My Responses to Pastor David Nicholes

Out of the blue, this gentleman, Pastor David Nicholes of Community Baptist Church in Suffolk, VA, contacted me via email, attempting to share his faith to get me back into the fold. To be fair, I like the guy - even though he called me blind and egregiously cynical. I think he has a good head on his shoulders, treats his family and others well, but just doesn't follow his ideas to their final conclusions.

Here are the links to our discussion (so far):

A Pastor Writes - I Respond

A Bible Lesson for the Pastor: Bill Gothard Was Blessed by God

Pastor David Responds: Part 1 - I Think I Like This Guy

Pastor David Responds: Part 2 - My Conversion is Just as Awesome

Pastor David Responds: Part 3 - Where He Sticks His Foot in His Mouth

Pastor David Responds: Part 4 - Preening the Feathers

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

This is the final part of this four part series. Pastor David begins to laud his own goodness to prove his superior faith:

And yet I am as sure that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Savior of all who will receive Him, as I am sure that the sun is hot. 

God has given me a wondeful marriage--29 years with one dear wife.  We have no skeletons in the closet and no ministry horror stories with reference to our home. I have five children.  We are a diverse yet unified bunch, all on good terms with each other and our neighbors--Christian and non-Christian.  The answered prayers we have experienced are stunning.  The provision, the guidance, the inner strength, and yes the chastening of the LORD too--are so real. 

I will do somewhat as you said.  I will continue my ministry.  You are another reason why I will continue my ministry--your terrible past encounters, your present egregious cynicism--compel me afresh to continue my appointed ministry of "the glorious gospel of Christ."

"And yet I am as sure that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Savior of all who will receive Him, as I am sure that the sun is hot."

David, you say it is so, so it must be so. That's as fair as a point I can give you with that one. As far as I'm concerned, I am pretty damn sure that Prince Humperdink is still running the small country of Gildor and the Dread Pirate Roberts is floating the high seas. Nah...that stab wound in his belly was but a minor flesh wound and shouldn't affect his abilities to thwart the armies of Floren at all.

Also, two things. First, the sun isn't hot depending on where you are with respect to it. Distance or angle can render it pretty damn cold. Secondly, the sun being hot can be tested empirically. Your religious mumbo jumbo about Jesus Christ being some sort of gallant knight on a white steed for all who accept the fairy tale cannot be tested empirically. Is it possible that he isn't as you say he is? Why yes! It is!

After all, young squire, you're an atheist, just like me. i just go one god further.

David, I'm genuinely happy (again) for you. I love that your family is awesome. I love that your marriage has lasted as long as it has. I love that, should your testimony be true, you are a good example for humanity on how people should live, according to you. I wish that all humans, religious or otherwise, would be like you.

But that's not the issue here. If you beat your wife every day, burned your kids with cigarettes, despised your neighbors, even murdering one of them and getting away with it, lied to your parishioners every time you got up in the pulpit. and did any other manner of evil - yet confessed your sin on your deathbed, saving your soul in the process - though you laid waste to hundreds of lives while you lived, and hurt those you should love the most, your family, you would be granted a place in heaven, just like those who lived the perfect life, and "accepted Christ" during it.

That one was easy. What about this David? A man who has been married for 29 years, has no skeletons in his closet and no ministry horror stories with reference to his home, has five children, is on good terms with all people he touches--Christian and non-Christian, living the perfect life - yet never believed in Jesus, that man, David, will go to hell, according to your "glorious gospel of Christ".

Now put those two scenarios together. Does that seem so "glorious" now? Yeah. I didn't think so either. I'll stick to the second scenario, knowing there is no hell, no god, no deified Jesus, no heaven, and live my life the way I see fit, doing what I believe to be right (just like you, though you attach a trivial religious paradigm to it).

Now about cynicism. My writing may contain a fair amount of what you consider to be cynicism. But it's really just looking at the world with a realistic and pragmatic point of view, without assigning ideological answers to that which I don't understand or need to learn. So you can accuse me of ignoring your gospel because I was affected my morons and idiots in my formative years, but that's really just for you  to dismiss my reasonable words so you can walk off into the sunset, having "presented the gospel," believing that "God's word will never return void."

