Yesterday, my 18 year old son told me that he doesn’t believe in god anymore. I raised him to be a good Christian but ever since he got one of those “atheist” girlfriends, he no longer has the time to go to Sunday church and eventually quit being christian all together. I know that he is old enough to make his own decisions, but I can’t help worry what will become of his life. I am extremely distressed because we had an arguement a couple of hours ago and he burned the family bible in front of my eyes <—that’s much more like a tantrum than it is atheism and called god a (I’ll be modest with he language here) “no good piece of **** that sits up there and laughs at other peoples misfortune”.<—That’s definitely not atheism I pray for him everyday and hope he believes again.
Being 18 might make us adult in a legal sense but not in an actual sense. Many of us weren’t very grown up at all at age 18, myself, my son, and maybe your son also.
Burning the Bible, especially when it doesn’t even belong to him in the first place is especially bad, but I would chalk it up to teenage drama. He wants to be an especially loud, offensive, angry atheist and there’s probably some teenage rebellion involved also. I would guess that before he went into this fit, he already knew that he had a place to stay at his girlfriends home. Atheists often like to draw lots of attention from Christians to their atheism, and the younger the person I would guess the more attention they want, especially from parents. Most atheist don’t have a very well founded faith, they aren’t very good at not believing in God. This may well be the case with your son too. It sounds like a lot of it might be based on looking good in the eyes of his girlfriend.
Calling God names and insulting Him is certainly not something an atheist would do since an atheist would believe there is no God to insult in the first place. Lots of so called atheists are very conflicted this way.
He’s being rebellious and hyper-dramatic. Many kids who are raised Christian only go along with it until they become independent of their parents and then go into churchless years. A girlfriend can be a very powerful thing in a young, hormone-driven guys life. Another girl could have led him into a different church. In the future another girl could lead him back to your church. Most of us don’t end up with the same girl we’re with at age 18 so the odds are, this relationship won’t last.
The less dark side: Most atheists outgrow their atheism and return to Church. When that happens, they often end up as the most admirable Christians in the congregation.
What will your sons options be if they breakup in a few months?
Keep praying…
The book was a suggestion but really you could use any book chapter or DVD from that explains reasons for God, and ask his opinion. Just make sure you have read it and understand the arguments.