INTERVIEW WITH DR. MONICA LARSON (PART 4)
Updated: Feb 15
By Warrior Richardson
Warrior Richardson: Originally I went to the University of Rochester first and then I hated it; so, I transferred to Howard University and I continued to be atheistic. That was a very Christian campus. The student president was a Christian--openly Christian, an avid Christian; so, I was atheistic on a very Christian campus. Not that everybody was Christian; bur far more were Christian than at the University of Rochester.
I graduated from there and got my degree in economics and became an economist at the Agency for International Development; and everybody knows the government is corrupt; but you don't know how corrupt it is unless you are working in the central economic policymaking office of the Agency for International Development; then you know what the United States government is doing in all the poorer countries of the world.
And it made me literally sick. Not just figuratively sick; but I'd come to work and I'd be sick one day and then I'd be sick another day and then it just got to the point where I said, "I'm going to be sick every single day" and i said "I'm not going be able to keep working this job" because it was immoral and it just violated my conscience and it paid well but I just couldn't...you know...there's a contradiction of an atheist with a conscience. There's a contradiction there; but I didn't see it.
And so I quit my job and eventually went back to Omaha Nebraska. (I was in Washington, DC.) What happened when i went back home--I'm leaving out a lot of details--I had gotten so good at making so many arguments against the Christian faith that it became clear to me what the implications of my own arguments were--the implications of my own arguments that so firmly demonstrated, allegedly, that there is no Go.
But the reality is that if there is no God there is no basis for morality; but yet i considered myself a very moral person; but upon what did I base that morality? From whence cometh right or wrong? What was my basis for determining what is right and wrong? What was my criteria? There was none. There was no consistent one; because I remember at times when I would be faced with a choice to take--a hard choice--between doing something right or wrong, that's when I really asked myself well should I do the right thing or shouldn't I do the right thing? But i was raised in a moral family; so, generally I did the right thing.
I'm going to back track to DC for a minute there because I remember the first time when I
began to seriously question atheism I was in a room full of my atheistic friends and I just sat up there and I was thinking and said out loud, "You know if there really is no God then there really is no basis for morality." And they said, "No no no no;" and that was the beginning of the end my atheism. I didn't realize that at the time but the inconsistency of atheism with my political activism, my fighting for what's right and "upon what did I base right or wrong?" and it became painfully and uncomfortably obvious to me that there was no basis. if there is no god then my notion of right and wrong is purely arbitrary. I just pull it out of the air; because when I was faced with really hard decisions I realized that I did not have a basis for deciding what is right or what is wrong, and that was very uncomfortable. And so, the discomfort intensified.
To be continued...
Dr. Monica Larson Purpose Statement:
To serve, love and touch the hurting through performing and writing to restore items lost through low self-worth, validation insecurity,
mistreatment by others and self-deprecation.
To build up through performing, writing and speaking to beauty. Teaching that although marred, they are masterpieces.
To be a witness for Christ through the entertainment industry.
To teach despite life's challenges, obstacles and setbacks, we can and we will finish the good race.
We are a work of art
We are all masterpieces from the painter's palette.
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In this blog I take a close look at a wide variety of topics using the Bible as my lens. When we look at the world through the lens of scripture we discover life-changing truth that transforms us. We discover our
identity, purpose and worth. We find answers to life's most pressing questions. “If you don't know where you're going any road will take you there.” But when we look at the world through the lens of scripture we find the "way, the truth and the life;" then we live life to the fullest.
The Scarlet Thread LLC is a Christian media production company that produces e-books, audio books, podcasts, explainer videos, animations and comic books in an effort to help skeptics overcome intellectual and emotional barriers to faith.
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