Why I Am Not An Atheist - Part One

“The greatest question of our time is not communism versus capitalism, it is not east versus west, but it is the existence of God or the absence of his existence.”
- Will Durant


I will readily admit that the title is not my idea, but every other possible idea I had for this next line of posts seemed either inflammatory or just silly. Before I get underway with this line of posts, I want to make it absolutely clear that I’m still not looking for an argument, despite what the title may see seem to provoke one. I am not here to rub anyone’s face into the philosophical mud, as it were, until they scream “uncle.” What I intend to accomplish with this line of posts is twofold. Firstly, to put some foundation to comments I have made in passing about there being no meaning or morality apart from God. I do not want to just throw such statements around as self-evident truths without taking the time to discuss why. Secondly, to point out the problems I have found to make the atheistic worldview one on which it is not sound to base one’s life.

I also want to say that anyone who says that they have avowed or disavowed the existence of God based purely upon their intellectual capacities reveals a prejudice and misunderstanding of the concepts at hand. There are many good minds that have been atheists, but there have also been many good minds that have been believers.

Furthermore, my main thrusts are going to be existential rather than abstract because it is very easy when discussing such material to climb higher upon the ladder of abstraction and lose all connection to the real world. The existence of God, or his nonexistence, will have a great impact on your life, and to not deal with the outworking at that level is to do ourselves a disservice.

The word atheism comes from the Greek. The alpha, a, is the negative and the word theos means god. Thus, we have a word that says negative god, or there is no god. This is an affirmation in the negative sense and is self-contradictory. The contradiction goes something like this: There is no being with infinite knowledge, and I know this to be infinitely so because on the basis of my own infinite knowledge, I affirm that God does not exist. The very properties of the being we are trying to deny the existence of are required in order to have the knowledge necessary to deny his existence! Now, let me also point out that by an atheist I also mean someone who may not have claimed that God does not exist, but whose life is lived in such a way as if God did not exist.

Ravi Zacharias has claimed that the man who has had the greatest impact on the twentieth century was Frederick Nietzsche and I am tempted to agree. He dealt a lot with the idea of the death of god as a philosophical entity and wrote, in his work The Madman, what the outworking would be if god were no longer an influence on our lives.

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!"---As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated?---Thus they yelled and laughed

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him---you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us---for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto."

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars---and yet they have done it themselves.

It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?"
Source: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882, 1887)

As we will see, the consequence of god’s nonexistence is an utter lack of morality, hope, and meaning.

Tsunami - Part Three

But why? Why does God allow such things to occur?

A friend of mine used this analogy to explain that very question to me. We look at the assault on Normandy beach, D-Day, in World War II. That one battle numbered among the top, if not the top number of American casualties suffered in the entire war. Many of us have seen Saving Private Ryan which can only offer the barest glimpse as to what it must’ve been like to really be there. Those who served truly know the horror it must have been. But that assault was vitally important for the allied force; indeed, it was necessary. God does not say that we will not face trials. He does say that when we do walk through the valley of the shadow of death, that he will be with us.

Those soldiers did not know the overall strategy. I am willing to wager they did not know much more beyond the fact that there was a beach that had to be stormed, through barb wire, walls and pillboxes of entrenched, hardened Nazi soldiers; but they trusted in their Commanders to see them through. And what is another word for trust?

Faith.

If those soldiers could put their trust in earthly commanders, how much more can we trust someone who underwent crucifixion for us?

I do not know why God allows certain things to happen. But there are times I can look back on that seemed rather painful and only after do I see the footprints of the hound of heaven chasing after me and herding me towards the correct path. If I may wax a little personal, a little over a year ago I broke my toe when I lost my temper and kicked a cement wall. Not my best moment. At the time there were many stressful factors in my life that kept building up until I lashed out, rather blindly, at the totally innocent wall. While my bone was broken, I needed crutches, transportation to and from classes, I needed people to walk slowly so I could maneuver across the icy sidewalks rather precariously; I needed people to understand my physical limitations and show me grace, and I needed to show grace to myself. It is only after me breaking my toe that God was able to break my heart, and mend it in a far more healthy way.

I have quoted this passage before as well, but I would like to quote it again.

In one of his final articles Malcolm Muggeridge, who lived a rather sensuous life, wrote this (after he accepted Jesus Christ into his life). “Contrary to what might be expected, at the time experiences that seemed desolating and painful I now look back on with particular satisfaction. Indeed I can honestly say this, everything that I have learned in my seventy-five years of life, everything that has delighted and enhanced my existence has been through suffering and not through happiness, whether pursued or attained. In other words I say that were it to prove possible to remove pain and suffering from our lives by the means of some pill or other medical mumbo-jumbo that the result would not be to make life delectable, but to make it too banal and too trivial to be endurable. This is, of course, what the cross signifies. And it is the cross more than anything else that has drawn me inexorably to Christ.”