And finally, thanks for calling me blind, using the following Bible quote:

Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not; But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to everymen's conscience in the sight of God.  But if our gospel be hid, it is hid from them that are lost: In whom the god of this world has blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.  2 Corinthians 4:1-4

That was an easy one for the Apostle Paul to say back in those days. There wasn't Google to search whether his story was bullshit. So he could pull a "because I said so" on anyone and everyone. It won't work these days. Not on the educated, anyway. Not to mention, this flies in the face of who your god says he is, a loving god who wills that none perish - and yet he willingly and purposefully blinds the minds of people so they can't figure out the riddle - which is stupid anyway?

You can keep your god David.

And, if you ever get up here to Minnesota, let's go out for a beer together. I'd love to chat.

Pastor David Responds: Part 3 - Where He Sticks His Foot in His Mouth

Part 1
Part 2

Let's get right into it for Part 3. Pastor David Nicholes writes:

I began attending a non-denominatoional (sic) Bible study group that met frequently during the week.  Before long I began to see some of what you seem to have seen also.  I learned that there were very many different points of view about major and minor issues.  Happily I made acquaintence (sic) by the grace of God with many spiritually mature people who guided me to greener pastures and steered me away from the poisened (sic) spiritual wells that are so ubiquitous.  This is precisely what Jesus said would be the case: Matthew 13:1-58.  

I remember early in my Christian experience (1979) hearing a prominent Bible teacher named, Frank Sells, give a mesage (sic) entitled MIXING THINGS WHICH ESSENTIALLY DIFFER.  In it he blasted the evil ministry of Bill Gothard.  I never heard of Bill Gothard and had no idea why Frank Sells was so worked up about this man.  Then I began to meet Gothard disciples.  Then I understood why Frank Sells was so worked up.  I learned about Hyles a few years later.  I also learned more about the rich grace of God. I learned that the world is a terrible spiritual battlefield--not primarily a political battlefield.  

I sympathize with you my friend.  The world, including many, many children (note the last awfully poignant word in the book of Ezra) is rife with horrors, child abuse and rape as you mentioned. I, like you, am astonished at the proflic (sic) religious madness that is generated in the name of God.  There are enigmas.  We do in many cases "see through a glass darkly."  I do not propose a neat tidy moral answer for much that takes: "Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known (Psalm 77:19)."

David, you're falling into the same trap as the Gothardites. You just can't see it, because you are convinced that your belief system is "spiritually mature" and has "greener pastures." But, oddly enough, that position is EXACTLY the same reasoning that Bill Gothard and all his followers use in their dogma. You can't get away from that when you are dogmatic in your beliefs, believing in an inerrant and infallible book, written by men. 

As expected, the canon is full of contradictions (even in the four gospels, read side by side), outright lies (the prophesies referenced by the Book of Matthew, God's pretense of "love" for humanity), and vindictive set-ups by the very god you worship (placing the tree in the garden, then sending a talking serpent to trick his people, testing Job by killing everything in sight, etc.). You can't get away from a myriad of interpretations when mere men (no women) wrote these pages independently over thousands of years. To pretend that the Bible is a singular organism, inspired by God, is to stick your head in the sand, and call everyone who doesn't see it your way "foolish and blind" - which you did, further in your letter, as did the Apostle Paul! 

Look at you! You're as spiritual as Paul.

Your argument is worthless. Bill Gothard is as right as you are. He gets his religion from the same book. He just interprets it differently. You may disagree, but it's no different than a Hamlet club disagreeing on the true meaning of falling on a sword when you could have lived another day. It's still religion. Meaningless drivel, derived from an ancient book, cobbled together by councils of men (no women), by majority vote! Notice that? Even the councils of men disagreed on the canon and what should and shouldn't be included. Their votes were never unanimous.

