Hebrews 11:6 (NIV)
And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes
to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek
him.
As a
part of my daily devotions, I have been reading Reasonable Faith by
William Craig. In addition to this, I have been leading a class on Tim Keller’s
book The Reason for God. Both of these books take an in-depth look at the
reasonableness of belief in God.
While
Keller begins with the objections of people that he has encountered in New York
City, Craig tackles the philosophical foundations of belief and unbelief. In
his chapter, The Absurdity of Life Without God, he carefully examines the current
philosophies that lead people away from belief in God. He highlights three
significant concepts that define what it is like to live without God.
The
first concept is that of the meaning of life. Current philosophical thinking
says that life is basically meaningless. Our universe and consequently
humanity, were created by a series of unguided random events. Philosophers such
as Jean-Paul Sarte have concluded that because our world is a random accident
then life itself is meaningless. If there is not immortality and no God behind
our world then our lives have no ultimate meaning. We live our life-span and
then disappear. This leads us to relativism which means that there is no right
or wrong in the world. None of our actions have any ultimate meaning, therefore
there is no real point to life. Taken to its logical conclusion, this can only
lead to despair.
But even
Sarte struggled to find meaning in life. He chose to create his own meaning.
But this self-made meaning is an illusion, because we are just pretending that
a meaningless universe has meaning because I said so. In addition, my meaning
is uniquely mine and your meaning is uniquely yours. If our two meanings clash
there is not reconciliation. What self-made meaning does is trap us in our own
small selfish world.
Ultimate
meaning must come from outside of ourselves to be real. It must conform to some
standard that is universal. Believing in immortality and the existence of God
fills this gap. If God is the creator of our world and has offered to us life
after death, then He has infused meaning into our world.
The
second concept is that of the value of life. If indeed our world is just a collection
of random, unguided events, then there is no value in life. Both Camus and
Bertrand Russell promote the absurdity of life, yet strive to hold onto the
value of love and brotherhood. Russel
admits that he believes that life is absurd and meaningless yet he cannot live with
the idea that ethical values are simply a matter of personal choice. Society
cannot survive without some shared set of ethical standards. But these standards
become arbitrary and ultimately meaningless in a vacuum. They must come from
somewhere and be supported by something outside of the system.
Most
people are appalled at the horrors of our world; of man’s inhumanity to man.
They cry out for justice and fair play. Yet, they deny any absolute standard
that can produce these things. This produces a major conflict in people’s
lives. On what basis do they claim that people have value if there is not
ultimate standard for morality? If there is no God and no immorality then the
evil acts of people like Hitler will go unpunished and all the personal
sacrifices that people have made will go unrewarded.
The
Bible teaches us that our value comes from God and not from some arbitrary
value system. God has created us in his image to reflect his glory in the
world. He has created us to live forever with him. Our value does not waver
from culture to culture or philosophy to philosophy. Ultimately God will reward
those who have lived according to his standards and he will punish those who
have violated them. Evil will be dealt with and good will be rewarded.
The
third concept is that of purpose in life. From an atheistic point of view, the
purpose in life is existence. It is to make the most out of life as possible
while you can. This means maximizing your pleasure and happiness. But in the
end, a person’s life has no ultimate purpose. It does not matter if a person
ever existed. Any purpose that a person had dies with them and disappears. This
attitude does not lead to love and compassion but to self-interest and
self-fulfillment. If life ultimately has no value and no meaning then it has no
purpose either. When people come to this conclusion it also leads to despair. It
is well documented that a person who lives wholly for themselves actually destroys
the happiness they so aggressively seek.
If God
does exist and has a plan for humanity, as the Bible teaches, then life has a
transcendent purpose. It frees people to love and sacrifice for others. It
fosters connections between people that go far beyond happiness.
Many who
want to deny the existence of God turn to some God-substitute to fill the gap.
Francis Crick in his book, The Origin of the Genetic Code, personifies Nature,
with a capital “N”. He attributes the qualities normally given to God to Nature
instead. This is very common at street level. It is not uncommon to hear people
who reject the idea of God refer for Mother Nature as a particular force that
has some influence in their life. Carl Sagan has done the same thing with the “Cosmos”.
Though these men profess not to believe in God, they smuggle in a
God-substitute because they cannot bear to live in a universe in which
everything is the chance result of impersonal forces.
I know I
have done an imperfect job of explaining this complex and highly significant debate.
But I hope I have caused you to explore this further on your own. The bottom
line is that taken to its logical conclusion, living as if God does not exist
leads to absurdity. Living with God at the center of your life replaces
absurdity with hope, purpose, meaning, and reality.
Le me
suggest a few books for further exploration.
1. The Reason for God by Tim Keller
2. Making Sense of God by Tim Keller
3. Reasonable Faith by William Craig
4. The Case for Faith by Lee Strobel
Taking
God out of the equation of life literally takes away the foundation that
humanity has stood upon for 1000’s of years. The question is, are we better off
without God in the equation?
Romans 1:18-20
(NIV)
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness
and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what
may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.
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.