God very rarely smites the wicked in such open and blunt ways, so I doubt that this tsunami was merely retribution against what some would call wicked people. I do not know why it has happened but I know someone who has told me that, whatever happens, my grief is meaningful, and that He will comfort me. One of the most powerful revelations I have had concerning the scriptures is this: Jesus was most glorified when he was on the cross. Not when he fed thousands with a few loaves of bread and some fish, not when he healed the sick, raised the dead or made the blind see; Jesus was most glorified when he was hanging from the cross and he shouts “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The moment of God’s greatest glory and greatest victory was when he seemed the furthest from his own son.

Because in that moment God withdrew his presence from his one and only son, whom he loves; He turned his face away from Jesus who was undergoing the penalty for all of our sins so that He could turn His face to ours. And as I have previously discussed in my posts concerning the crucifixion of Christ, when we see the face of God crying out “Holy Father,” again and again in the garden, we realize that His omniscience is no longer terrifying, and His omnipotence is no longer paralyzing.

Going back to the metaphor of the soldiers trusting their commander, I thought it appropriate to end with this simple poem written by a soldier in a shell-hole.

Lord God I have never spoken to you.
But now I would like to say, “How do you do?”
You see God they told me you didn’t exist,
And like a fool I believed all of this.
If I had taken the time to see the world you’ve made,
I’d have known they weren’t calling a spade, a spade.
The signal, well God, I’ve got to go
I love you lots, I want you to know.
This may be a horrible fight;
Who knows, I may come to your house tonight.
Although I wasn’t friendly to you before
I wonder now if you’d wait at your door.
I hope that you will take my hand
Somehow I feel that you’d understand.
Look I’m crying, I’m shedding tears
I have to go now God, goodbye,
Strange how since I’ve met you,
I’m not afraid to die.

Tsunami - Part Two

On the other hand, the questioner might mean: “Well, you talk about such-and-such a God. Let us assume that God exists – now tell me, how can he be this way in light of what has happened?” This is a very different question, and I will proceed from here.

Let me first say that Jesus does not call us to be mindless followers. Abraham, when God says he will destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, asks God if there was but one righteous person, would God spare the city. And God says yes, yes he would. Jacob actually wrestled with God the night before he was to meet up with his estranged brother, thinking his brother was going to avenge an old wrong. Jesus invites us to ask the hard questions, that is why he tells us to love the Lord with all of our mind, heart, soul and strength.

I turn to the story of Lazarus to see what God has to say to me. While Lazarus was sick, his sisters Mary and Martha sent word to Jesus that Lazarus was very sick but when he heard this, Jesus did not go. Instead he remained where he was for another two days before going to Lazarus’ home. And no surprise to Jesus, nor to many other people that Lazarus is dead. Martha, when she heard Jesus was coming ran out to meet him and tells him that had he been there, Lazarus would never have died. Mary said the same when she saw Jesus, the disciples said so earlier. Many of us are familiar with the conclusion of the story, but before Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, do you know what he does?

He weeps.

The shortest verse in all of scripture is John 11:35 “Jesus wept.” There is a popular story of a man being marched off to his death in the death camps of Germany and he cries out “Where is God? Where is God?” To which an onlooker cries back,”He’s up there with you.”

“But Zion said, ‘The Lord has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me.’ ‘Can a Mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands… ‘(Isaiah 49:14-16).”

The first thing to note is that God is not uncaring, cold or distant. He is here with us, knows our joys and our sorrows, and knows when we are on the verge of anger, despair or tears. The compassion of God is seen on the cross. Any charge of an uncaring God may be legitimately motivated, but any answer must also be given with the cross in mind. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16).” “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13).” “The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life – only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again… (John 10:17-18).”

But how does this translate into our lives? It is one thing to say that God loves us, it is quite another to show how he gives us love to help us endure suffering.

Fung Hien worked as a translator for missionaries in Vietnam. When the Vietnam conflict erupted, he was captured and regularly shown the works of Marx, Engles, and other atheist and communist pieces in an attempt to brainwash him into thinking that all of western civilization, including its Christianity, was nothing but a lie. Eventually he began to doubt and gave in and for the first time since becoming a Christian he didn’t pray the following morning. He was then given a job – latrine duty. He was ordered to clean the bathrooms and toilets and while doing his work he found a piece of paper with English writing. As he related his own story, the paper was covered with (if you’ll pardon me here) human excrement, but he cleaned it off so desperate was he to read something in English. And he began to read “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him…” from the book of Romans. One of the commanders had been given a Bible and he was using it for toilet paper. Fung Hien fell onto his knees and prayed, thanking God that he didn’t let Fung even last for twenty-four hours without believing in Him. In time he had collected the entire book of Romans. Later on, he constructed a boat when he was confronted by members of the Viet Cong who asked if he was trying to escape, to which he lied, saying no, he wasn’t. He apologized to God for the lie and asked for an opportunity to tell them the truth. When they returned, Fung admitted to it and asked if they were going to put him back in prison. The Viet Cong said no, that they wanted to go with them. And as Mr. Hien further related the story, without the Viet Cong they never would have made it by sea as they were very skillful sailors and navigators.

