Here’s an interesting quote from Stealing Jesus:

For some people “are atheists because of a higher implicit theism than that professed by believers. They reject God because His name has been taken in vain, and they are unable to distinguish between His holiness and its profanation.” In other words, they rebel, both intellectually and morally, against what legalistic faiths have made of God, “both in the realm of truth and in the realm of the good, in both culture and ethics.”

Now I don’t know if there really are any (functioning) atheists that arrived where they are because of this, but it’s in line with a thought I had yesterday. In some ways, the church has done more damage to people’s faith than a thousand million Dawkins/Darwins/Hitchens. When someone steps out of our theological comfort zone we can be so quick to tell them how wrong they are and that the error is going to lead them out of the body. You tell someone that often enough and they’ll start believing it. If they do then they’ll either give up telling you that they believe what they do and go along to get along or they’ll just throw their hands up and leave. Sure, they might also come to agree with you, but have you done God’s work in that case? Or are we profaning God by taking his place in the judgment seat?

Now just for the sake of clarification I do think there are times that a person can be in legitimate danger of heresy, but I would argue that those cases are rarer than we really want to make them.