A Gift and a Rejected Gift-Giver

The speaker described how he endured a most horrific plane crash and fire. His burns were so serious that portions of his skin were hanging free. After three years, he is still recuperating. However, he regards the entire experience as a great “blessing,” which he  would not exchange for anything. Through it, he perceived the beauty of life – “gratefulness, forgiveness, and grace.”

Meanwhile, he has returned to teaching and to the meditation center, which he manages. After his talk, I approached him:

• You’ve learned some valuable lessons. You’ve learned about grace, gratitude, and forgiveness. As a Christian, I cannot help seeing my Savior in what you have described and learned. Do you feel that you’ve had an encounter with Deity?

He smiled and acknowledged that it’s possible. However, he then added something that really surprised me. He gently and graciously explained that it didn’t matter how he interpreted his experience. Instead, the important thing was the experience and the lessons he took away from it.

In my mind, it was like receiving a beautiful gift with a card, which he discarded, as if it didn’t matter from whom the gift came. Would he have said, “The gift is the important thing and not the card or the giver?” Of course not, but this was what he was saying about the gift he had just received.

I shared this with him and suggested that he needed to explore the origins of his gift - who sent it to him. He asked, “How would I do that?” I told him that he needed to pray about it and quoted Jesus’ words:

• "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.” (Matthew 7:7-8)

I felt that such advice was appropriate, but I also felt the curtain going down on our conversation. He had no intention of praying or seeking the identity of his Benefactor. But why wouldn’t he? Perhaps he intuitively knew that the answer might place restrictions on his life. Would he be able to continue with his own philosophy of life? His meditation center? His friends? His respect within his community? Who wants such restrictions placed on their lives! No one!

Who could blame him? I couldn’t! Besides, it wouldn’t do any good. Nevertheless, before God, he remains blameworthy. God had called his name, “blessed” him, shook him out of life’s stupor, but he refused to come into the light. Instead, he chose darkness – a refusal to see beyond the gift that had God’s name written all over it. I can only pray for him.

Bertrand Russell, Evidence, and why we Reject God

The atheistic mathematician Bertrand Russell was asked what he would answer God if, in the midst of the final judgment, God asked, “Bertrand, why didn’t you believe in Me?”

Russell famously answered, “There just wasn’t enough evidence.”

Doesn’t this seem reasonable? God can certainly provide more evidence, and so, why doesn’t He? Jesus answered this question through a parable involving a poor man (Lazarus) and a heartless, disobedient rich man (known as “Dives”). Both had died. Dives found himself in a place of torment, while Lazarus in a place of blessing with “Father Abraham.”

After being informed that it was impossible, at this point, to relieve him of his suffering, Dives called out to Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his five brothers about this place of torment. He reasoned that if his brothers saw Lazarus rise from the dead, they would repent and not end up in torment. However, Abraham responded:

• They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them… If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, if one rise from the dead. (Luke 16:29-31)

The evidence is already available! This parable explains that humanity’s problem of disbelief and rejection of God is not fundamentally a matter of a lack of evidence but an unwillingness to embrace it. It is not that evidence and proofs aren’t important. It is just that there are of secondary value. What is of primary value? Our proclivities/desires!

Jesus had raised another Lazarus from the dead after four days in the grave. One group of spectators believed; the other group set about more intently to put Jesus and now Lazarus – the evidence – to death (John 11).

They all saw the same miracle – the same evidence. What made the difference? Their hearts! The first group was willing to believe; the other wasn’t.

Scripture consistently proclaims that we are surrounded by evidence but reject it. Proverbs likens the evidence to wisdom crying out in the public for takers:

• Wisdom crieth aloud in the street; She uttereth her voice in the broad places;  She crieth in the chief place of concourse; At the entrance of the gates, In the city, she uttereth her words: How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? And scoffers delight them in scoffing, And fools hate knowledge? Turn you at my reproof: Behold, I will pour out my spirit upon you; I will make known my words unto you. (Proverbs 1:20-23) 

Paul wrote that the evidence is so clear and pervasive that anyone who rejects it is “without excuse”:

• For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hinder the truth in unrighteousness; because that which is known of God is manifest in them; for God manifested it unto them. For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse. (Romans 1:18-20)

Why then would we reject the evidence? The existence of God is simply not consistent with our agenda!