What is Practical Atheism and Am I Doing It?

I Believe in God With My Mouth and Live Like an Orphan With My Calendar

Last month I stood in my garden at 6:15 in the morning, staring down a tomato plant that had clearly decided it no longer wanted to be a tomato plant. Half the leaves were curling, the stem had that sad slouch, and I did what any reasonable person does in a moment of horticultural crisis. I did not pray. I opened YouTube.

I typed in "why are my tomato leaves curling" faster than I have ever typed anything in my life, watched a man named Gary from Ohio diagnose my plant in four minutes, and tried to fixed it exactly the way Gary told me to. But somewhere between the wilting leaves and Gary's very confident voice, it hit me. I hadn't thought about God once. Not because I don't believe in Him. I believe in Him plenty. I just didn't think I needed Him for this particular problem, because…well, Gary from Ohio had it covered.

That, my friends, is the whole sermon in a tomato plant. That is practical atheism, and if you have a pulse and a Google app, you may have probably practiced it this week too.

What Practical Atheism Actually Is

Practical atheism is not the same thing as regular atheism. A regular atheist stands up and says, "I don't believe God exists." A practical atheist stands up in church, sings the songs, says amen at the right moments, posts the verse graphic on Instagram, and then goes home and runs their marriage, their money, their parenting, and their Tuesday like God is on an extended vacation and left no forwarding address. We are not denying God with our mouths. We are denying Him with our calendars.

Paul saw this exact thing happening in his own day and he did not soften it one bit. Writing to Titus about false teachers, he said:

"They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work." (Titus 1:16)

That is a hard sentence to read at 6:15 in the morning next to a tomato plant. Notice Paul does not say these people deny God with their theology. Their theology is fine. Their creed is orthodox. Their statement of faith would pass any doctrinal review board in America. What gives them away is their works. What gives us away is not what we would say if you handed us a microphone on Sunday. It is what we actually do on Monday when nobody is checking.

Kristin, the Budget, and the God I Apparently Didn't Trust With It

Early in our marriage, Kristin and I hit a stretch where money was tight in the way that money is tight for basically every young couple who has ever existed. I remember lying awake doing math in my head, the bad kind of math where you keep subtracting the same bill twice because your brain is panicking and panic is not great at arithmetic. I was anxious, short with Kristin and generally acting like a man whose entire future depended on whether I personally could out think a stack of bills through sheer force of worry.

Here is the embarrassing part. I would have told you, without hesitation, that I trusted God completely. I had preached on it. I had probably quoted Philippians 4:19 to somebody that same month...you know, the one about God supplying all our needs according to His riches in glory.

But my behavior told a different story. My behavior said I believed God supplied needs for other people's budgets, just not mine, and that mine was somehow my job to manage alone through worry, and being passive aggression toward my wife. Oops.

Jesus addressed this specific flavor of practical atheism directly:

"Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink... Your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things." (Matthew 6:25, 32)

So, this word for anxious in this passage carries the idea of being pulled apart in different directions. Umm. Ouch?

But to be honest, that's exactly what it felt like and it is exactly what happens when you claim to believe in a Father who owns the cattle on a thousand hills but you manage your bank account like an orphan who has to figure it out alone. I was not an atheist on Sunday, however, I was a very committed one the rest of the week.

The Sneaky Kind of Godlessness

The Psalms give us the classic line on this. "The fool says in his heart, there is no God" (Psalm 14:1). We tend to picture the fool as some angry philosopher shaking his fist at heaven. But look closer at the verse. It does not say the fool announces there is no God. It says the fool says it in his heart, quietly, privately, functionally. This is not a debate stage. This is a decision-making process. This is the version of godlessness that never shows up on a survey about religious belief because it is not about belief at all. It is about behavior that has quietly stopped consulting God.

Think about where this shows up for you, because I promise it is somewhere.

• The parent who prays a lovely prayer over dinner and then makes every parenting decision based purely on what will keep the peace for the next ten minutes.

• The husband who believes God designed marriage and then treats his wife's feelings like an inconvenient software update he will get to eventually.

• The guy, and I am regrettably raising my own hand here, who will spend forty-five minutes reading reviews before buying a lawnmower and forty-five seconds praying about a decision that will actually reshape his family.

• The Christian who says "God is in control" whenever something goes wrong for somebody else, and then white-knuckles the steering wheel of their own life like the whole operation collapses if they blink.

I will confess I have stood at a fence on a Saturday morning more locked in, more emotionally invested, and more vocal than I have been in prayer some entire weeks. There is nothing wrong with a fence, or a scoreboard, or loving watching your kid compete. But it is worth noticing what gets our full attention without a fight, and what we have to force ourselves to show up for.

That gap tells you something true about what you actually believe is worth your Saturday. James put it even more bluntly than any of us would like.

"You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe, and shudder" (James 2:19).

That verse should stop us cold. Correct belief, held tightly, changes nothing on its own. Even the demons have their theology in order. What separates real faith from practical atheism is not what fills out your doctrinal statement, it's seen in how you live out your week.

The Calendar Does Not Lie

I am not writing this from some finished, victorious place where I have this fully solved and I am now dispensing wisdom down to you from the mountaintop. I am writing this as a guy who talked to Gary from Ohio before he talked to God about a tomato plant, and who has a long personal history of trusting God's Word in theory and my own grip strength in practice. This is a confession as much as it is a challenge. (By the way, the tomato plant did NOT make it.)

Here is what I want you to actually do this week, not just read and nod at.

Pull up your calendar and your bank statement from the last thirty days. Both of them, side by side, no editing them in your head first. Go through and circle every single thing you gave full effort to. The things you sacrificed sleep for, rearranged the whole family for, paid good money for without blinking, and would have felt genuinely embarrassed to skip. Then, in a different color, circle where your relationship with God actually shows up in those same thirty days. Not where you meant to fit Him in. Where you did.

Now just look at the two colors. Don't explain it away yet. Don't tell yourself the story about how busy this particular month was. Just look at it honestly for thirty seconds.

Whatever got the bigger circle, more of your money, more of your calendar, more of your energy without a fight, that is a fair description of what you actually treat as ultimate right now, regardless of what you would say if I asked you on a Sunday. That is not a guilt trip. It is just math, and math does not care about our intentions.

Then take it one step further. Pick one specific thing that gets circled every month and ask God directly whether it has quietly become bigger to you than He is. Not whether it is inherently bad. Most of these things are not. Ask whether it has become ultimate. Write down what He shows you. Then make one concrete change this week, not a vague resolution, an actual change to your calendar or your checkbook, that reflects what you claim to believe.

Kristin and I still have often done soemtihng similar to this this ourselves. We’ve had to relearn it with the budget years ago, and if I am honest, we have had to relearn it since with our kids' schedules, which is its own special category of "Lord, I clearly do not have this under control."

Paul's charge to Titus was not "believe better." It was live differently, because the two are supposed to be the same thing. Faith that only shows up in what we say and disappears the moment we have to actually do something is not faith at all. It is a very well-dressed form of practical atheism.

God is not just the God of your Sunday morning confession. He is supposed to be the God of your Tuesday, your budget, your marriage, your garden, and yes, even your curling tomato leaves. Gary from Ohio can help with the tomatoes. But he cannot help with anything else on that list.

That one is still on us to bring to the only One who was actually in the room the whole time.