SEEING AND DISBELIEVING

Gary

looks at the case for the reality of God’s existence

Iremember a friend blushing profusely when her fellow youth group leader suddenly stood up and said: “Right – it’s about time we went out!” Although she leapt up in response, to her horror she realised he was telling the kids around him that it was time to play football; he wasn’t asking her out on a date!

Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to focus on one thing – in my colleague’s case, the handsome youth leader – that we fail to see what’s really going on.

Take magic shows, for instance. We may think we’ve seen someone sawn in half or turned into a human pincushion as swords are being inserted into a narrow box but, for health and safety reasons if nothing else, we clearly haven’t!

It’s the things we didn’t notice – the concealed compartments, trapdoors, contortionists or doubles – that make the deception possible.

Our attention is drawn to one area of the stage, so we don’t see what’s going on in another. Seeing shouldn’t necessarily mean believing, and we shouldn’t be under any illusions about that!

When I was a child, I saw something brown in our front garden. My eyes told my brain it was a cat but, when I went closer to examine the unmoving creature, I realised it was a brown paper bag! Later, when I started wearing glasses, I finally saw things clearly. (Before that, I’d assumed that distant objects looked blurred to everyone.)

I experienced something similar when God revealed Himself to me. It was like being given spiritual spectacles. The way I saw life changed totally. As CS Lewis once wrote: ‘I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.’

But what about those who don’t believe? Romans 1:20 reminds us that ‘God’s invisible qualities – His eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen… so that people are without excuse.’

When I was small, I believed in God, but I became friends with an atheist and stopped believing. Was it the strength of my friend’s arguments that convinced me that God didn’t exist, or was it the fact that, in my sinful, wilful, unregenerate heart, I wanted to believe He didn’t exist so I could do what I liked without any consequences?

Psalm 14:1 states: ‘The fool says in his heart, “There is no God”’ but because biblical folly is associated with moral deficiency rather than stupidity, I wonder if some people prefer not to believe in God because it’s more convenient that way.

After all, unbelief asks nothing, demands nothing, requires nothing. But that doesn’t make it right!

Romans 1:18-19 tells us: ‘The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain.’

As Hebrews 9:27 says: ‘…people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.’

For those who don’t believe in Jesus, all that’s left is to place one’s hope in chance, karma, fate or luck – a kind of nervously crossing one’s fingers and hoping for the best.

Others, however, echo the defiant words of William Ernest Henley’s poem, Invictus: ‘Out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul… It matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.’

But that’s not really true! We have no control over our punishment or fate.

The 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes described man’s existence as being one of ‘continual fear, and danger of violent death… poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’

For those who don’t believe in Jesus, what Hobbes referred to as his ‘last voyage, a great leap in the dark’ must surely be terrifying.

Another philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, claimed in 1882: ‘God is dead... And we have killed him.’ Seven years later, Nietzsche suffered a complete mental breakdown. He died 11 years later, having struggled with pneumonia, dementia and a series of strokes.

God of course remains very much alive, as the existence of our complex and confusing world attests. The fool may say in his heart "There is no God", but what will happen when the fool’s life comes to an end and, like Nietzsche, he is no more?