absolutely no personal experience with the contemporary CoE, and the only literary experience I have with it is through the writings of George Whitefield and other historians, many writing from the perspective of why the Separatists left England to come to America. However, it is my impression (and please do correct me if I’m wrong – which I probably am) that CoE has been something of a cold, dead shell of a Christian church for many years, and has degenerated into a legalistic set of do’s and don’t’s. I wouldn’t want any part of that, so it doesn’t surprise me that anyone else would feel the same way.

      I have never read any of Dawkins’ books, but I have watched him in a number of debates and interviews, so I have something of a grasp of what he believes and where he’s coming from. I doubt I will get to any of his books in this lifetime (and probably not in the next, lol). I have so little time to read (which kills me, as I love to read), and I have a bunch of books in my “to read” pile as well as over 150 books on my Kindle waiting for me. Plus, I’m supposed to be writing my next book as well as all my other responsibilities, so I’m pretty much buried. I need about a 10 year vacation :0)

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  6. Hi Michelle, just a (continued) holding reply for now if I may … Christmas – or rather, the festival where we used to celebrate the sun once again climbing in the skies after the shortest day in these benighted northern climes! – has rather got in the way of the proper response you deserve. Please bear with me a while longer. (Don’t worry, I’m no pagan; I’m as atheistic towards Woden or Thor – or Zeus or Baal – as I imagine you are; I just go one God further than you!)

    There’s something in the warmth and benignity and non-judgmentalness (you know what I mean ..!) of the traditional CofE which remains deeply attractive to me. I’m afraid the rot set in in about 1980 when they abandoned the remaining beautiful liturgy bequeathed us by Cranmer and switched to cold, ‘accessible’ modern language. I know why they did it; but it took away much of what distinguished everyday life from what at the time I still believed, and probably hastened my exit!

    Anyway, I digress again. More soon (and more on topic)!

    Best wishes meanwhile,

    Andrew

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    1. No worries. I’m extremely busy this month as well. Please don’t feel any pressure to respond within any particular time frame. (And don’t worry, you can call it “Christmas.” I promise I won’t tell any of my “orthodox” atheist friends, lol. Your secret is safe with me! :0)

      In my imagination, no matter how much it has modernized, CoE at least still has beautiful music at Christmas time, yes? I hope so.

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    1. Andrew-

      I got a comment from an “Andrew” on my recent post titled “Keep on Keeping Up.” Was that you? (I couldn’t tell because the ISP it gave for that Andrew was different from your regular ISP.) Anyway, just wanted to say- glad to see you again, or, if that wasn’t you, been thinking about you and hope you’re doing well :0)

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