The Best Christian I Ever Knew Was An Atheist....

This is the (partial) story of a wonderful man whom I believe to be an exemplar of the values that we all espouse as Christians … and yet he was a self-professed atheist.  I hope that something in what I share helps each of you in life and on your own faith journey.

Crawford Maxwell was a Scotsman, born, I believe in or around Edinburgh sometime in the early- to mid-1880s.  He led an interesting, diverse life and came into my life as "the neighbor next door" during my formative years who actually became a member of our extended family.  This is nice, of course, but not the full story or even the point of mentioning him.

What makes Mr. Maxwell so noteworthy, I believe, is the paradox that he represented for me then - and continues to represent even now - because Crawford Maxwell was the most decent, kind, ethical, supportive and loving man that I have ever known outside of my family and, one might say, an exemplar of Christian values in practice.  Except for one very big caveat:  Mr. Maxwell was a self-professed atheist (or so my beloved mother told me).

When I was growing up, Mr. Maxwell was the closest non-relative to my family and, in fact, was actually closer to us than some of our family members.  He was such a significant presence in my and our lives that, among other things, he:

• Came to a window overlooking our driveway and greeted my mother and me almost every morning as we left for school


• Was usually a guest at all family holiday gatherings at our home and was even invited to many of the ones at other relatives’ homes
• Would substitute for my mom if she were delayed at a meeting or under the weather and take me to and pick me up from school


• Was the very first customer of my grass-cutting business and paid my $3 fee for both the front and back lawns though he usually only had me do the former (to keep me away from his precious garden in the back yard, I suspect)


• Would often substitute for my father as my mother’s escort to arts or other more aesthetically-oriented events


• Cooked me many meals - I had Indian food for the first time in his home, a fantastic curry dish actually - where he also introduced me to foods that were exotic delicacies to me at the time (like beef tongue) and told me many stories of his life, including of his service as a very young man in the Second Boer War and of his time in India as an official of the British Empire.  So, as a young man, I explored the world vicariously through his life experiences.  (For example, while I’ve never been to India I still intend to go some day, and until then I’ll continue to treasure the indelibly vivid picture that Mr. Maxwell painted of it for me so many years ago.)


• Read avidly, a passion that he shared with my mother – with whom he would swap books and dish about the stories that they had read – and also influenced me to become the voracious reader that I am today

As you hopefully have an inkling by now, Crawford Maxwell was an incredibly interesting and special person.  Yet, this doesn’t begin to do the man justice.  For example, he lived in inner-city Detroit in the 1950s, 60s and 70s – a time of riots, white flight and social confusion (if not disintegration) – and was the last white person on what became an all-Black, mostly middle class block.  Yet, he never gave any evidence that this affected him.  He acted as if color were irrelevant, which, truth be told, it is and should be.  He didn’t fly with other whites because he saw his new neighbors as people, not Black.  And he was the best neighbor that any of us ever had, white or Black.

Simply put, he was also the most decent, kind, ethical, supportive and loving man that I have ever known outside of my family and, one might say, an exemplar of Christian values in practice.  In fact, he was the man I most admired other than my own namesake and maternal grandfather, Dr. Walter Ellsworth Johnson.  And he was an atheist (though I don't remember ever discussing the subject with him).

This was a huge problem for me because my rather diverse religious upbringing had taught me that no matter how good and wonderful a person he was, Mr. Maxwell could never get into heaven because he didn’t believe in our Christian God.  As I cobbled together my own unique spirituality from my Baptist upbringing, the Lutheran and Catholic theology to which I was exposed - and with which I was indoctrinated - in school and my participation in a Congregational youth group, I struggled with how to reconcile the concept that the most decent, “Christian” man that I knew was going to hell and some of the folks whom I knew from church - whose behavior outside of the sanctuary contrasted so completely with the beliefs that they supposedly professed inside of it - would be given undeserved entry into heaven for eternity.

As I turned this conundrum over in my head hundreds of times during my teenage years and early adulthood, eventually I decided that either God was not as good as we believed Him to be or that our theology must be wrong.  Accordingly, I continue to believe that the fault lies with our conception of God and His Grace, not with God Himself.*

It’s a potentially heretical view that I hold even today:  If there is a heaven, I expect to see Mr. Maxwell again, because the way he lived his life certainly qualifies him to be there (as, I hope, does the way that I am choosing to live my own).  I, for one, would rather spend all of eternity with good atheists like Crawford Maxwell than bad Christians of whom there are so many.  I would rather be in the presence of a person who was always giving and loving and kind than someone who is convinced that the Bible is an historical truth or that we Christians alone are in possession of the sole/true path to the Divine, etc.

As I’ve matured and developed into a self-described Christian heretic and spiritual eclectic, I trace a lot of what I have come to believe to my experience with Mr. Maxwell and his quiet, positive example of how a human being should conduct himself.  As far as I can tell, the only thing that he ever did wrong was to choose not to believe (which, I realize, is the biggest thing that one can get wrong from the viewpoint of most believers and churches).  Yet, he was such a good person that I named my youngest son after him, so that every day I am reminded of his incredible example that continues to furnish a model for me and my children – and for us all – to emulate.

So as you go forward this day, ask yourself if you will someday be remembered as fondly and with as much admiration as Crawford Maxwell.  If so, do you think that you deserve a place in heaven but that he doesn’t?  I think not.  And though I can’t pretend to know what God thinks, I sure do hope that She agrees with me….

*  I apologize for the use of the male pronoun to describe God, but that was how I was raised to see/understand Him/Her/It at the time.