God’s love comes in many forms. One is the ability to stand and continue to live. I want to repost a hymn that I posted previously and, after each verse, reveal how God has worked with each verse in mind.


How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,
Is laid for your faith in His excellent Word!
What more can He say than to you He hath said,
You, who unto Jesus for refuge have fled?

In every condition, in sickness, in health;
In poverty’s vale, or abounding in wealth;
At home and abroad, on the land, on the sea,
As thy days may demand, shall thy strength ever be.
(Jesus, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Ezekiel, Elijah, Elisha ,etc. )

Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed,
For I am thy God and will still give thee aid;
I’ll strengthen and help thee, and cause thee to stand
Upheld by My righteous, omnipotent hand.
(The armies of Israel led by King Jehoshephat against a vastly superior foe)

When through the deep waters I call thee to go,
The rivers of woe shall not thee overflow;
For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless,
And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.
(The exodus from Egypt, the dominion of Babylon)

When through fiery trials thy pathways shall lie,
My grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply;
The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design
Thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine.
(Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the furnaces of Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon)

Even down to old age all My people shall prove
My sovereign, eternal, unchangeable love;
And when hoary hairs shall their temples adorn,
Like lambs they shall still in My bosom be borne.
(Solomon, Samuel, Enoch)

The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose,
I will not, I will not desert to its foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.
(The disciples who, except one, were murdered for what they proclaimed)


God provides strength, love, and compassion. He provides meaning for a life that, after such an awful tragedy, may seem meaningless. That is why when Paul and the other early Christians, when imprisoned, did not complain or cry out – they sang. They sang songs to God not because they were oblivious to their own pain and suffering, but they sang out of gratefulness to a God that they had dedicated their lives to who continually looked out for them even in those dark moments. They sang praise to God even while they wept. Jesus wept for Lazarus even though he knew that he was going to raise him from the dead.

That is why Terry Anderson, a hard-nosed atheistic French reporter, said that while being chained and held captive by Middle Eastern terrorists in a dark dungeon in the Mecca valley that he found God. In that dark night of his soul, he found the Hound of Heaven pursuing him, not letting him fall further than he could bear, and revealing the light of the love and glory of God in a place far more symbolic of Hell.

It is the love of Christ that illuminates the life of the Christian, and that love ought to overflow. As Jesus said, he who believes in Jesus will have springs of eternal water gushing from him. Let us take that water of grace to people who are suffering, and as Christ helped us to stand, let us help them to stand. The kingdom Jesus came to build is where the Romans, the Babylonians or anyone else could never invade – the hearts of people who love God. In the light of a God who gave his one and only son for us, it behooves us not to give of our time and money, at the very least, to help those who suffer. Maybe, some of those who cry out to know where God is in the mist of tragedy would not do so if we Christians saw them with God’s eyes, and loved them with God’s heart.

Martha told Jesus that, had he been there, Lazarus would never have died. Jesus responds by saying that her brother would live again, and Martha said she believed in the resurrection of the dead at the last day. But Here Jesus makes another scandalous statement. “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die (John 11:25-26).” The resurrection is not a fixed, impersonal event; it is a person. The resurrection is not a when statement, but a who statement, because it comes not at a certain point but because of a certain person, the person of God in Jesus Christ. Jesus offers the love of God, not just now but forever.

When we watch those clips on the news of two people standing together, and the waves come and sweep one of them away, what does Voltaire have to say to me? What does Nietzsche have to say to me? What does Madeline Marie O’Hare, the one who popularized Nietzsche have to say to me? You know in her journal, O’Hare wrote time and again, Someone please love me. Do we commit their souls to the Great Perhaps? Or like Bertrand Russell, do we live on a philosophy of unyielding despair? Proximo said this, in the movie Gladiator, “We are but shadows and dust. Shadows and dust.” And without God, that is all we have to give to those who suffer though your heart refutes you a hundred times, as Voltaire said.

God does not dismiss your pain as secondary, emotive, or glandular. God embraces it, and the one who suffers, and tells them that they are loved. That though you are aching and hurting, God desperately loves you and will help you to stand. “Can a Mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you… (Isaiah 49:15).”

Tsunami - Part One

“We say that the hour of death cannot be forecast, but when we say this we imagine that hour as placed in a distant and obscure future. It never occurs to us that it has any connection with the day already begun or that death could arrive this same afternoon, this afternoon which is so certain and which has every hour filled in advance”
- Marcel Proust

This will be the most difficult post I have had to write yet, and may well be for some time to come. It is easier to talk about philosophical abstractions, the existence of non-material objects, and the law of non-contradiction, even when boiling these things down into existential examples and illustrations, than to deal with the naked face that death can so easily rear. Indeed, as I have mentioned previous, when death crosses your path, very often your entire worldview is shaken at least momentarily.

I have heard about many of those who have been interviewed on television and attempted to give some sort of answer as to how or why this could happen, and have found nearly all of them to be lacking in some form or another. I do not know how long they had to prepare, or if they could not turn the conversation a certain way due to time constraints or whatnot, but it may be easier to do in a forum such as this where there are not sponsors waiting to have their logos parade across the screen and do not look kindly on being made to wait.

