If You Reject God, You've Only Done Half the Job!

Blog Series

Why Believe in God?

If You Reject God, You’ve Only Done Half the Job.

  In our final blog post in this series on believing in God, subtitled: If You Reject God You’ve Only Done Half the Job, we will summarize the things we've discussed these last several months, and bring the main point to a sharp focus. It's a little longer than my normal blog, but hang in there. The final story was a game-changer for me. It is common for people to object to something about God or the Bible and then use that as a reason to reject God Himself. They may object to...

1. A lack of scientific evidence to prove God.
2. The existence of pain, evil, and suffering.
3. Apparent contradictions and errors in the Bible.
4. Miracles, especially the resurrection of Jesus.
5. All the failures of those who believe in him.

Then, people often assume that if they simply reject God, they don’t have to worry about answering to Him. But if they reject God they’ve only done half the job. The other half is that they must explain how the universe around us came into being.

The five free miracles that modern science asks us to give them.

Miracle #1: Not having to explain how something came from nothing.

Miracle #2: Not having to explain how order came from chaos (Big Bang).

Miracle #3: Not having to explain how life came from non-life.

Miracle #4: Not having to explain how consciousness came from non-concious life.

Miracle #5: Not having to explain how transcendence came from consciousness.

As we've seen in the previous posts in this blog series, modern science has no explanation for these five things which are essential to explaining life as we know it, so they just agree to ignore them. Secular scientists lock arms and agree with one another not to let God into the equation. And therein lies their strength: the united unwillingness to consider anything outside the boundaries of their presuppositions. However, again as we've seen in this series, advancing knowledge in science, archaeology and history are combining to make it less and less credible to deny the existence of God. So why do people not believe in God? There are five 5 common reasons why people say they do not believe in God. Typically, secular scientists have troubling questions about God and Christianity.

Reason #1: They cannot reconcile the existence of pain, evil and suffering with a good God.

Reason #2: They cannot accept miracles, especially the resurrection of Jesus.

Reason #3: They cannot accept that there is only one way to God.

Reason #4: They cannot accept all the supposed contradictions and errors in the Bible.

Reason #5: They cannot accept that those who die without hearing of Christ could be lost.

These objections are not sufficient to reject God. There is no academic, intellectual or logical reason to reject God based on these objections. They all have credible scholarly answers, which I've discussed in previous blogs in this series, referenced in the links above. However, let's just briefly summarize the discussion of the last objection, regarding those who die without hearing of Christ. Romans 1 explains that, through nature and conscience, God has revealed Himself to everyone who has ever been born. If people respond to that light, He gives more light until eventually a person has enough information to believe in Him.

Those who do not believe in the true creator God suppress the truth revealed in nature and conscience, and create reasons to believe something else.

Therefore, those who reject the true creator God are ultimately without excuse - God will always reveal Christ to anyone who is truly desiring to follow Him, the one true creator God. Full truth is on the other side of belief If you simply want to win an argument, then you can treat this all as an intellectual game or academic exercise. But if you want be sure if it is safe to die, then you must press on. If modern science cannot explain reality without God (they have no credible explanation for any of the issues of the five miracles they require), then those objections are not sufficient to justify disbelieving in Him. There is too much at stake. Therefore, the only way to make sure it is safe to die is to, based on credible evidence (as discussed throughout this series) accept the reality of God, and on the other side of that belief, find the most credible explanation for your previous objections. My attempt to unbelieve Not long after I became a Christian in college, I made an attempt to unbelieve. I didn’t like the doctrine of hell. It seemed overkill to me to punish people for eternity simply for not believing in, or accepting God. It seemed to me that if I knew, by creating, that even one person would go to hell, I would be willing to not create. So why did God, knowing that people would go to hell, create humanity anyway? I couldn’t reconcile a loving God's doing such a thing. So I went looking for a worldview that didn’t include hell. And I found a number of them, including liberal Christianity. But when I accepted a worldview that solved the problem of hell, it created a cornucopia of other problems that were more difficult to resolve than hell. So in a gift of mercy, God brought me back to belief in him, in spite of my inability to reconcile the doctrine of hell with a good God. Coming to peace In the end, I processed this way. If I cannot explain reality without God, I must explain reality with God. The challenge I had was reconciling the reality of hell with a good and loving God. For me, these points, which I covered more completely in an earlier blog post, helped me reconcile it.

1. The Bible insists that God is good (not sufficient in and of itself, but a good starting point).
2. The Bible promises that in the end, God will resolve the pain, evil and suffering in the world.
3. God paid a terrible price to provide a solution for the problem of pain, evil and suffering, including the death of His Son, plus His own pain of having to witness all the pain, evil and suffering of all people for all time).
4. God’s overall teachings are of the highest order (do unto others as you would have others do unto you, love your enemies, turn the other cheek, etc.)
5. Everywhere, in all places and all times in history, whenever God is followed authentically, goodness, peace, love and joy bubble up, spill out and overflow.

So when I factor in reasons to trust God’s goodness in spite of the presence of pain, evil and suffering, I still do not understand the presence of evil and suffering, but I can accept and rest in His goodness in spite of my lack of understanding. As we conclude this blog series, the following story is an excellent illustration of this and was a game changer for me as I wrestled through this issue in my own life. Conclusion Corrie ten Boom was a Dutch Christian who helped Jews escape the Nazis in Germany during World War II. In her book, The Hiding Place, she told the story of when she was a young girl on a train trip with her father asking him what “sex-sin” meant. She had heard it and couldn’t imagine what it meant. Her father didn’t answer. Then, when the train stopped, her father asked her to carry a large and heavy piece of luggage for him. She tried, but couldn’t. It was too heavy.

“Yes,” he said. “And it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little girl to carry such a load. It's the same way, Corrie, with knowledge. Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger you can bear it. For now, you must trust me to carry it for you.”

And I was satisfied. More than satisfied --wonderfully at peace. There were answers to this and all my hard questions -- for now I was content to leave them in my father's keeping."

Corrie’s father had been so wise, so capable, so loving, and so kind in every other area of life for as long as she had known him, that he had accrued all the credibility necessary for Corrie to trust him in something she did not understand. The same is true with our God. He has demonstrated Himself to be so good and so loving in all other areas of life, that He has accrued all the credibility necessary to me to trust Him in something I do not understand.

 

In case you're new here

This blog post is part of a series titled "Why Believe in God? If You Reject God, You've Only Done Half the Job.", introduced on January 5, 2022. As the series continues, each succeeding post will be added to and available in the blog archives at www.maxanders.com.

If you know anyone who you think might enjoy joining us in this study, please forward this blog to them and encourage them to go to my web site (www.maxanders.com) and sign up for the free video, “Master the Bible So Well That the Bible Masters You”, available there on the home page. This will put them on my regular mailing list and they’ll receive my weekly blogs on this subject.

I look forward to going through this faith-affirming journey with you.