“The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no
God.’” (Psalm 14:1)
“For
since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities - his eternal power
and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been
made, so that men are without excuse.” (Romans
1:20)
I have
gone through some hard times recently. (Reposted
from my other blog.) Not only has there
been a bunch of discouraging trials, but these trials have been accompanied by
“spiritual droughts” of sorts. Long, dry
spiritual times, the kind that could leave you wondering if you only convinced
yourself all along that there is a God.
He has
been so silent, so distant . . . and at a time when I needed Him to show
Himself most. My soul has ached for more
than what He is giving right now. I cry
out, but hear nothing. I pray and pray
about certain things. And . . . nothing
happens.
Many
prayers have not been answered - prayers for things to be healed, house
problems to be fixed, friends to call me back, etc. I don’t even really want the particular
answers as much as I want evidence that God is listening and cares. Just
answer something, anything, clearly and obviously so that I can know You are
there! Show me that You care!
I find
myself wanting to pull back from God, to retreat into a safe, little,
protective shell and tell Him, “Fine, God, I can handle it. I don’t want anyone – even You – to care
about me. I can accept it. I am used to it. I’m strong enough.”
But the
thing is . . . I’m not.
I’m not
strong enough. I’m cracking under the
pressure. And I don’t know what to do
anymore except wait on God for . . . well . . . for I-don’t-know-what. I don’t know what I am waiting for. I don’t know what to expect, what to wait
for, what to hope for. I’m more broken
than I’ve ever been. And I don’t know
how to fix it.
I am
sharing all of this as a way to say that I can totally understand how people
who are going through hard times and who feel a huge void where God should be
might think, “There is no God.”
They
have my sincerest sympathy. It is really
hard to cling to faith when God seems so very far away and prayers
don’t “work.” When you feel like life
has been too much to handle and like you are cracking under the pressure and
like God just doesn’t care. And it makes
you want to go, “Fine! Then I don’t care
either.”
I was
thinking of all this the other day. And
I asked myself,
“Why could I never be an atheist? What is helping me keep my faith in this
long, dry spiritual desert? In these
spirit-crushing trials?”
For one
thing, I need God. No matter how quiet
He is and how things don’t happen my way, there is a deep ache in my soul that
cries out for Him. And I think we all
have that ache. Just look at what
happens during any tragedy in the world.
We automatically cry out to Him.
We ask Him, “Why?” We join
together in prayer. We wonder where He
was and why He let it happen. Even city
officials get on camera and ask us to pray, and no one scolds them. We might raise our fists at Him or we might
fall down on our knees before Him, but the point is that we turn to Him. Every tragedy turns our thoughts to God.
Deep down in all of us is a built-in need for Him, for
Someone bigger than us who is watching out for us and who holds all things in His
hands.
And
while many people explain it away or ignore it or soothe the ache with other
things, we all know it’s there. And
tragedies bring our need for God to the surface.
Despite
the fact that He is so quiet and that I wish I could give up on prayer
sometimes, my soul still cries out for Him.
It’s always reaching for Him.
Because deep down, I know
He’s real. And I need Him.
I know
that we are not alone, that we are not accidents, and that He is always close
to us, always listening, and that He does care and does answer prayer, even if
life is hard and the trials are many and we get more “no” answers than we like.
And I am much more willing to believe
that there is a God and that He is choosing to not do things my way, not answer
as I want Him to, than to believe that there is no God just because things
aren’t going my way.
I mean,
look at this world. The order. The delicate balance. The miracle of life, of the human body, the
eyeball, the brain. It is much more
reasonable to believe in God than to not.
Atheists have much more to explain when it comes to the intricate order
and balance of this world and universe than I do. It takes much more “faith” to believe that
all of this is accidental than to believe in a Creator.
And it is narrow-minded, self-centered pride to think that
God should always answer my prayers the way I want Him to. It is foolishness to decide that there must
not be a God just because life isn’t going my way. There is far too much evidence for a Creator
for me to base my belief in Him simply on what He does or doesn’t do in my own
little life.
While I
might doubt and wonder about how God acts and why God does what He does, I do
not doubt His existence.
And one
major reason I don’t doubt is something I talked about in another post – the
five months of spiritual, demonic harassment that I went through several years
ago. It is as fresh to me today as it
was then, although it is not scary anymore.
In fact, I think of it basically every day. It has radically changed my life and my
faith.