I am going to talk about this in what may seem a convoluted manner, so I hope you will bear with me because I intend to try and tie all of this together at the end. And let me reiterate this now, before I go any further – my purpose here is not to cause any arguments, or stir up controversy – my purpose is rather to try and shed some light on such vitally important things in life.

It was Voltaire who said,
“I am a puny part of the great whole.
Yes; but all animals condemned to live,
All sentient things, born by the same stern law,Suffer like me, and like me also die.
The vulture fastens on his timid prey,And stabs with bloody beak the quivering limbs:
All’s well, it seems, for it. But in a while
An eagle tears the vulture into shreds;
The eagle is transfixed by shaft of man;
The man, prone in the dust of battlefield,Mingling his blood with dying fellow men,
Becomes in turn the food of ravenous birds.Thus the whole world in every member groans:
All born for torment and for mutual death. And o’er this ghastly chaos you would say
The ills of each make up the good of all!What blessedness!
And as, with quaking voice,Mortal and pitiful, ye cry,
"All’s well,"The universe belies you, and your heart
Refutes you a, hundred times your mind’s conceit...
What is the verdict of the vastest mind? Silence.
The book of fate is closed to us. Man is a victim of his own research.
He knows not whence he comes nor wither he goes, tormented atoms in a bed of mud;
Devoured by death, a mockery of fate.”

There are those that have said that only the purely scientific worldview can offer any sort of explanation that is, at least, coherent. Or so said an article in The Guardian. But what is the verdict of the vast scientific minds? The minds say that there was a great eruption and upheaval of plate tectonics beneath the earth which caused the water level to dramatically rise and sent that water spilling across the shores. But that is not worth anything to someone who has had to watch a child, a sibling, a loved one swept away from where they stood beside you. In essence, these minds too are reduced to silence because they have nothing meaningful to say to someone who has suffered through this agony. But at least, so read the Guardian’s article, that message of nothingness is coherent.

If man is the simple outworking of time + matter + chance then the question of why is irrelevant. Indeed, I would simply suggest that we all sit down and read The Green Book, so we can all be reminded that this immense tragedy is nothing but the product of certain enzymes being secreted by certain glands, which we interpret as feelings of sorrow, frustration, anger and loss; and saying that you don’t like tsunamis is the equivalent of preferring chocolate ice cream to strawberry; any such statement loses any significant meaning and instead becomes a comparison of what we like compared to what we don’t.

But we ask this question of why because, as Voltaire put it, our hearts refute us a hundred times with the conceit of some minds who can only explain this tragedy as the movement of plate tectonics.

There are assumptions the questioner makes when asking the question why of the believer, or even of God. If you are not given to philosophical thinking, please put your thinking caps on and bear with me because this is important. These ideas have relevant consequences. I will examine these, and then we can move into seeing what God has to say to us. The question of why implies that the question of why is meaningful, and that we expect a meaningful answer. If there is no God, then there is no meaning, and asking why would be the same as saying “blark;” that is asking why would be unintelligible drivel because apart from God there is no meaning. Neither is there objective morality apart from God, so asking God why he allows for such evil also assumes the existence of good. If there is good and evil, then there must be a moral law on which to differentiate between the two. But in order to have a moral law, there must be a moral law giver; there is no reason to assume (or defend, really) objective moral properties apart from an objective moral law giver. So if the questioner points out the evil and suffering of the tsunami in an attempt to disprove the existence of God, his or her own question assumes that God exists (by assuming the existence of evil and then, by necessity, having to assume the existence of good, a moral law, and a moral law giver) and therefore the question is self-negating. In essence, the questioner has said nothing. Aristotle defined nothing as that which rocks dream about.

Once upon a time, Ravi Zacharias (along with someone else whose name I regrettably forget) was a guest on a radio talk show whose host was an atheist. During their time of taking phone calls, a very angry woman called the show and carried on, saying that she knew what their agenda was as men and as Christians, and she went on to bring up the whole issue of abortion. Now, Mr. Zacharias countered by saying that no one had even brought up the issue, but the woman insisted that abortion was the driving force behind their agenda, and she continued that she could not accept the right of God or men to impose such rules upon what she deemed as her own body.

Mr. Zacharias asked if she could reconcile a contradiction from her perspective. His refutation went something like this: the woman (I’ll call her Adelia) has abrogated the right to decide on the life of the fetus she carries to herself and called it her moral right to do as she will. Mr. Zacharias has been on campuses where people ask what kind of God allows a plane to crash with twenty people dead and only four alive. Such objections are always followed by questions of what kind of God is he worshipping who arbitrarily decides twenty people to die and only four to live. He’s not a very good or moral God, is he?

