Dear John,
I am a Christian. I appreciate your stated recognition that Christians are intelligent people. I also appreciate your concern for the moral condition of this world and especially your anger over the presence of evil in the world. Everyone wants the world to be a better place. In everything that I have seen of what you and others on this site have written, it seems to me that you are under the impression that Christianity is a state of mind. It is not a state of mind, it is a state of being. This is crucial for you to understand because it means that I cannot be intellectually persuaded out of faith. I sustain this in the context of the rest of this post and am willing to clarify anything you wish.
On your website, you claim that you members were all once Christians who have seen the light and turned away from an untenable faith. This very statement proves that you do not understand Christianity because a Christian cannot lose his salvation. Please follow the argument very carefully. I know that you do not believe in Christian doctrine, but the line of argument will show you that you are imputing a belief onto Christianity that is not Christian, whatever it may be.
If you say that a person can “lose” his salvation, than you are saying that you can be bad enough to be rejected by God. This necessitates logically that there must be good things you can do to earn salvation. Christian doctrine clearly teaches that you cannot earn salvation, it is a gift and it comes through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. This is the crux of why Christianity is a state of being. I am in a relationship with God. I talk to him and he speaks to me. This also has to be sustained, I will come back to it.
There are two kinds of “ex-Christians” as you call yourselves and neither of these two categories have ever been real Christians. The first category, which most of you probably fall into, are those who have an intellectual perception of Christianity but have never entered into a relationship with Jesus Christ. These type of people tried very hard at the Christian thing trying to do all kinds of Christian activities to fill the void resulting from the lack of relationship. Their faith was head knowledge without heart knowledge and was works based. These people never really understood Christianity and unfortunately, Christians failed to help them.
The second category are people who encountered God experientially, but because of pride and narcissism, were unwilling to bow their being to God and preferred to pursue their own lifestyle apart from God. Stalin is an exemplary example of this. He was a seminary student and at a critical point in his life decided he preferred to pursue his own road apart from God. The major distinction here is that he knew with all his being that God existed and chose not to worship him. Svetlana Stalin, his daughter, told the English Journalist, Malcolm Muggeridge, that on his death bed, her father’s last act was to raise his fist to the heavens and shake it at God. Another example is a popular english author whose books contain an entire pantheon of gods. When asked if he was religious, he said, “No, I am an athiest who is mad at God for not, not existing.”
G.K. Chesterton wrote that Christianity has not been tried to be found wanting, but has been found difficult and left untried. One of the significant arguments that I see threading your writing is an outburst of discontent at the evil in the world and the impossibility of God existing in such a corrupt world. But when you talk about evil, are you not assuming that there is such a thing as good. If there is such a thing as good, then there has to be a moral law on the basis of which to distinguish good and evil. If there is a moral law, there must be a moral law giver. In case you think I am setting up a straw man, let me give it to you syllogistically.
Objective Moral Values exist if God exists.
Objective moral values do exist.
Therefore, God exists.
If you claim the atheistic or agnostic position, the question of evil is a mute point; it completely dissolves itself. There is no such thing. You can only talk about evil and suffering in the framework of an ultimate cause; God.
I do not want to minimize the atrocities that have been committed in the name of Christianity. I take those things very seriously. But it is important to point out, that all those atrocities occurred in violation of Christ’s teaching rather than in support of it. They did not follow the teaching of Christ. When atrocities were committed in the name of Christ, it was in violation of the teaching of Christ. In contrast, more people have died in the 20th Century than in the previous 19 put together because of atrocities. These deaths were caused by atheism and it was the logical outworking of the atheist belief system.
The following quotation comes from Nietzsche:
“Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: I seek God I seek God ---As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated?---Thus they yelled and laughed.
The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. Whither is God? he cried; I will tell you. We have killed him---you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the grave diggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.
How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us---for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. I have come too early, he said then; my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars---and yet they have done it themselves.
It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God? ”
Nietzche really believed as you seem to, that he had killed God with his philosophical knife. But the key is this. When you reject God, you assume his place. You elevate yourself to “godhood.” Nietzsche said that because “man becomes the measure of all things” in the absence of God, the 20th Century would become the bloodiest century in history. He was right. Stalin, Hitler, Mao were all athiests and they obliterated millions of people.
Viktor Frankl, founder of the Logotherapy School of Psychology, and holocaust survivor, wrote in his book, The Doctor and the Soul, “if you present man with a concept of man that is not true, you may well corrupt him. If you present him as an automaton of reflexes, as a mind machine, as a bundle of instincts, drives, and reactions you will feed the nihilism to which modern man is in any case prone. I became acquainted with the last stages of corruption in my second concentration camp, Auschwitz. The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the belief that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment, or as the Nazis liked to say, ‘of blood and soil.’ The gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared, not in some ministry or other in Berlin, but at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.”
Does this mean that all athiests are violent and cruel people? Not at all. But atheism lends itself logically to nihilistic and narcistic conclusions. I find this to be a double standard, and certainly I do not understand how the question of evil can be justified outside of the framework of God.
Inside of the “God framework,” how does one address the problem of evil?
If I walked up to you and said, “Hi, my name is Tsheej and I am perfect.” You would hold me in contempt or laugh at me or something to that affect and your reaction would betray you. It is universally recognized that nobody is perfect, that we are all flawed, and that we all do things we regret. The bible calls this sin.
