Atheist Bus Campaign

The Atheist Bus Campaign

According to a Jan. 6, 2009 article by Sarah Lyall in The New York Times, “Atheists Send a Message, on 800 British Buses,” the Atheist Bus Campaign has posted ads proclaiming: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

These atheists have every right to express their notion of “God” and their conclusions about how life would be after Her demise. I don’t feel compelled to defend every religious notion of God. In fact, I feel that many of these conceptions are dehumanizing and militate against the personal and political liberations which humanity needs. Very often, religion is indeed the opiate of the people, and for me it is an open question whether religion in world history is more often an obstacle to personal and structural transformation rather than a liberating force.

Some of my best friends and some of the most dedicated humanists and social-change agents are atheists or agnostics whose love of neighbor, practical service and political commitment put many Christians to shame. I consider them the holy atheists of Matthew 25 – those who fed Christ in the hungry and visited him in prison although they were not conscious of loving and serving him in their neighbor.

But the bus posters in Britain do not represent the position of these atheists. The ad seems to be based on the old image of God as the Great Disciplinarian who squelches the joy in human living, the Supreme Punisher who will make us suffer later for our pleasure now.

This is not the biblical God, the creator who saw “that all is good,” the God of Jesus who wanted his joy to be ours. The question is, “What is true joy and happiness?” Enjoy your life has an individualistic ring to it. If I “enjoy my life” at the expense of others, exploiting workers for my own accumulation of profit and possessions; if I “enjoy my life” by being sexually or ecologically irresponsible or by choosing to remain blissfully ignorant of the suffering around me or by profiting from investments in ethically questionable firms – then indeed the Christian God will challenge me, calling me to be true to my real self and responsible to my brothers and sisters and to Mother Earth, inviting me to live and work in compassion and solidarity with others rather than in the pursuit of my own selfish power and pleasure. Jesus claims that this is the Way to true fulfillment.

For the vast majority of humankind, banning the notion of God from their lives will not help them to “stop worrying” and “enjoy life.” They will continue to worry about the day’s food and water and medicine for themselves and their kids, or about the boss demanding that they work harder and longer, or about their man beating or leaving them. They cannot enjoy life under such circumstances.

For many of these victims of oppression, it is precisely God who gives them a sense of dignity and a drive for freedom, calling them to struggle against the pharaoh in their lives, strengthening them on the way, and nourishing their hope as they work with God in the creation of the Kingdom of Justice and Peace.

The bus ads would be of no consolation or liberation for them.