By Dr. Mark H. Creech
Many people see God as some kind of diffuse entity, one like “the force” depicted in the famous Star Wars trilogy. The Bible, however, portrays God as a personal being who deeply cares for us and wants a meaningful, personal relationship with us. Still, many struggle with believing in God. They feel that to believe in him is to abandon all reason and take a huge leap into the dark. [1]
You may have heard the story about the man on the roof of his two story home trying to repair his TV satellite disk. Suddenly he slipped and started sliding down and over the edge. At the last second, he grabbed the rain gutter and held on for dear life.
“Help! Help! Help!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Is there anyone down there who can help me?” he cried, desperately looking about. There was no answer. He then looked into the heavens and asked, “Is there anyone up there who can help me?”
The clouds suddenly parted and a deep, resonant voice came from the sky, saying, “Believe and let go.”
“Is there anyone else up there that can help me?” the man yelled in response. [2]
Today society is full of atheists, agnostics, and skeptics. They’re growing in number and they’re wary of anything they can’t see or touch. Their wills won’t follow what their minds can’t comprehend. In fact, such are the leading voices in academia and other high places of influence.
But Christianity provides the best of reasons for believing. It’s not simply a leap in the dark to trust in Christ. In fact, when the evidence concerning him is carefully considered, the preponderance of it leads to the conclusion that Christ is exactly who he claimed to be – the Son of God – the Messiah – the Savior of the world – God wrapped in humanity.
Lee Strobel, a skeptic, who earned a law degree at Yale University and was also an award-winning legal affairs journalist for the Chicago Tribune, decided he would use his training and journalistic skills to prove that Christianity was untrue. But Stroble became a believer when he looked at the facts.
Among the many evidences concerning the reliability of the Christian religion, Strobel was stunned by the scientific proof that Jesus was the Messiah. He was most impressed with the work of Peter Stoner, a mathematician, who demonstrated the possibility of any one person fulfilling only eight of the 333 Old Testament prophecies concerning Christ was one in 1017 – that’s 1 with seventeen zeros behind it. To fulfill forty-eight of those prophecies would be 1 in 10157!
Strobel then realized this would be like finding “a single predetermined atom among all the atoms in a trillion trillion trillion trillion billion universes the size of our own universe.” Strobel, finally did the only intellectually honest thing he could do – he acknowledged Jesus was indeed the long-awaited Messiah. [3]
The evidences for Christianity are voluminous for anyone really having the courage to investigate them. It takes mettle to examine Christ’s claims because discovering that he really is God, as he said, is a totally life-altering experience. Unfortunately, most people are unwilling to change their lives. They don’t want to have to modify their behavior.
Daniel Webster was once asked, “What is the most important thought you ever entertained?” Webster replied, “The thought of my individual responsibility to God.” [4] The great preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, once contended when a man speaks in unbelief, it’s a “foolish heart speaking and endeavoring to clamor down the voice of conscience.” [5]
In other words, unbelief is more a problem of the heart than of the head. Man, the Scriptures teach, has a fallen nature – one that is bent toward resistance of any admission that God is the Creator and lawgiver and that this lawgiver will be our Judge and require an accounting of our lives.
Interestingly, in a public television interview of Sir Julian Huxley several years ago, the most prestigious evolutionary scientist in the world at that time, Huxley was asked, “Why do you think evolution caught on so quickly?” You might have expected Huxley to say because of the overwhelming scientific evidence. Instead he answered, “We all jumped at The Origin [The Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin] because the idea of God interfered with our sexual mores.” [6]
Bertrand Russell was a brilliant philosopher, but he hated Christianity. He wrote a book titled Why I Am Not a Christian. Russell argued if one accepted the evolutionary scientific view of randomness, then life would have no meaning. He preferred philosophy over an evolutionary scientific worldview. But Russell really didn’t discount Christianity because of science or philosophy. His primary reason for rejecting it was because its tenants interfered with his sinful lifestyle.
Russell was a terrible philanderer who had multiple marriages and divorces. One judge who granted a divorce to his wife said he was a rogue guilty of adulteries worse than any self-respecting adulterer would commit. He was constantly trying to seduce women. Once he was invited to stay with a physician friend for two nights and on the second night he tried to seduce his host’s teenage daughter. Is there any wonder Russell didn’t want to become a Christian? It would have required an end to his sexual escapades. [7]
Nothing can more radically change a life for good than faith in Jesus Christ. The Bible says, “[T]hose who become Christians become new persons. They are not the same anymore, for the old life is gone. A new life has begun” (II Corinthians 5:17, New Living Translation).
Faith in Christ makes all the difference in a person’s conduct. Of course, there will be some who argue you can still be a good person without faith. Granted, there are people who live reasonably decent lives without believing, but when they do, they simply piggy-back on Christian ethics. Moreover, unless the code for morality followed has a strong external authority, most people won’t follow it.
Sadly, because unbelief is at an all-time high, morals are at an all-time low. In fact, not only is this true for America, but also for all of Western Civilization which is now at a breaking point.
Just this week, a young man walked into a movie theatre in Colorado with a shotgun and other weapons and indiscriminately opened fire, killing 12 innocent people. The horror of it! These acts of random violence are becoming so commonplace; Americans hardly think that much about it anymore. It’s a sad commentary on how far the morality of our nation has fallen.
Once again, faith is the answer, more specifically, faith in Jesus Christ.
Margaret Thatcher, one of England’s greatest prime ministers once admonished:
“The Christian religion – which, of course, embodies many of the great spiritual and moral truths of Judaism – is a fundamental part of our national heritage. For centuries it has been our lifeblood. Indeed, we are a nation whose ideals are founded on the Bible. Also, it is quite impossible to understand our history or literature without grasping this fact…
But I go further than this. The truths of the Judeo-Christian tradition are infinitely precious, not only, as I believe, because they are true, but also because they provide the moral impulse which alone can lead to peace, in the true meaning of the word, for which we all long…
But there is little hope for democracy if the hearts of men and women in democratic societies cannot be touched by a call to something greater than themselves.” [8]
How true. The cost of unbelief is always high on both a personal and a societal level.
While we continue to slide down the slippery slope of human wisdom and moral decay, trying to hold on for dear life, let us repent of our sins before its too late, and with real faith acknowledge there is none below or above that can save us but God.
Resources
[1] Rusty Wright & Linda Raney Wright, 500 Clean Jokes and Humorous Stories and How To Tell Them, Barbour Publishing, Inc. Urichsville, Ohio, pg. 192
[2] Ibid, pg. 192
[3] D. James Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe, What If the Bible Had Never Been Written, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tenn., 1998, Information Regarding Lee Strobel, pgs. 214-215
[4] Ibid, pg. 28
[5] C.H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of David, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Mich., 1957, Vol. 1, pg. 161
[6] D. James Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe, What If the Bible Had Never Been Written, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tenn., 1998, Information Regarding Sir Julian Huxley, pg. 28
[7] Ibid, Information Regarding Bertrand Russell, pgs. 26-27
[8] Ibid, pg. 28