Dear Mr. Wolf,

    This is in response to your letter to the editor comparing a freethinker's view of life to that of a Christian (letter #5 in Captured Thoughts).  You are obviously a Christian and though your depiction of a freethinker was true as far as it went, you did not tell the whole story of why we think as we do.  The purpose of this letter is to enlighten you as to the complete reasoning of  a natural materialist such as myself.  Not being a freethinker yourself, you shouldn't get the last word in defining a freethinker.  So this letter also fulfills the purpose of presenting a fuller understanding of a real intellectual's mind.

    If it is exciting to my flesh and the supernaturalists say that it is damaging to my soul and you Christians say that it is repulsive to your spirits, then "I LOVE IT!"  I exist to satisfy my fleshly body and entertain that part of my flesh which I call the mind.  Every conversation which I engage in or participate in must pertain to the lust of the flesh or stimulate my mind with the details of life such as the accomplishments and creations of men as the creators.  The talk of so-called "spiritual things" such as Jesus Christ, the life and death of this man, the Christian life, etc. makes me nauseous.  It is as though some of the Christian's little demon enemies are influencing me to make me sick at my stomach whenever this goody-two-shoes talk is brought up around me.  I mean, this Jesus man was apparently a good man,...for all that's worth; but you Christians seem to worship him as "THE" God or something!

    I cannot imagine living my life without reaching for all the gusto and the pleasures of the flesh which I can legally obtain.  Hey, I don't bother anybody else with my self-centered desires, so what business is it to those who think they are better than me because they have Jesus or Jesus has them?  All Christians are hypocritical phonies anyway!
    Life is too short to be building a spiritual ark for a supposed coming flood of judgment in the last days.  "This world" is the "real thing" and I want all of it I can get...all the wealth, all the power, all the sex, all the popularity and fame, all the material possessions and all the entertainment I can grab.  As far as the Christians' dream of being with Jesus,...they can have him!  As for me, I'll take all the rest of what they don't want.  It just makes more for the rest of us in the world.

    I just wish you and the rest would keep your "you can be saved too!" talk to yourselves and quit wasting my precious time trying to make me feel like a creature in need of a creator, a servant in need of a Lord, and a lost person in need of a savior.  I can't, and don't even want to, overcome my fleshly desires and I just want to live fully in the flesh, so why should I sign on to the "spiritual life" and play the hypocrite?  Your religion has nothing to offer me!

    By the way, did you hear the one about the traveling salesman, the farmer, and the farmer's ... &*$%#&%%*+#* (censored).  O.K., so a dirty joke excites my flesh, tickles my mind damages my soul (according to the supernaturalists), and is repulsive to the Christian's spirit.  If you can't stand the heat, then get out of the kitchen...because I plan to stay in the kitchen until my life is over!  My motto is, "EAT, DRINK AND BE MERRY...OR GAY," depending on your own personal preference.

    Am I an atheist or an agnostic?  I leave that up to you to label me as you wish Mr. Wolf.  In fact, you can call me anything you want as long as you call me for supper...Ha!  Ha!  Ha!
 
 

Dear Mr. Anonymous Materialist,

    Now that I know the fullness of your philosophy, I ask that you give me a fair hearing concerning my faith.  After reading your anonymous letter and reflecting upon all the points you made, a part of me agrees 100% with all of your viewpoints.  Note that I did not say, "ALL of me agrees 100% with PART of your viewpoints."  These are two significantly different statements.

    When you talked about "existing to satisfy your fleshly body and entertain that part of your flesh which you call the mind," you were identifying the two parts that you believe make up the "I" of each person.  You evidently believe that if parts of your fleshly body were lost or removed, then the vehicle that you are in would be altered, but a part of you would not be touched.  You presently wish to refer to this other part as "mind" only, whereas I refer to the whole of it as "soul" (I see soul as including mind.)  But with either label, you believe that when the fleshly body dies, then the other part that is you (mind or soul) also dies.

    The part of me which agrees 100% with all of your viewpoints is my flesh nature.  I, or what I would call my soul, was born with a flesh nature; which as a Christian, I believe was corrupted from Adam's sin of disobedience with God at the beginning and fall of the human race.  This sin nature naturally seeks self-gratification and total independence from God.  This flesh nature wants to rule the soul (the other part of each of us which we both recognize but in wholeness by different names.)  One of us believes the mind will die with the flesh part, while the other believes the mind and soul is now and always will be in existence.  One of us believes in a "philosophy of death" while the other believes in a "faith in life" concerning this nonflesh part of ourselves which I call the soul.

    What you might be thinking now is, "If he read my letter and his body or flesh agrees totally with what I said, then why doesn't his mind or soul also agree?"  The answer to that question is that I am no longer a servant or slave to my flesh.  A higher nature has been introduced to my being.  At one point in my life (the exact day I cannot pinpoint) I looked all around me at the world and of my own free will believed that a designer, a watchmaker, or a creator had to create everything, put everything in motion, and continually keep everthing in motion.  At that time I had accepted God's "general revelation" concerning himself.

