ANSWERING ATHEISM

 

An atheist laid out this challenge on Facebook:

·       Why do people believe God is guiding and protecting them, yet children die across the world? Can someone religious please give me a legitimate reason as to why a child has to die?

Here is my response:

“Thanks for your challenging question. However, I must warn you from the start that my answer will not be a comprehensive one. However, even science cannot give us comprehensive answers. In fact, science cannot even give us comprehensive answers about the basics – What is time, space, matter, light, not to even mention the nature of sub-atomic particles? However, here are some basic assumptions to shed light on your question:

1.    God will not shield us from the implications of our freewill choices. In fact, we need to be cognizant of the fact that God will not always bail us out from our irresponsibility. One probationer had explained to me, “Now that I have a child, I am going to change and get a job.” He understood that he had to bear responsibility for his child’s welfare, just as God would have it.

2.    We go bad without sorrow and loss. We begin to take others for granted, if there are no consequences, namely death. We have seen scenes of people being found alive in the rubble, days after an earthquake. The family members are filled with hugs, tears, and gratefulness. But why don’t we experience this on a daily basis? We become jaded and need to be awaken by tragedy.

3.    The suffering and loss are preparation for our final destiny. Perhaps we will not appreciate the end of all pain unless we know what pain and destruction are like.

You mention your own sorrow and sense of unworthiness when you hear about others who suffer far more than you. This is a healthy response, because none of us are worthy. However, to walk around in a state of guilt and unworthiness leads to self-destruction. (We might even resort to masochism to reduce the guilt.)

God knows this and He addresses our guilt by first confirming that our feelings of unworthiness are revelatory, but that He has made provision for our guilt by dying for our sins. This is a sacrifice available to any who will come to Him acknowledging their need.”

MY YEARS IN CHRIST AS A LEGALIST

My first number of years in Christ was as a legalist. I believed in “grace” but also believed that I had to be worthy of it. However, it was becoming apparent to me that I was unworthy. This realization tormented me. I had given myself to the Lord, but I had no assurance that He had given Himself to me, an unworthy sinner.

I therefore sought to make myself worthy of Him. However, the harder I tried, the more it became apparent that I was unworthy. Even if He did save me, I couldn’t help thinking that He didn’t like me very much. Instead, it seemed that He liked others better, since He was blessing them more than He was blessing me.

As result of this thinking, I resented the very ones I was supposed to love. I even secretly resented God but wouldn’t admit it to myself.

This led to utter despair. I was so broken that hope became a rare luxury. However, in the midst of my brokenness, Christ made His grace real to me. I began to see that none of us are worthy. That’s why Christ had to die for me, the Worthy One for the unworthy.

Afterwards, I no longer could tolerate the “do better, try harder sermon,” which had so afflicted me. I just wanted sermons that would tell me that it is all about what Christ had done for me and not what I must do for Him.

However, as I became more confident in God’s grace, I began to see that the Christian life was more than just receiving Christ’s grace. A healthy lake must be stream-fed, but it must also surrender its water. Of first importance, I had to receive grace, but I also had to pass it on, responding obediently to it.

Immediately after affirming grace – “the implanted word, which is able to save your souls” (James 1:21; ESV) – James launched into describing our necessary response to grace:

·       But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. (James 1:22-25)

Being “doers of the word” isn’t an option. A true faith is an obedient faith, while a fruitless faith is a faithless faith, an imitation of the real thing. A real faith is a tree that bears good fruit (Matthew 7:17). If we trust in Christ, we will do as He instructs us.

As we grow in our understanding of grace, we become assured that if we confess our sins, He will forgive, cleanse, and readily appoint us a fresh start (1 John 1:9). This gives us assurance and gratefulness so that we can gladly serve Him, not because we fear that He will damn us but because we are confident that He won’t.

However, when we show no interest in being “doers of the Word,” we are deceiving ourselves if we claim that we know the Savior. According to James, a barren faith is a bogus faith:

·       What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. (James 2:14-17)

Grace doesn’t relieve us of the moral requirements of the law, now called “the perfect law, the law of liberty.” We still mustn’t kill, and we must love our neighbor as ourselves (Leviticus 19:18). Instead, we “uphold the law” (Romans 3:31), but in a new way:

·       You also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code [of the Mosaic Law]. (Romans 7:4-6 )

To not uphold what the law is to damage ourselves and those around us:

·       By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. (James 3:13-16)

We all have such temptations. Jesus was tempted in every way that we are, except without sin (Hebrews 4:15). He didn’t give in to the temptation, and we must not.

Being a “doer of the word” is more than just an indication of a true faith. It is also a source of blessing, as James had written: “He will be blessed in his doing” (1:25, above). We will also suffer if we turn back from the Word.