The point is this: people blame God for seemingly arbitrary choices when we proclaim, and demand, that we be given that same right to arbitrarily choose between life and death. In other words it is okay for us but not okay for God. Ravi asked if she could explain this contradiction to him, and do you know what she did? She just hung up the phone. She had no answer to give. And my point in bringing this story up is quite frankly that the same questions we have of others very often apply to ourselves whether we like it or not. Nor is it fair to hold someone else accountable for exercising rights we have demanded that we be allowed to exercise.

On the other hand, the questioner might mean: “Well, you talk about such-and-such a God. Let us assume that God exists – now tell me, how can he be this way in light of what has happened?” This is a very different question, and I will proceed from here.

The Cross - Part Four

What is the cross?

Crucifixion was considered the ignoble death of thieves and worse, which Jesus underwent. In The Passion, as Jesus falls beneath the cross in an alley, his mother Mary runs to his side screaming that she is there with him, having seen how the people spat at him, turned their faces away, betrayed him, lied about him, beat him all because he came to spread the truth and love of God. And Jesus, embracing his cross, says to her, “Behold mother, I make all things new.”

The cross is the ultimate demonstration of God’s love. To quote Ravi Zacharias, “The cross stands as the central piece because it shows the dastardliness of what sin is, and the beauty and love of what forgiveness is.” My friend Victor once said that the love of God is utterly scandalous; the scriptures show the scandalous nature of this love by revealing God as a loyal husband and savior, and we are his disloyal prostitute of a wife. Maybe, then, Jesus is justified when he says, “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me… (Matthew 10:37).”

The cross is the renewal of all things. It is the turning of the ignobility of crucifixion into a symbol of hope that has endured for two thousand years. It is the spreading of truth from a carpenter and his haggard group of confused and sometimes disloyal followers to the corners of the world and that truth being made into the world’s most read book of all time.

But most importantly, it is the renewal of our relationship with our heavenly father, our daddy, our God from whom we have wandered away. Not only have we spit upon God all of our lives and he demands justice be done, he undergoes that sentence of justice himself, to reconcile his prodigal children to himself.

Have you read the story of the prodigal son? I’m sure many of you are familiar with the son who asks his father for his inheritance and leaves to go spend his money on parties and having a good time or whatever. But here is the significance: the son asks for his inheritance. If you are a parent, then you will identify with this illustration best – imagine if your child came to you and asked you for their inheritance while you were still alive. It is tantamount to that child saying to his, or her parent, that to the child, the parent is dead. And God lets that child go. But when that child returns, as the story of the prodigal son illustrates, as soon as the father hears word that his son is returning he runs out to meet him. The father (God) does all the work as soon as the child is ready to come back and not only that, he throws a huge party – what believers know as the joy of salvation, something that David asks for in his psalms to be returned to him.

The cross is the renewal of life, because it reconciles us back to God who is the source of life. It is a life able to be lived consistently, it is a life with a loving daddy, it is a life with meaning, purpose, hope, fulfillment, destiny, justice, direction, evidence, and morality. It is continued life with God in heaven.

But most importantly, it is life through a relationship. When POW’s are given a few seconds to say something into a camera, what do they express their love for? Knowledge? Cars? Games? No, they express love for a wife, a father, a mother, a son, a daughter, a brother. If I may be so bold, here is a clue to the meaning of life – that it is found in relationships. And ultimately, in a relationship with God. Jesus does not call you to his ethic, like Zoroaster does. Jesus does not call you to the Qur’an, as Mohammed does. Jesus does not call you to nothingness, or the Way Which Cannot Be Named (Taoism) or to your ancestors he calls you to himself and offers not a way of life, but a relationship.

The cross is life. “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. For whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it (Matthew 10:37-39).” It is easy for our relationships with other people to eclipse our relationship with God; we become so enamored with the gift that we forget the gift-giver. But more importantly, that gift cannot offer the life that God does to anyone who wants it. An idol is anything that eclipses our relationship with God. That is why Jonah says “Those who cling to idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs.”

Why did Jesus need to die such an excruciating death? (The word excruciating, by the way, finds its roots in the crucifixion, literally meaning “as from the cross”) Some other critics said that Gibson’s film, in its gritty and realistic approach, would cause anti-Semitism to rise for people blaming the Jews for killing Jesus. It wasn’t just them, it was the Romans, it was the Samaritans, the Philistines, his own followers. He died because of me, and he died because of you.

If you don’t know Jesus, I encourage you to get to know him. I encourage you to ask him to make himself known to you in a very real and understandable way.

I will end this series with a hymn that, I think, best captures the significance of the cross.

The Wonderful Cross

When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of Glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss
And pour contempt on all my pride.

See from his head, his hands, his feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down;
Did ever such love and sorrow meet?
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

Oh the wonderful cross, Oh the wonderful cross,
Bids me come and die
To find that I might truly live.
Oh the wonderful cross, Oh the wonderful cross,
All who gather here by grace draw near
And bless your name.

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were an offering far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

Forbid it Lord that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ my God;
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to His blood.

Oh the wonderful cross, Oh the wonderful cross,
Bids me come and die
To find that I might truly live.
Oh the wonderful cross, Oh the wonderful cross,
All who gather here by grace draw near
And bless your name.

