Unbelievers should be encouraged  to know, therefore, that lack of belief in God, and religious piety are not prerequisites to being an effective truth teller. Truth is truth — no matter who speaks it.

It is a curious fact that people who are not religious and skeptical that God exists seem to be especially skilled at sorting truth from lies. This is especially true regarding Christian Nationalism, religious extremism and conspiracy theories which they easily identify as lies. It is also a curious fact that non-religious people often do a much better job of obeying God’s commands about loving and caring for one another.

Why non-religious people are able to discern truth from lies is not well-understood, but logical explanations could include, but are not limited to the following:

• • • They have not been trained as children to believe that the words of the literal bible are true.
    • As adults they have figured out that the words of the literal bible are not true.
    • They have observed the hypocrisy of Christians and Jews who say they believe one thing and then do another.
    • They have willfully chosen to reject and resist religious beliefs, doctrines and practices because they are unwilling to suspend logic, science and reason for the sake of belief in a god for whom there is no evidence that he exists.
    • They have willfully chosen to reject and resist religious beliefs, doctrines and practices that are based on illogical, unbelievable bible stores that they characterize as magic and myth.
    • They are not able to reconcile the disconnects between their understanding of God’s character — as they understand it — with the literal words of the bible and the teachings of religious leaders.
    • Having opted out of religion which demands suspension of logic, science and reason, they habitually use their hearts and minds to discern the difference between truth and lies rather than trust the teachings of religious leaders who trade in deceit, myths, lies and magic.

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While these are all reasonable explanations for why non-religious people might be especially skilled at sorting out truth from lies, we have the following scriptures that explain why unbelievers are qualified to be truth tellers:

With these scriptural explanations in mind, we understand why so many people who are not actively religious seem to have an acute ability to know the difference between truth and lies in politics, good and evil, justice and injustice, conspiracy theories and truth. This is a necessary skill when confronting Christian Nationalism.

In a country that identifies so strongly with religions that put their trust in the literal words of the bible, the ability of those who do not identify as Christians to discern lies from truth offers the best hope we have that Christian Nationalism can be overcome and democracy preserved. Opportunities for such hope grow as the numbers of religious dropouts continues unabated because, as people drop out of religion, their ability to discern truth from lies increases.

Room for hope that unbelievers can be constructively involved in confrontations with Christian Nationalism is found in the story of Balaam and the donkey through whom God spoke. When we understand the symbolism of this story we learn that lack of belief in God is not an obstacle to God working through people to share truth.

It is counterintuitive for Christians, atheists and agnostics to consider that lack of religious training, aversion to religious practices, and perhaps unbelief in God can be a useful asset when it comes to knowing truth and then sharing that truth in a constructive way. But this is exactly what we learn when we correctly interpret the symbolism of the story of Balaam.

More hope for success is found in the fact that, as the population of ex-christians grows, more and more people are dropping out of church. See this link for more about this phenomenon. Religious people see his trend as a bad thing for God. It is bad for churches and religious leaders, but, in fact, people dropping out of church is a good thing for God because he is calling them out of religion so they will stop listening to religious leaders and start listening to his spoken voice.

Since God is calling people out of religion, it is reasonable to expect that ex-christians have heard God’s voice somewhere in their transition out of religion. They did not hear his voice while religious because, while they were religious, they listened to the voices of religious leaders — not God. While they were religious, they were part of the problem but, now that they no longer practice religion, they, along with other religiously unaffiliated people, can be part of the solution as truthtellers.

It is also reasonable to expect that the minds and hearts of these ex-christians have been cleansed a little or a lot from the lies they were taught while they were religious. That is why they now possess that critical ability to discern the difference between truth and lies in politics, good and evil, justice and injustice, conspiracy theories and biblical truth. They, along with people whose minds have never been muddled with religious lies, will be front-line defenders of democracy in the war against Christian Nationalism.

Despite this trend of people dropping out of religion, the fact remains that religiously unaffiliated people are still in the minority in America according to The 2020 Census of American Religion. But that is not a problem for God as we learn in the story of Gideon who reduced his army from twenty-two thousand men down to three hundred.

What this means for religiously unaffiliated people is this: 

If you think that religious extremists misrepresent God (if indeed God exists) and his ways because they interpret the bible wrongly (i.e., literally), and, if you think that symbolic interpretations of the bible accurately represent God (if he exists) and his ways, and, if you actively share those correct, symbolic interpretations with religious extremists so that they might know the truth about how to interpret the bible, then, your actions are gateways for changes of hearts and minds. In other words, it is belief in how the bible should be interpreted (i.e. literally or symbolically) that matters to God. The overriding truth that God wants us to share, whether we believe in him or not, is that the truth about him and his ways exists in symbolic bible interpretations – not in literal interpretations, and especially not in interpretations that result in religion.