And
although it was terrifying at the time, I thank God for that experience. Because that alone (along with the “light as
a feather, stiff as a board” game that really worked when I was an adolescent)
would be enough to convince me that there is indeed a supernatural world out
there. I do not doubt at all the
existence of angels and demons, heaven and hell, God and Satan.
So when
these long, dry “spiritual deserts” come, I can still rest assured that I never
“made up” God in my head, just to satisfy some need to have a god. He is real.
And I know it. And I will cling
to Him because I have had a small taste of what evil is like, and I didn’t like
it at all. I choose God!
Anyway,
that is a very personal reason for me, one that many people cannot relate to or
won’t understand. But there are other
reasons why I could never give up my faith in Christ.
And
another one is the fact that I once decided (in college) that I needed to study
all the other major religions (which I will briefly explore in another post),
to see if they had any real answers or hope or truth.
What if
I was wrong all along and one of them
was right? I had to find out.
And I
will admit that I was a little afraid to start that research. What if I did learn that I didn’t have real
reasons to believe in the Bible, to put my faith in Jesus? What if I realized that I had built my faith
on shifting sand?
But I
knew that I had to do this research, that I had to go into it with an open mind
that really wanted to know the truth.
And I
did.
And I
was relieved and delighted to come through it only more convinced that the
Bible was the truth and that Jesus is
the Savior. None of the other religions
offer the kind of hope and reasonable answers that I found in the Bible, in
Jesus. And I was able to close the book
on that research, on wondering if some other religion had it right instead of
Christianity.
For me, there is no other
choice. If Jesus isn’t the answer and
isn’t the way, then there is no other option in any other religion. It’s either Jesus or nothing!
And so
in that way, I guess maybe atheism would be the only other option for me. Yet, as I said, atheism isn’t the answer for
me, either. So it’s really only Jesus!
Another
reason why atheism isn’t the answer for me is because of what they stand
for: nothing!
Atheists
spend their days, their lives, fighting for a future full of nothingness, for
the idea that people don’t really matter eternally, that we have no real lasting
value, no real purpose, and no real hope of things ever being better. What a hopeless and discouraging view!
And the
funny things is, the vocal atheists spend their days actively fighting against
the idea of God, whom they believe doesn’t even exist. So basically, looking at it from their
perspective and considering that they don’t believe in an afterlife, they spend the only life they have fighting against nothing and for
nothing. So
nonsensical! So sad!
Why
would anyone waste so much time and energy trying to convince people that we
don’t really ultimately matter? That no
one is looking out for us? That we are
accidents with no real value or purpose?
That what happens here on earth doesn’t really matter in the long
run? Why would they want to believe that
themselves?
I think
that, in general, atheists use a lot of words and fancy arguments to cover up
for the fact that - deep down - they know there is a God. (Or at least they don’t want to seriously
consider it because that would mean major changes in their lives.) They don’t want to have to bend a knee to
God. They don’t want to be accountable
to God. They want to be their own
gods.
But
with that comes a life and eternity away from the real God, away from the
Creator who loves us and sustains us, who gives our lives meaning and purpose,
and who will right all wrongs in the end and dish out ultimate justice.
Can you
imagine telling a child who is dying early of a disease, “Sorry, that’s a tough
break. But this is nature’s way. You are really nothing more than a ball of
accidentally-alive cells anyway. And
don’t worry, you won’t remember any of this later because you are going to
simply vanish. And it won’t really
matter that you suffered. It won’t
really matter what happened in your life, because we all just disappear in the
end anyway!”
Or how
about telling a person who was horribly abused by someone who never got
punished for it, “Well, I’m sorry that it happened but it doesn’t really
matter. Nothing really matters in the
end for any of us. It doesn’t ultimately
matter if you were the abused or if you were the abuser. We all go to the same place and have the same
ending: nothingness. And I am sorry that
there is no real justice for you in the end, no consequences for the person who
abused you. But they will end up in the
same place you do. And it will be like
they never did anything bad and like nothing bad ever happened to you. So it really is just a tough break that this
is what your life has been like. I wish
I could say that things will be better for you one day, that justice will be
served, but I can’t. So sorry!”
Do we
say that kind of stuff when bad things happen?
(Of course, not even an atheist would say this because it is so
insensitive. But it is essentially the
gist of their beliefs, if they are honest with themselves.)
No, we don’t say
this.
We say, “It’s not
fair.”
It’s
not fair that a child dies of cancer.