Oh the wonderful cross, Oh the wonderful cross,
Bids me come and die
To find that I might truly live.

The Cross - Part Three

What is sin?

The word sin comes from, of all places, archery competitions. It was a word used to mean that an arrow had fallen short of the bull’s-eye. The same holds true here. God is holy. And let me say this about holiness. If I were to say to you I am a holy person, you would think that there are certain activities I don’t engage in, there are certain shows I don’t watch, there are certain words I don’t use, there are certain places I don’t go. The holiness of humanity is the absence of something, the holiness of God is the presence of something. God is holy. God is all-good (omnibenevolent). God is just.

We, my dear readers, are not. Malcolm Muggeridge once said that the depravity of man is at once the most denied reality and the most empirically verifiable fact. I have already talked at some length about the nature of humanity in many posts, so I’ll try not to belabor this point. But sin is not just the horrendous evils we see; rape, war, murder, gross pollution, etc. It is also in our daily lives; lying, not caring, being selfish, etc. It is in our research when we believe things not because of the evidence, but rather as Thomas Nagel put it, because we don’t want things to be any other way due to what the entailments of the truth would mean in our lives. Sin is looking away from the beggar, helping yourself to your friend’s food if he is poor, always asking for more, using sicknesses as an excuse, hypocrisy, abuse, being self-righteous, being too strict, being too lenient. In essence, not being perfect – missing the mark of perfection that God is. That is sin, and it is also bondage, and what Jesus came to save us from.

Sin is, ultimately, an attitude towards God; either of passive indifference or active rebellion.

The T-800 says this concerning the destiny of humanity in the shoot-‘em-up film Terminator 2, “It is in your nature to destroy yourselves.” If you will forgive the arguable crassness of the film, it is a worthwhile statement to consider.

And although justice may be all well and good when it is time to even the score with a lover who jilted us, a friend who betrayed us, we don’t think its alright when someone wants to even the score with us. But God is just with everyone. C.S. Lewis said this concerning judgment day, that it will not be necessary for God to point out how we failed to live up to His will for us, rather he will just have to point out where we failed to live up to even our own expectations for ourselves.” Why is that? Because apart from God, it is impossible to live in a meaningfully consistent way.

The Cross - Part Two

Now one could very well say that if what we believe is what we want, aren’t I guilty of the same thing? I doubt it – not because of my being superior in any sense – but think about it: if I believed because I wanted there to be a God, why wouldn’t I choose a God who is not all-knowing and all-powerful? That would remove many questions that are often brought to bear against believers, and leave me free to pretty much do as I want and still go to Heaven. Indeed, that is the kind of God that the Old Testament prophets continually remind the Israelites that God is not that kind of God. Why? We look at the Bible, and we see God described in the following terms: God is sovereign, God is omniscient, God is holy, God is immutable (unchanging).

This is a true story, carried by a European newspaper. There was a truck driver who, one his long travels, would visit various houses of prostitution. And as he was getting ready to leave for one such trip a friend raved about a particular brothel just outside of Rome, where he lived, and of a particular prostitute to ask for. He got all excited with anticipation and stopped at this brothel. He asked for this particular prostitute his friend recommended and continued to wait, as she was busy with someone else. Finally, as he was ready to sate all his desires, he goes to see this woman and discovers that the woman is his wife.

As the paper carried the story, he was so livid with rage he nearly strangled her to death on the spot.

Interesting that it is alright for him to live such a lifestyle, but when his wife provides that kind of lifestyle, suddenly there is something wrong. Holiness is all well and good for someone else; but when we apply it to our own lives, we don’t like it very much.

Once upon a time there was a businessman at a company baseball game. He hit the ball, rounded the bases and ran home. As he did so he lowered his head, connected with the catcher who was moving to tag him out. This businessman suffered a critical injury, and was left paralyzed from the neck down. He phoned Ravi Zacharias to ask where God was in his predicament.

Holiness can be troubling, omnipotence can be terrifying, and immutability can be paralyzing unless we look at the face of God. And what do we see from that face? Someone being spat on. Someone who spread love and truth at the expense of his own life, a life that he gave up willingly. Someone unrecognizable after the soundness of the torture visited upon him. Someone people turned away from. Someone who did not complain about what he was suffering. So often when things go wrong we immediately blame God. George Carlin does a brief comedy sketch on Christian athletes who thank Jesus when they win but never mention him when they lose. But there are those, I would say more people, who when everything is going good they thank themselves, but when things go wrong they blame God.

Jesus asked God the Father if there was any other way let it be done that way. He says also “not my will but yours be done.” And three times as he prays in the garden before he is to be arrested and slaughtered, he cries out to God, calling him “holy father.”

My dear reader, when God is your father, then holiness is not troubling, omnipotence is not terrifying, and immutability is not paralyzing because those characteristics are bounded by love. Studies show that fatherless homes have a bearing in creating violent children; how about a world that has rejected its spiritual father? Indeed, that world has produced the bloodiest century yet due to atheistic regimes and empires. But one of the most important messages of the gospel is that we are not cosmically orphaned and estranged from God. Rather he would have us call out to him as Abba, your daddy and mine.