Shouldn't those men have been inspired by God? After all, they were putting together the canon, the inspired word of God. If one man voted against the book of Ezra and voted for the book of Ezekiel, while another man voted the opposite in both cases, which man was the actual inspired gentleman? And if only one of them was, why then do we have both Ezra and Ezekiel included in the Bible? They couldn't BOTH have been inspired, could they have?

Anyway...I'll leave that to smarter men than me.

Let's talk about the last chapter of Ezra.  I have no idea what you mean by "note the last awfully poignant word in the book of Ezra." The last word is "wives." But let's back up a bit and speak of the whole chapter in light of your statement, "I, like you, am astonished at the proflic (sic) religious madness that is generated in the name of God."

That whole chapter was about a stupid little rule that God set up for his nation of Israel - that his men could not marry foreign women. Women who were not Jews. But, for the sake of argument, let's assume that God had a really great reason for not allowing the gene pool to be expanded. 

Now, in that chapter of Ezra, God was messing up the peeps of Israel. And they decided that their foreign wives and kids from those wives were the culprit. So what was their solution? 

Kick them out of camp. Yep! The women AND the children. Boom! Gone. No help. No assistance. Just dump them off outside the walls, and then they would be saved from the wrath of God.

And you think we have religious madness today? THAT, my friend is the reason why your god is fucked up. He sticks to rules that make absolutely NO sense, and innocent women and children are left to wander the desert, so God's elect can live another day, saved from his wrath. And you say I'm supposed to accept the fact that religious abusers and rapists are enigmas? Hell no! Your own holy book DEFINES that abuse.

Frankly, being religious does not make you good. Being religious does not make you prone to doing evil things. Being non-religious also does not make you inherently good. Nor does it make you evil. Religion has nothing whatsoever to do with morality at all. Morality of individual human beings, sometimes parroting the collective, is present despite the presence or absence of religion.

Rape, my friend, is a human problem. We created it. We can eradicate it. Abuse as well. But not in your worldview. You look at the world and, speaking religiously, say it is crumbling and headed for destruction. To you, that is inevitable. You cannot see the good, because your religion dictates that we must be brought to our end, completely reprobate from all good, so that your god can send his son back to you. Your outlook on life is hopeless.

I, my friend, have hope. No matter how baseless you deem my hope is, I don't care. I have it. And that, David, is what matters. Not some pie in the sky Bible verse that has no meaning.

Part 4 (Final Part) - Preening the Feathers

Pastor David Responds: Part 2 - My Conversion is Just as Awesome

I began answering Pastor David Nicholes latest letter to me here. Now, I'll jump right in to his next paragraph.

Alas, the providence of God--my brother and I went to a huge beer blast in a college town (Athens, Ohio).  There, of all places, I met a friend with whom I played lots of baseball while we were growing up in Cleveland Ohio.  We were both good pitchers and had much mutual respect for each other with reference to baseball.  I was in a sports bar in Athens Ohio and in he came, not expecting to see me, but when he saw me he commenced at once to tell me of his new found faith.  He apparently had just become a believer and was excited to tell me about it.  I was quite surprised and a kind of spiritual conviction seized on me.  I didn't understand what he was trying to say except for the fact that God was real, that God apparently was personal, and that I should learn more about what knowing God means.  The next 18 months were full of remarkable experiences as I sought to make reforms of sorts--groping after God.  I won't try to recount these for you now.  Suffice it to say God wonderfully took the veil away so that I clearly understood that God saves people--even me--on the basis of pure grace, without any meritorious works whatsoever.  In May of 1977 something really wonderful happened, God brought me to life.  I could feel it, my desires changed, I changed.

David, let me tell you a story. Usually, at this point, an ex-Christian will tell you how awesome a Christian they were. Not in a self-aggrandizing manner, but simply to combat your definition of a True Christian. I'm not interested in that approach. The merits of my Christianity can stand on their own and I don't really care if my brand didn't or doesn't fit your "absolute truth". Instead, I'm going to tell you about my conversion - or de-conversion, if you will.