It’s not fair that a family member dies in a natural disaster. It’s not fair that war ruins lives and
families. It’s not fair that diseases
ravage people’s bodies. It’s not fair
when someone is abused.
And why
do we say, “It’s not fair”?
Because
we know – deep down – that we were made for something more, something better,
that life is supposed to be a certain way.
You can’t say “It’s not fair” unless you have something to compare
“fair” against, unless there is some ultimate standard by which to measure the
quality of life.
In a
world without God and without eternity, it really should not ultimately matter
what happens. If life is accidental and
random and unplanned and created by unthinking forces, we can’t complain when
it isn’t the way it’s supposed to be . . . because there would be no “supposed
to be” about it. And death and disease
and harshness would be as “fair” as life and health and goodness. (And you could even consider them beneficial,
if they serve a purpose for mankind as a whole.)
And
eventually, we would all end up in the same place anyway. It would not ultimately matter if we lived
long, healthy, kind, gentle lives . . . or if we suffered tremendously . . . or
if we made others suffer . . . or if we died early of a disease. “Fair” and “supposed to be” would never enter
the picture because there would be nothing solid to measure the quality of our
lives or our choices against.
But
deep down, we know. We all know that we
were made for more and better.
We know
that when a person is abused, it is wrong and unfair. We know that they should have had a better
life than that. They should have been
treated better than that. We know that
the abuser was in the wrong, that there is a standard that all of us should be
- will be - held accountable to. Not
just a human standard of what is socially-acceptable behavior, but a real,
deep, abiding, binding standard of right and wrong ways to live and treat
people. And so, we want to see justice
done. And we are outraged when it is not
done on earth.
We know
that when a child dies, their life was snuffed out too early, that it wasn’t
fair because they had a lot more living to do.
We know that they mattered tremendously and that their value goes much
deeper than what they could contribute to society. They matter because they are human. And there’s something about being human that
gives us incredible value, no matter our skin color, health, physical ability,
circumstances of life, etc.
And
deep down, we all know that our value isn’t determined by society (oh, the
horrors that can happen when society determines our worth!) but by something
that transcends our frail, tiny, human standards and values.
And
Christians know that it’s because God made us in His image, that He loved us
enough to send Jesus to die for our sins so that we could live, and that our
souls will live after the body dies. We
matter because God made us and loves us.
And our lives on earth matter because death isn’t the end of us. Our lives will greatly affect our
eternities.
Atheism
is a great excuse for living any way you want, with little regard for how it
affects other people. Because in the end
– if we all simply disappear – it won’t matter how any of us lived, will
it?
It
wouldn’t ultimately matter if you were Hitler or Mother Teresa.
If
there is not an ultimate, supreme, objective standard for right and wrong then
there is no real right or wrong. If
there is no Creator and no Supreme Judge then it doesn’t ultimately matter how
we live because, in the end, none of us has any lasting value and we are
accountable to no one and there are no real, lasting consequences.
And
then how do we determine “right and wrong”?
If it hurts someone else? But why
should hurting people be considered wrong, especially if it benefits someone
else? Just because we, at this time, in
our society, say it’s wrong? If we were
in a primitive, lawless society, would violence all of a sudden be okay, just
because we allow it and because that’s the way things are?
And how
do we determine the value of people if there is no objective morality? Is the value of a baby’s life based on if the
mother wants it or not? Or on if it has
some sort of genetic defect or not? Does
the value of a human change if they end up severely crippled in an
accident? Was feeding the Christians to
lions “morally acceptable” because the Romans believed it was? What about primitive societies that used to
bury live babies with their dead parents?
Is that okay just because they think it’s the way things should be
done? Could you whisper those words of
comfort to that baby as you placed it in the ground, crying and kicking, and
shoveled piles of dirt over it?
I think
that if most people were honest with themselves, if they listened to the deep
down parts of themselves, getting past all the fancy atheistic arguments, they
would hear it … that Voice that says,
“You matter eternally. There is a right and a wrong. A ‘fair’ and an ‘unfair.’ And you were made for more than this. More than the tragedies and diseases of this
life. More than the abuses and trials
and heartaches. More than a meaningless
existence that doesn’t matter in the end to anyone but your family. You are more than a pile of
accidentally-alive, breathing, walking dust.
And you are not alone on this planet.
I am watching over you. I gave
you life. I am calling to you. I want you to let Me love you. And I will right all wrongs in the end. What happens to you matters. How you live matters! You
matter to Me!”
We know it’s true. We all know it!
Whether or not you admit
it.