In his book, The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis uses the concepts of heaven and hell to draw a distinction between the choices that we make in our lives. His basic idea is that in life, we are either making choices that mold us more and more into the person God created us to be*, or our choices are causing us to become shadows of what God intended us to be. For example, if a person was gripped by greed, he would degrade as a human being as he became more and more consumed by greed. In modern psychological terms, you would call it pathological I think. A person who becomes increasingly obsessed with sex and eventually degrades into rape or child molestation. They reach a degree where it becomes a pathological addiction and they even convince themselves that they are doing their victim a favor. This illustrates the kind of degradation Lewis was talking about.
I spent two years working with boys in trouble. All of my boys had been abused, many were abused sexually. And in many cases, if they had been abused, they had a parent or grandparent who had been abused, never dealt with it, and passed it on to the next generation. I was sitting around a campfire with a bunch of junior high students and the question came up: Ernest Hemmingway–he committed suicide, his father committed suicide, and his grandfather committed suicide, is suicide genetic. Obviously, it can’t be genetic or it would suicide its genes out of existence. But the pain that can be passed generationally had a lot to do with it.
When you look at the mass wipe outs of whole populations in the old testament you really need to understand what was going on because it is documented history, both written, and archeologically. When God told the Israelites to wipe out the nations around them, there was a very specific reason. They were doing some incredibly heinous evils. They were sacrificing their own sons and daughters on altars to pagan gods. God knew that if he just wiped out the parents, the pain and experiences that had been passed on to the children would continue when they grew older. It was a hellish society to live in. Go back to the time of Sodom and Gomorrah. God said, if I can find even 10 good people in the city, I will save it. You wanna know what kind of stuff was going on in Sodom and Gomorrah? Look at what was happening in Judges. A Levite walks into town and the men of the city come pounding on the door demanding sex with him. “Don’t do this horrible thing” says his host. Here, have his concubine instead. They rape her till daybreak and leave her dead on his doorstep and it does not bother him enough to do something until she’s dead. Somehow rape wasn’t so bad, but killing her, that goes too far????
This is mild guys. God didn’t wipe out whole cities because of this. It got a lot worse first. By the time he got around to wiping out whole cities, there was not any redemptive hope for them. They had become so evil they had walked a similar road of degradation that sex offenders today walk. They were but shadows of what God created them to be and as the author of life, he also had the authority to take life. That does not make him evil. He is, after all, the definition of good. All through the old testament God is implementing his plan for redemption. He sent Jonah to the Ninevites to call them to repentance.
Ultimately, God dealt with the evil in the world, brought on by man’s choices. Even Mohatmah Ghandi, a devout Hindu, said that the cross of Christ was the most overwhelming aspect of the Christian faith and singularly unique. Christ atoned for our sin on the cross and rose again. Now, the disciples could have made it easy on themselves and said he “spiritually rose from the dead.” Then nobody could ever prove them wrong. But they didn’t. They said that he “bodily rose from the dead.” All that had to be done was to find the body and this fledgling following of Jesus Christ would have dissipated and all of history would be different. But the body has never been accounted for and these men went to their deaths for spreading Christ’s message and he has become the most influential man in history? Do you really think they would have gone to their deaths to preserve a lie? Do you really think he became this influential by accident?
But ultimately, what makes the cross of Christ so unique is that it is God’s answer to evil and suffering in the world. In his book, “Night,” Elie Wiesel tells the story of a hanging. One of the victims was a young boy and as he hung there struggling and everyone forced to watch, Wiesel said, “Somewhere from within a voice welled up saying, “where is God in all of this?” Equally out of nowhere welled up in him the answer, “right there, hanging on the gallows, where else?” The crux of the Christian answer is that God took all the evil of all mankind, all the suffering we have ever felt upon himself and died. But he rose again and conquered evil and suffering.
Rich Mullins said, “The Bible is not a book for the faint of heart. It is a book filled with all the violence, tenderness, and sex that befits mankind. It is not a bunch of pretty little anecdotes mouthed by pious little church mice, it does not so much nibble at your shoes as it cuts to the marrow and splits the bone. It does not give us answers to our small-minded questions but truth that goes beyond what we even know to ask.”
C.S. Lewis, two years before he became a Christian said his struggle to know God could be likened to Hamlet trying to get to know Shakespeare. It could only happen if Shakespeare wrote himself into the play. Imagine Hamlet walking through the courtyard and bumping into a funny looking man in Elizabethan dress. The funny looking man says, Hello Hamlet, my name is Shakespeare and I created this world you live in. I know there have been a lot of strange goings on around court but don’t worry. I am in control of everything and it will all work out in the end.” We all think, “yeah right it will.” Lewis said that was what held him back. But two years later he became a Christian and he wrote that he realized that his shakespeare illustration was a perfect metaphor of what God had done through Christ.
When you base your entire world view on reason, you are starting with a particular and you will never find the universal. Even Plato learned this. You must start with the universal and work to the particular, not the other way around. Your world view is so narrow. I am not a Christian because one line of evidence (logic) is convincing to me. I am a Christian because all the lines of evidence (including logic) overwhelmingly support it and that includes personal daily interaction with God. I can answer all your questions adequately but not exhaustively. To answer your questions exhaustively I would have to be God. I am not God and so I cannot answer exhaustively. But I can answer them adequately, by the power of God, so long as they are not nonsense questions. I guarantee that I will not use ad hominems or blow off any questions. If I don’t know, I will tell you so rather than make up trash. But I am convinced there is not a necessary question that cannot be answered thoroughly. There are no contradictions in the bible, only perceived ones and I can maintain this statement against scrutiny as well.
The concept of a Triune God is actually very very logical. I can assert the triune God on the three-fold test of logical consistency, empirical adequacy, and experiential relevance. However, you must realize that is a completely separate discussion from the one on the existence of God. One must grant the existence of God before this discussion can take place.
Blessings,
Tsheej