In the winter of 2010, my son died three times in the hospital. He stopped breathing from whooping cough. He hadn't been vaccinated because we didn't believe in vaccinations at the time. Neither did anyone at the church we were attending - my childhood church. The "world" was not to be trusted and vaccinations were an integral part of that "world". 

I watched my son waste away, throwing up all food and drink for weeks. He coughed throughout the night, and, as I mentioned before, was hospitalized several times, even stopping breathing. I watched in horror, hoping beyond all hope, that years later, I would remember this as a terrible distant memory. At that time, I was thinking about the current events as if it was par for the course, my faith was being tested, and I would be made stronger for it.

But then something clicked in my head.

There were millions, nay, BILLIONS of people who didn't get whooping cough. Even the families at my church who had a few of their kids inoculated with the DTAP shot when they stepped on a rusty nail didn't get whooping cough when it swept through the church. And here I was, watching my son die, right before my very eyes, because of fear.

Fear of what!? Fear of the unknown? I don't know a lot of things. But that shouldn't make me run from them. What I needed was education about these "worldly" things, in order to see WHY the rest of humanity didn't suffer from whooping cough, and yet was not inherently evil.

So I studied vaccines. And I found that I had been lied to. And lied to - a lot. So I kept going. I didn't only study vaccines, I studied everything.  I learned about homosexuals. I learned about abortion. I learned that there were thousands of viewpoints for every single issue known to man. And yet I had been taught all my life, that life was black and white.

I looked at God. I saw a paradox. A paradox of good and evil. The good was irreconcilable from the bad. And I decided that it was acceptable - for a while. Then I dropped that as quickly as I grasped it. I kept going. I noticed many flaws in God's character. I began to look at the Bible through the eyes of the people that were killed or affected by God's chosen nation, Israel. And I saw pain. I saw hurt. I saw death, undeserved. I saw women with their bellies split open if they were pregnant. I saw children, stabbed through the heart by a sword, crudely crafted by a nomadic people. I saw shock on the faces of those that were being attacked by an army and killed for just living. I saw a woman carrying water to a well, kidnapped, and made to live in an upper room, ashes on her head, dressed in a gunny sack. Then, after 30 days, she was raped for the rest of her life by her captor, who prayed his thanks to his god for providing him a hole to stick his penis into.

I saw all these things. Previously, I had only seen a people, Israel, blessed by God, wholly in the right to kill all those in their way. And I read it just like I was supposed to read it - a description of a holy and just god. I read it just like you David. 

But I couldn't anymore. People are people. One army is not blessed above a civil society, just because they have an angrier god, or whatever petty reason the attackers have to kill the victims.

So I left that religion. I moved into freedom. I was free. I no longer had to go to church. I no longer had to spiritually lead my family. I no longer had to tell my kids stupid stories that made no sense. Life finally had real meaning. I was never happier. NEVER happier.

Part 3 - Where He Sticks His Foot in His Mouth

Pastor David Responds: Part 1 - I Think I Like This Guy

If you've been following along, I've been having a small email exchange with a gentleman, Pastor David Nicholes, about his sadness for me leaving his faith. I say his faith because all of Christianity is different. Even the orthodoxy that everyone says they have consensus on. They fool themselves into believing that they have the right answers. There are as many interpretations of Christianity as there are people who believe in it.

Pastor David wrote to me, I responded, then I followed up with a Bible lesson for him after noticing a theological flaw in his first correspondence. Now, he has written again. I will be quoting his latest email below, then responding to it, bit by bit.

Hello I. C., 

God has so marvelously transformed my life through the gospel which brought me into living union with the Lord Jesus Christ.

I'm happy for you David. I really am. Whatever makes you happy, as long as you don't hurt yourself or others, I genuinely don't care what you believe. Go ahead and believe that Zeus throws lightning bolts and Jupiter runs around with naked women, causing you to love your wife. Heck, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is all the rage these days. Even better than your god, he is actually on YouTube!

But seriously, I have no idea what you mean by "living union." I know all the Christian jargon. I was bred on it. I knew it better than 99% of Christians. I lived it, buddy. But, living union? Is this just a filler phrase to denote the fact that Christ is alive and has made you spiritually alive?