And when your daddy is God, the suffering you face and the pain you endure are seen in a vastly different light because he does not leave us in the midst of it. I do not know who wrote this but it beautifully illustrates this point.

How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,
Is laid for your faith in His excellent Word!
What more can He say than to you He hath said,
You, who unto Jesus for refuge have fled?

In every condition, in sickness, in health;
In poverty’s vale, or abounding in wealth;
At home and abroad, on the land, on the sea,
As thy days may demand, shall thy strength ever be.

Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed,
For I am thy God and will still give thee aid;
I’ll strengthen and help thee, and cause thee to stand
Upheld by My righteous, omnipotent hand.

When through the deep waters I call thee to go,
The rivers of woe shall not thee overflow;
For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless,
And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.

When through fiery trials thy pathways shall lie,
My grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply;
The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design
Thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine.

Even down to old age all My people shall prove
My sovereign, eternal, unchangeable love;
And when hoary hairs shall their temples adorn,
Like lambs they shall still in My bosom be borne.

The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose,
I will not, I will not desert to its foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.

The Cross - Part One

“The cross stands as the centerpiece of Christianity. It smacks against everything we think of in life, (and everything we want).”
- Ravi Zacharias


Many of us have heard that Jesus died for our sins. Indeed, I heard it while I was growing up but those words did not mean anything to me. Partially because I did not know what was meant by “dying for my sins.” There was an assumption being made by my teachers that I knew everything that they were talking about. In his film The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson attempts to capture what was meant by the statement “Jesus died for our sins.” But when he set out to do so, he was hammered in the media by many critics who claimed that the film was simply too bloody and too sensational. After seeing the movie myself, in the back of my head I thought that one could aptly name the film The Slaughter of the Christ and nothing would be lost. But rather than simply side with the critics (who have missed the point) about the film being as “sensational” as it was, let me explore this question – why did Gibson feel the movie had to be that realistic?

Or, better yet, why did Christ need to die on the cross at all?

There are many, many places in the Bible that contain echoes of the cross but I will turn to Isaiah for most of my explanation.

“See my servant will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted. Just as there were many who were appalled at him – his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and his form marred beyond human likeness – so will he sprinkle many nations, and kings will shut their mouths because of him. For they what they were not told, they will see, and what they have not heard, they will understand. Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth (Isaiah 52:13 – 53:7).”

The ruthlessness of the crucifixion is vitally important; not because Christianity also smacks of sensationalism, but because it represents historical fact and shows the truth of what Christ endured. The Romans were good at many things – brutality was at the top of the list. Indeed, the Romans got the idea from the Phoenicians and put it to excellent use.

Secondly – it is so very easy to dismiss the importance of the crucifixion if you and I do not have to see the awfulness of it. I can’t help but wonder if that is what drives some of those who criticize the movie in such a fashion – an unwillingness to see what the cross really cost Jesus. Because if we are to look at the cross in its awful and powerful truth, we would see the very face of God. There are those in the movie who do look at the truth of the cross and see God there, as Isaiah writes “…kings will shut their mouths because of him. For what they were not told they will see, and they have not heard, they will understand.” Not just kings, but people. That is why the thief on the cross beside Jesus asks to be remembered when Jesus returns to his father’s side. That is what Simon sees after he helps carry the cross, all the while claiming that he was an innocent man and carried the burden of a condemned criminal and he realizes that it was the other way around; he would have left Jesus to his fate and not cared. That is what the Romans see when Jesus is dead.

But there are those who do not want to see God’s face because of all that it would entail for them. “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God (John 3:19-21).”

We see the truth of this in life. Steven Jay Gould once said this concerning atheism “Once you find out that there is no higher power, no superior cause, it is liberating if not exhilarating.” Quite a contrast to Aldous Huxley who was a little more honest in his book Ends and Means when he said “Science does not have the right to give to me my reason for being. But I am going to take science’s view because I want this world not to have meaning. A meaningless world frees me to pursue my own erotic and political desires.” Or better yet listen to Thomas Nagel, professor of philosophy at NYU who says this “In speaking of the fear of religion, I don’t mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions… in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper – namely the fear of religion itself… I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God, and naturally, hope there is no God. I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that (The Last Word).” I remember once speaking to a young tattoo artist in Panama City, Florida concerning the truth of the gospel. He argued that the Old Testament and New Testament God were completely different, I provided illustrations to show that this was not so. At the end of our exchange he looked me in the eye and told me, rather unblushingly, that he didn’t care about the evidence; unbelief boiled down to the fact that he and his wife engaged in various activities that he did not want to give up.

This truth applies in our personal lives, our scientific lives, all parts of our life and what we want effects what we will do. Ideas have consequences. I quote someone whose name I, unfortunately, forget, but he said this, “Nothing good can come if the will is wrong.”