Grace is the good soil necessary to bring forth the crop. However, good soil without a crop is useless, while a crop without good soil is a fantasy. We were saved and endowed with God’s grace for a reason – “that we may bear fruit for God” (Romans 7:4, above).

Consequently, I think that we need those “try harder, do better” sermons, but they all must rest on the solid foundation of knowing the grace of our Lord. Without this foundation, we will be pierced by many discouragements and despair.

WHY DO GOOD?

I asked an atheist, “Why do you practice virtue if you don’t believe that there is such a thing as an objective moral law?” He answered very candidly:

• I live virtuously because of what it does for me. It provides psychological rest, enabling me to feel good about myself. It also improves my relationships.

Although this is true, I tend to think that his pursuit of virtue carries some deadly cargo. How? It seems like our pursuit of virtue is contaminated by our all-too-human desire for significance or righteousness. In “The Significant Life,” attorney George M. Weaver identifies the ubiquitous drive to establish our self-importance:

• Individual humans are not concerned so much about the survival of the species as they are about their personal survival or significance. In order to push ourselves beyond our confining space-time limits, we as individuals try to set ourselves apart from the rest of humanity. It is unsettling to admit that one is average or ordinary – a routine person. (7)

Weaver documents this in many ways:

• Salvador Dali once said, “The thought of not being recognized [is] unbearable”…Lady Gaga sings, “I live for the applause, applause, applause…the way that you cheer and scream for me.” She adds in another song, “yes we live for the Fame, Doin’ it for the Fame, Cuz we wanna live the life of the rich and famous.” (7)

Perhaps one reason we never achieve our longed-for significance is that it always comparative. We need to be more significant or to have more recognition than the next guy. Writer Gore Vidal had been very transparent about this:

• “Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.” (58)

Eventually, its seems that this drive to establish our significance/righteousness tears at friendship, dividing instead of bringing together. The jealousy displayed by comedian Al Jolson is also reflective of the human condition:

• According to his biographer, “He once had a team of performing elephants fired because he thought the audience liked them too much.” (59)

Trying to achieve our worth, significance, or even virtuousness can become brutal and abusive. When life is about maintaining our “psychological rest” or our “good feelings” about ourselves, we can do some destructive things to ensure that these “good feelings” continue.

And it doesn’t seem to matter how successful, important, or honored we become, we always want more. The richest man in the world, John D. Rockefeller, was asked how much more money he would need to be happy. He answered, “Always a little bit more,” demonstrating that humanity is in pursuit of an unattainable goal.

In “Fame, The Psychology of Stardom,” psychologists Evans and Wilson argue:

• What we try to create… is some illusion of permanence. The desire for permanence drives people to carve their name on trees and rocks, just like the handprints on Hollywood Boulevard. We need to have an impact on life – to leave something behind us when we go. (19)

It is not enough for us to simply enjoy what we have. Our quest for “psychological rest” demands us “to leave something behind us when we go.” We even have to convince ourselves that we are leaving more behind than others. Weaver cites President Lyndon B. Johnson as an example of this:

• According to one commentator, “It is a curious footnote to history that long before he ran into trouble, Johnson had turned central Texas into a living monument to his heritage and his journey to the summit (the L.B.J birthplace, the L.B.J. boyhood home, the L.B.J. state park, the L.B.J. ranch and more).” (22)

The craving to be a somebody – to feel good about oneself - takes many forms besides the pursuit of virtue. It can embrace virtue or even vice. Weaver writes about other attempts to leave one’s mark on the world:

• In 2005 Joseph Stone torched a Pittsfield, Massachusetts apartment building… After setting the blaze, Stone rescued several tenants from the fire and was hailed as a hero. Under police questioning, Stone admitted, however, that he set the fire and rescued the tenants because, as summarized at trial by an assistant district attorney, he “wanted to be noticed, he wanted to be heard, he wanted to be known.” (44)

Evidently, this drive for significance is so powerful that it can overrule the moral dictates of conscience. One mass-murderer gunman explained in his suicide note, “I’m going to be f_____ famous.” (45)

This perverted drive for significance can even override all other affections. On December 8, 1980, Mark David Chapman, a zealous fan of the Beatle, John Lennon, first obtained his idol’s autograph before gunning him down. He explained:

• “I was an acute nobody. I had to usurp someone else’s importance, someone else’s success. I was  ‘Mr. Nobody’ until I killed the biggest Somebody on earth.” At his 2006 parole hearing, he stated: “The result would be that I would be famous, the result would be that my life would change and I would receive a tremendous amount of attention, which I did receive… I was looking for reasons to vent all that anger and confusion and low self-esteem.” (47) 

By attaching himself to fame of another, Chapman was able to elevate himself. Was it “low self-esteem” or merely Chapman’s way to achieve what everyone else is trying to achieve – importance and self-value? Weaver adds that:

• More than two hundred people confessed in 1932 to the kidnapping and murder of the infant son of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh. (50)

If we fail to be famous, at least we might have a crack at being infamous by attaching ourselves to fame. Could this pursuit for significance also explain why females throw themselves at the Rock Stars and the rich and famous? After all, we do not seek autographs bums but from the successful and the famous. Why? This elevate us, adding to our importance? (I like to boast that Charlie Manson had been my roommate for a few days!)  