If so, then good! If you want to think you have a spirit, go right ahead. I don't have any such notions, so I don't worry about loving a dead guy. I'm kind of into women myself, really.

I was raised in a middle class heathan (sic) home.  I never talked with a Christian even once that I can recall until I was 18 years old.  I really didn't even know there were people that took the Bible seriously.  When I was 18 I enlisted in the Navy on the delayed entry program.  I joined to find a meaningful change in as much as my home life was not going well, my friends were living increasingly pointless lives, I was tired of mowing lawns, working in a restaraunt (sic), and stealing things to get by materially. 

I actually feel sad for you - a bit, being that you didn't know any Christians until you were 18. That's kind of a long stretch to not be well-rounded, immersed, or at least tangentially affected by other schools of thought. No WONDER you converted! Christianity must have felt fresh to you. I know what you mean. I've had those "feelings."

Also, don't kid yourself. Even those who take the Bible seriously, don't really take the Bible seriously. They explain away all the horrible parts or make excuses for their god, saying his sovereignty gives him the right to be a dick, do anything he wants, and then outright lie to those he says he wants to "save."

My friends know that my favorite Bible story is the one about Pharaoh and Moses. I know, as an Independent Fundamental Baptist Pastor, you believe in free will - unless of course, you have been co-opted by the John Piper, Reformed Theology predestination crowd. (Of course, they don't really believe in predestination if you press them on it. There would be no point in missions if they did and they know it would make them look like elitists. It gets worse as you work yourself through the theology. Much worse than the more laughable notion of free will in a world run by a god that encompasses every omni characteristic there is.)

Anyway, back to the Pharaoh story. I mention it because you take the Bible seriously and I want to teach you about your god.

Several times, Pharaoh told Moses and the Israelites to leave. Free will, right? A victory for God! He sent his dumbest servant, Moses, to go and plead his case (because, for some reason, an all powerful god can't just knock over a few soldiers and let his blokes run through the city walls, escaping to freedom), and Moses was successful!

But God was like, "Nuh uh! No! I'mma gonna do some killin'!!"  So what did he do? He "hardened Pharaoh's heart" and forced Pharaoh to poke Moses in the eye. Why? Why did God do this? Why in the hell did he have to harden Pharaoh's heart so that he could get to the final plague where he kills all the baby boys?

And you thought your god was pro-life. *cluck *cluck...

We could also talk about the fact that your god specifically says that he doesn't want anyone to "perish". In this case, as you know, perish means that you get to go to hell forever, just for not noticing a petty, jealous, childish, and selfish god. No, you say? God isn't those things? Oh yes he is! But it's okay, right? God CAN be those things - because he's God, and that makes naughty things holy things.

Back to the perishing thing... God doesn't want anyone to perish, is all powerful, all knowing, with knowledge of  the past, present, and future. And this isn't a "choose your own adventure" futuristic knowledge. No. Look at his prophesies. Every one of them are specific, to the point, and un-equivocating.

And yet he created hell. WHAT!? He created hell? But I thought he didn't want anyone to perish!? You know, David, if I was your god, I would have an easy solution - no hell. Simple. Everyone gets to not perish.

Oh, there's more. I could go all day. But you get the point. The Bible is so chock full of crap that you have to swallow to pretend that God is a loving god, when he's simply a selfish jerk, less amiable than even your most tantrum-throwing toddler. At least your toddler just throws a shoe. Your god? He murders entire populations - simply because they squatted on their own land - which just happened to be his.

Finally, I haven't been a Christian for about two and a half years. Since then, I haven't stolen a thing. I stole more crap AS a Christian than I ever have or will as an atheist. And my life is not pointless. It is full of meaning. When I was a Christian, all the rules and regulations, wrapped up in the bullshit idea of grace and mercy, kept me so tied down to a system of thought, I never cared to get to know people who believed differently than me. The idiot Apostle Paul told me not to. He said to be separate. And I was.

I am happy.

Read Part 2 - My Conversion is Just As Awesome