Faith and Reason

“We are not living in the glorious dawn of science, but rather the gristly morning after. Where it has become quite apparent that science can give us only improved means, to achieve unimproved or rather deteriorated ends”
- Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means

I have no doubt that Huxley’s claims are a rather slanted approach towards science, in light of all that it has done for us. Indeed, science has given us a great many cures and has eased many of our lives, if not providing the ability to restore those lives outright. But in many cultures, ours included, science occupies a throne of the domination of thought, but does so in a rather backwards manner. And that which seems to disagree with science is rubbish.

That is why there seems to be a divide between faith in God and reason.

Let me illustrate the point with an article written by a rather angry Englishman, and the article is entitled “The Rage of Reason.” And the author is terribly upset that many of his countrymen still believe in god, particularly the Christian God. Thus he harkens back to Blake, who once wrote “Oh Milton, thou should be living at this hour. England has need of thee,” in a plea for a pure spirit to light what seemed to Blake England’s dark night of the soul. Similarly, this English writer cried out for Thomas Paine and David Hume in a similar fashion, “Oh David Hume, thou should be living at this hour, England has need of thee. We are irrational men, believing all kinds of irrational things.”

David Hume has been accredited with hammering in the final nails into Christianity’s coffin. He said this, and I paraphrase,” The Christian religion has always proven irrational to believe in because even in its founding days, was attested by miracles.” Fair enough, and even true insofar as miracles have always been a part of Christian belief.

But then he goes on to say this,” Take into your hand any book of philosophy or tome or religion and ask yourself this question. Does it contain any statements concerning mathematical formulations? No. Does it contain any statements concerning matters-of-fact or empirically verifiable data? No. Commence it then to the flames, for it can be nothing but sophistry and illusion.”

Basically, he says take any book (like the Bible) and ask yourself if it contains anything apart from what science would tell us is true, or mathematics, and if it doesn’t, burn it because it is nothing but nonsense.

And here’s the kicker: David Hume’s claim does not pass his own test.

His statement does not concern matters-of-fact, nor anything mathematically demonstrable or scientifically empirical – his statement is a philosophical statement. And according to Hume, his own words should be committed to the flames for they, too, are nothing but sophistry and illusion.

The world tells us many things. And our little corner of the world here tells us, very often, that those things which are neither mathematically or scientifically provable are worthless and meaningless and insignificant. But by the way, the Bible does contain empirically verifiable phenomenon: the prophetic scheme, the existence of various peoples in various parts of the world, the locations of cities, the birth of Christ, the life of Christ, the resurrection of Christ.

Indeed, science can attest that even the miracles happened: http://english.sdaglobal.org/evangelism/arch/redsea.htm

In the book “Does God Exist?” J.P. Moreland, a theist, and Kai Nielson, an atheist, debate the very question in the title. And J.P. Moreland begins in the opening statement by piling argument upon argument, data upon data, and many illustrations and formulations of arguments coming from and dealing with many different ideas: ontological teleological, moral, design, etc. Kai Nielson dismissed all of it and asked if J.P. Moreland could show him God like Kai Nielson could show his friend Louis to Moreland. And from that point on, the argument became vapid and rather ridiculous as Kai Nielson dismissed everything that Moreland had brought to the table.

In the Arkansas trial on evolution, one of the witnesses was a man named Chandra Wickramasinghe. Now Chandra is a Buddhist and therefore a non-theist, if not an atheist. And he said this concerning the likelihood of the random formation of a single enzyme necessary to create human beings: “The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only 1 in 10 to the 40,000 power, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of nothing but organic soup ( Evolution from Space).” Do we realize how large this number really is? The number of atoms in the known universe is only 10 to the 80th power; all of the atoms in all the known universe. In the Arkansas trial on evolution, he relayed this to the judge and was then asked if he was a non-theist, how did he himself account for our origins? He, and Francis Crick, both hold the view that aliens must have seeded our planet with spores, or genetic material, and that is how life originated. Who is having faith now?

To be fair, Crick and his colleague Wickramasinghe are both very well-to-do in their professions, indeed even leaders. But the problem with this idea of seeds being sown from space is that it does not answer the problem of the complexity and probability of origin: it seems that one must now account for the likelihood of how these other aliens came about, and how likely that would have been.

Bernard Shaw, noted cynic and atheist, even once said this concerning his own philosophical perspective, “I am an atheist who has lost his faith.”

Indeed, faith in God is not faith that is irrational. Rather, faithlessness in God is irrational. And by the way, the Hebrews did not even have a word for faith like the Greeks did, and we often think of (that is, of faith being blind and unreasoning), rather they used “faithfulness.” That is why we see in the book of Habakkuk that it is written, “The just shall live by His faithfulness.” What does that mean? It means that the just people will live by seeing God at work and justifying believing in him in light of all that he has already done for them, empirically and verifiably.

What is faith? Is it blind and unreasoning? No, it is trust. And trust ought only to be given when we have seen that it makes sense to give someone our trust.