And doesn’t our craving for recognition, even for immortality, also find its more common expression among people-pleasers? Isn’t this just another way - through the esteem of others - that we achieve significance? And then we become resentful and jealous when we fail to obtain this desired commodity.

I’m suggesting that all of these drives for worthiness, recognition, approval, significance, moral adequacy, success, and even for negative notoriety are connected. But what is the common glue or the underlying cause that gives rise to these various manifestations of the drive for adequacy? Underneath, we feel morally inadequate, unworthy, and insignificant and, therefore, try to compensate for this nagging awareness. We experience guilt and shame and try to cover these destabilizing feelings with the tokens of success and significance – applause and approval. We wear designer clothing to cover up our sense of inadequacy. And when we are bested in our quest, we feel diminished as did Gore Vidal by the success of his friends.

Do we feel morally threatened? Is our sense of adequacy and worthiness threatened when we fail to live up to our moral standards? Yes! This would suggest that we are not born with a blank moral slate but a parchment filled with moral laws. In “Mere Christianity,” C.S. Lewis observed that even the atheist cannot escape the moral law that has been written on his heart:

• Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promises to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining, “It’s not fair.”

Even though the atheist does not acknowledge an objective moral law, he inescapably acts as if he does. One evidence of this is the defensive excuses we make when we are accused of doing wrong:

• If we do not believe in decent behavior, why should we be so anxious to make excuses for not having behaved decently? The truth is we believe in decency so much—we feel the Rule of Law pressing on us so—that we cannot bear to face the fact that we are breaking it, and consequently we try to shift the responsibility.

We also compensate for our sense of moral inadequacy by trying to live a virtuous life, even if we don’t believe in the independent existence of virtue. I am not suggesting that there is anything wrong with this. However, if we are pursuing virtue for the wrong reasons – primarily to prove that we are good and morally adequate people – it will backfire on us and everyone around us. It will also make us intolerably self-righteous if we deem ourselves successful at proving our adequacy.

Instead, virtue must be pursued for virtue sake and not because it elevates us for the moment. (Often, the drug that elevates will also bring us crashing down.)

But why were we created to be obsessively driven to achieve significance and moral adequacy? We weren’t! We were created in such perfection that the first human couple went naked without any shame. What happened? They rebelled against God and refused to confess their sin. And this became the ultimate moral and relational Big Bang. It blew us apart from our life-sustaining relationship with our Maker where achieving significance had never been an issue. We were, therefore, banished into the very state of autonomy that we had so longed for and have been suffering ever since, awaiting the return of our Creator-Savior-Healer.

Our Absurd Attempts to Fill the Emptiness

The French mathematician and philosopher Rene Pascal had observed that we have a God-shaped vacuum within, which demands to be filled, and God promises to intimately fill it:

• I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the LORD… I will plant her for myself in the land; I will show my love to the one I called 'Not my loved one.' I will say to those called 'Not my people,' 'You are my people'; and they will say, 'You are my God.'" (Hosea 2:19-20, 23)

King David also anticipated this eternal and divine filling of the vacuum:

• You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand. (Psalm 16:11)

Closer still, looking towards this salvation, we can savor the presence of our Savior:

• Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls. (1 Peter 1:8-9)

However, it is not just Christians who long for this painful emptiness to be filled. Rather, the entire history of humankind testifies that we have been desperately trying to fill the void by proving our significance or worth. We have sought money, power, accomplishments, influence, and popularity in a futile attempt to fill the vacuum.

Perhaps there is no sight quite as ludicrous as humanity in pursuit of something – some recognition, house or piece of clothing – that will satisfy but never finding it. Yes, we find it for a few moments, but then, again dissatisfied, we hunger for more. When the richest man of the world was asked, “How much more money will you need to be happy,” he answered, “Always a little bit more!” Such satisfaction is always elusive.

