Atheism is my true Religion

I cannot believe in God, that is why I study theology. Ben Myers once wrote:

Theologians are people for whom the Christian faith is especially difficult, incomprehensible, infuriating. As a rule they are not especially talented or spiritually adept individuals. They are people whose minds have been hurt by God, and they are restlessly searching for – what? Healing perhaps, or catharsis? To expect so much from the study of theology would be futile or even dangerous. At any rate there is no lack of opportunities for theological catharsis: often our worship services seem calculated to remove the difficulty of believing, to make God easy and accessible, more a cure than a wasting sickness.

Perhaps then we should define theologians like this: They are people for whom even the Christian worship service does not provide adequate catharsis of the hurtfulness of God. 

That is why, as a general rule, you should try to show kindness to theologians. Not because they are necessarily exemplary personalities. Not because they necessarily know what they're talking about. Not because they are necessarily people of great faith. Instead, you should show them kindness because their faith is so weak and so vulnerable; because they are burdened by the difficulty of God; because they are driven to think about God the way some people are driven to drink. You should take care of your theologians the way you would care for the widow and the orphan. 

Jürgen Moltmann has somewhere remarked: "We are not theologians because we are particularly religious; we are theologians because in the face of this world we miss God."

 I cannot and will not take solace in platitudinal assertions that everything will be fine because God is somehow in control. When I hear such things I assume the speaker is either delusional, a liar, or a salesman. There is no evidence in the world that things are "getting better" and honestly, such arguments are offensive in their bourgeois arrogance and assurance in the truth-function of something as abstract as "data."

Reality is hard. Humans do horrific things to one another. Nature rises up and destroys us just as surely as we rely on it for giving us life. There is something utterly repulsive about the masses who cling to Romans 8:28 and Jeremiah 29:11 in the face of the Syrian Civil War and Guantamo Bay. Surely God could "work things out" less violently?

 The same religious folk who invoke the name of  the above described "god" in turn are willing to, in the name of that "god" kill, steal, and destroy - assuming of course that the Creator of all that is, must no longer care for the creature.

This is why the theologian and the prophet both dance with madness. After all, the Israelites were creating a new god at the same time that Yahweh himself was giving the Law to Moses. This is archetypal of all human activity. As God reveals Godself to us, we create a shinier new god of our own design.

To claim atheism as true religion is to internalize the "No" of Holy Saturday so deeply that we perpetually reject all ideas about God in order to be met by a stranger who teaches us to see the familiar as strange. The strangeness of the empty tomb leaves us terrified.

So, terrified, I study theology. Hoping that the familiar becomes strange. Hoping that a stranger appears to explain the scriptures. Hoping to see the face of God in a world that has only ever seen God's back. This may disqualify me from being an atheist, but I'll hold onto a healthy of dose of atheism over the comforting fleshpots of idolatry.