    Everyone, including the pygmies in darkest Africa, are given the opportunity to accept or reject this general revelation, or revealed information from God.  When any soul, wherever he is on Earth, accepts the existence of God and chooses to have more information or desires to have a relationship...God in grace offers that soul, directly through the Bible in their language or indirectly through a Christian in their language, "special revelation" concerning a savior who has made provision for that soul to live eternally with God.  God is no respecter of persons, therefore he that answers his call to salvation is elected.  However, without God's special revelation, through the ministry of God the Holy Spirit, a soul would not know of this provision, because as you commented in jest in your letter to me...there are unseen principalities and powers in control in this world..."but if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost:  in whom the God of this world hath 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" (IICorinthians 4:3 & 4).  The first God referred to in this passage is of course the one whose existence the materialists presently deny...but the Satanists know about him...the prince of darkness himself is the God of this present age.

    If a soul rejects God's offer concerning salvation after accepting "general revelation" of his existence, then that person is simply a supernaturalist such as a devotee to the many world religions or cults, and that soul attempts, to no avail, to make his own way of salvation through some system of works produced by the flesh and the soul.  But the person who simply places his faith in Jesus Christ (God the Son) who is God the Father's provison for salvation, will be made spiritually alive.  A new spirit  nature will be born in this person, which is indwelled by God the Holy Spirit.  Things which were once desired by this person when he was a slave to the flesh or sin nature will now be repulsive to the new nature which now wants to rule in the person's life to reflect the person of Jesus Christ in the world and to the world.  But note, the remaining sin nature will still be attracted to these fleshly temptations.

    If you ask, "Wouldn't a mind or soul, with two different and opposing natures trying to rule it, be a virtual battleground?"  The answer to that question was supplied by the Apostle Paul himself in the Book of Romans:  Chapters 7 & 8 of the Bible.  The answer is most definitely, "Yes!"  And any honest Christian will second the motion.  But the Christian has been promised in God's word that at the point of physical death, the flesh will in fact die.  This death of the flesh belief is actually shared in common with the materialist.  But whereas the materialists believe that the mind will also die leaving the "I " nowhere to exist but "nowhere"; the Christian again believes the promises of God's word that the soul and spirit of the believer will be in heaven with "the great intellectual mind" who has put the whole universe together.

    At the point of the death of an unbeliever - the flesh dies, the spirit is dead because it was never regenerated during physical life and much to the soul's surprise,...it will still exist.  The soul's free choice during physical life was rejection of God's provision of salvaton in the gift of his son while totally clinging to a flesh nature which even Christians saw death written all over, and holding tightly onto the worldly philosophy that "independence from God would bring the most happiness."  This Christ-rejecting soul will have, by choice, made it's own bed and must eternally sleep in it, in a place prepared WITHOUT GOD.

    You said in your letter that "you wanted all you could get of the world; all the wealth, power, sex, fame, possessions, and entertainment."  However, God says in Matthew 16:26, "For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"  Your flesh is playing a great hoax on you and the sincere Christian is merely concerned and has love for your soul and has the same opinion of your flesh as he has of his own flesh.  The flesh must be the servant and not the master.

    You also said in your letter that, "I can't, and don't even want to, overcome my fleshly desires and I just want to live fully in the flesh, so why should I sign on to the "spiritual life" and play the hypocrite?"  By this satement, you show that you have had exposure to some false religious teachings, some cult(s) of another Jesus (not the Biblical one), or some "religious legalistic" Christians who stress manner of living through human efforts instead of stress the birth of the spirit.

    If it's all for real as I've described in this letter (and I'm telling you that it is), you may think that you could never "act like a Christian in order to be saved," but God's order is "accept salvation as a free gift and leave the manner of your life to him."  God works from the inside (spirit)-outward (through soul and body).  Without Christ, a soul can only put on an act from the outside (flesh)-in towards the soul.  This outside-to-inside effort imitates a Christian life, but leaves the unbelieving soul in the position of eternal separation from God...a sort of "not having your cake and not eating it either."

    A caring and knowledgeable Christian will continue to tell you that "you can be saved too," but he will not try to force it down your throat.  God gives all people freedom to accept or reject his provision for life and so should a gracious Christian always present the gospel of Christ (good news of Christ) in a volitional manner without force, recognizing another soul's free will.

    It makes no differenc whether one is labeled an atheist or an agnostic...only whether one remains spiritually dead or becomes spiritually alive, because the days of the flesh are numbered.  Christ can take a soul in a dying flesh and give it eternal life...not even his foe can do that.  Jesus said in John 14:6, "I am the way, the truth, and the life:  no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."

    "He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured.  He unhesitatingly behaved as if he was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offences.  This makes sense only if he really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin.  In the mouth of any speaker who is not God, these words would imply what I can only regard as silliness and conceit unrivalled by any other character in history.

    Yet, (and this is the strange, significant thing) even his enemies, when they read the gospels, do not usually get the impression of silliness and conceit.  Still less do unprejudiced readers.  Christ says that he is "humble and meek" and we believe him; not noticing that, if he were merely a man, humility and meekness are the very last characteristics we could attribute to some of his sayings.

    I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about him:  "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God."  That is the one thing we must not say.  A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.  He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the devil of hell.  You must make your choice.  Either this man was, and is, the Son of God:  or else a madman or something worse.

    You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God.

    But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher.  He has not left that open to us.  He did not intend to."  ---quote from C. S. Lewis' book "Mere Christianity"