In The Significant Life, attorney George M. Weaver provides many examples of the absurdity of our quest for self-importance to fill the crying vacuum:

• Salvador Dali once said, “The thought of not being recognized [is] unbearable”…Lady Gaga sings, “I live for the applause, applause, applause…the way that you cheer and scream for me.” She adds in another song, “yes we live for the Fame, Doin’ it for the Fame, Cuz we wanna live the life of the rich and famous.” (7)

Writer Gore Vidal had been very transparent about this:

• “Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.” (58)

Clearly, this drive for significance tears at friendship, dividing apart instead of bringing together. Comedian Al Jolson had also reflected our pathetic condition:

• According to his biographer, “He once had a team of performing elephants fired because he thought the audience liked them too much.” (59)

For some, the closest they can come to immortality is the acclaim of the crowd. Even the fantastically successful never outgrow this quest. Napoleon laughably boasted:

• There is no immortality but the memory that is left in the minds of men… History I conquered rather than studied.” (12)

People attempt to fill the vacuum of insignificance in many different ways, even those who seem to have made it. Weaver cites President Lyndon B. Johnson as an example of this:

• According to one commentator, “It is a curious footnote to history that long before he ran into trouble, Johnson had turned central Texas into a living monument to his heritage and his journey to the summit (the L.B.J birthplace, the L.B.J. boyhood home, the L.B.J. state park, the L.B.J. ranch and more).” (22)

If the vacuum had been created to be satisfied only by a divine relationship – a relationship with our Maker and Savior - filling the vacuum on our own is merely another form of masturbation.

Our attempt to fill the vacuum can appear even more absurd:

• In 2005 Joseph Stone torched a Pittsfield, Massachusetts apartment building… After setting the blaze, Stone rescued several tenants from the fire and was hailed as a hero. Under police questioning, Stone admitted, however, that he set the fire and rescued the tenants because, as summarized at trial by an assistant district attorney, he “wanted to be noticed, he wanted to be heard, he wanted to be known.” (44)

Evidently, this drive for significance is so powerful that it can overrule the moral dictates of conscience. One mass-murderer gunman explained in his suicide note, “I’m going to be f_____ famous.” (45)

How pathetic but also how human! Some have the resources to pursue significance in a socially approved way; others do not. Is there really much of a difference between these two groups?

This drive for significance can even override all other considerations. On December 8, 1980, Mark David Chapman, a zealous fan of the Beatle, John Lennon, first obtained his idol’s autograph before gunning him down. He explained:

• “I was an acute nobody. I had to usurp someone else’s importance, someone else’s success. I was  ‘Mr. Nobody’ until I killed the biggest Somebody on earth.” At his 2006 parole hearing, he stated: “The result would be that I would be famous, the result would be that my life would change and I would receive a tremendous amount of attention, which I did receive… I was looking for reasons to vent all that anger and confusion and low self-esteem.” (47)

Absurd? To the max! But are we more rational? Superficially, we might look better than others, but are we really better? Both groups are narcissistically pursuing an impossible goal and have rejected a God who has promised to elevate us in a way that only He can. Instead, we have opted to go our own way, even if it means addiction to things that cannot satisfy. Perhaps we are all Mark David Chapmans struggling to fill the vacuum with whatever the available means, even if it means social disapproval:

• More than two hundred people confessed in 1932 to the kidnapping and murder of the infant son of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh. (50)

The need for self-importance is so powerful that people are willing to pay almost any price for it. However, observing the meaninglessness of this pursuit, some have converted this absurd quest into a quest for virtue. It might take the form of a moral-crusader.

The religious leadership of Jesus’ day also sought to fill the vacuum, but with impressive religious displays instead of the real thing – the unshakable love that comes from God, the source of all being and self-definition, the one who can definitively tell us who we are and affirm it. Jesus continually exposed the do-gooder perversion:

• "Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full… And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.” (Matthew 6:1-2, 5)

Instead of courting God, they courted the approval of man to their own detriment. While God offered us an eternal marriage where we would find fullness of joy, we rejected this offer for the immediate but fleeting esteem of man.

What if we considered our pathetic condition - pursuing things that can never satisfy but enslave and addict? What if we were able to see that our absurd strivings are universal? Perhaps we might see that we have lost our way.

Adam and Eve lost their way. They had sinned and refused to confess it. Instead, they took matters into their own hands and thought they could escape God’s scrutiny and cover their shame with fig leaves. We have been doing this ever since. However, our fig leaves are dollars, PHDs, possessions, and recognition. Should we not instead be asking:

• How can I escape my jail of meaningless striving? How is it that humanity is characterized by the same futility? Is there any remedy? What must I do to connect with the Savior? What response does He want from me?

According to the Bible, the way up is the way down, humbling ourselves to confess our sins, recognizing that we are utterly incapable of filling our own vacuum. Here’s how the Apostle John put it:

• If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives. (1 John 1:8-10)

Confessing our sins is also to confess that we are unable to fill our vacuum. When we humble ourselves in this manner, He will lift us up.