Dr. William Boyd once wrote a book by the same title which included letters his skeptic father had written to him and his answers to those letters from the perspective of a believer in Christ. I thought I would do the same in this blog post.
When skeptics accuse Christians of not being reasonable, of being weak and afraid, folks who need to create a God to lean on to feel more secure and content, I point out that the impersonal god (or gods) men have invented over the centuries of our existence as a species does seem to allay our fears and give us more strength. Sinful man is indeed inclined to believe in a God of our own design. The design to play to our human wants and needs is obvious in the nature of the invented gods ranging from the legalistic God of Islam, who lays down the law to motivate human beings to behave better, to the other extreme, a pantheistic God who doesn’t hold us accountable for our behavior, and every concept of a deity in between the two extremes. None of the religions built around such designed gods present the Christian God of love and mercy, a righteous and holy God who enters into history and interacts with his creation in expecting us to be accountable for our behavior but also providing us with a Savior to wipe away our sin which separates us from him because he knows we cannot do enough good to reconnect with him. Through such love and grace, we are reconnected to our God for all of eternity.
Skeptics claim that expecting to be saved through belief alone is too easy. I tell them that this isn’t the whole story. We understand from reading the Bible that our belief is given to us by God and motivates us to do good things for our fellow man, things we sinners are not naturally inclined to do, to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek, to be the person Christ describes in his Sermon on the Mount. No human being would ever design a God like this, and indeed no one did. God is not the figment of our imagination, the wishful thought of a desparate person, he is the God the pharaoh defined in the movie “Ten Commandments,” when he said, “His God is God.”
This God of Scripture is the one who saves us, but he seems to ask too much of us in return. We instinctively rebel against God anyway and surely rebel against such a personal, busy-body God, watching over our every move, holding us accountable and responsible for our behavior. No, he’s not the God for us; any God but him. Belief in some God makes sense, but a belief in such a personal God doesn’t make sense at all, does it? Nonetheless, a philosopher, a man who is respected for knowing how to make sense, Jean Paul Sartre, the atheist author of a book he called “Being and Nothingness,” recanted his unbelief towards the end of his life. He admitted that there is not only a creator God, a God who “prepared him and prefigured him,” but a God who actually “expected him,” and that admission points to a personal God, a God who not only created him but placed him there for a purpose he expected him to achieve. Author, Cabana Chronicles contributor and resident Theologian, Charles Leopardo adds: “If there is a Creator such a being must in some sense be “personal” since creating anything requires will and intention and some kind of plan. Besides this the created world certainly includes persons like us. How could an impersonal being have created us? How could such an entity have even conceived of persons if personality were not intrinsic to its being? The very fact that individual persons exist proves the existence of a personal God. Unless of course, the universe and we are purely the result of a chance combination of elements rather than the product of intentional design.” Note: Jean Paul Sartre refuted that belief when he stated that he didn’t believe were just a “speck of dust.” Charles concudes in saying that “the idea of an impersonal Creator is inherently illogical.” Well, since skeptics who are familiar with John Paul Sartre’s intellect would never claim he was an illogical person, I say that if Sartre can admit to believing in a personal God, this refutes the validity of the skeptic’s accusaton that only unreasonable, illogical people believe in the God of Scripture, the God theologian Francis Schaeffer referred to as “The God who is there.”
When the skeptic then attacks the credibility of the Bible by stating that it is no more than just a fictional book of myths and fairytales, I admit to him that all the books in the canon of the Bible do tell a story. This is because God knows we learn best through stories. He tells his story through men he has chosen to inspire to write down what he wants to say to us who believe in him. I admit that the biblical stories do seem like myths, but point out what apologist C. S. Lewis (an expert in mythology) once described as a “mythical radiance” about them. They aren’t like any other myths ever written. They’re really good stories, particularly Christ’s parables, and not all the biblical stories are to be taken literally. Whether an unbeliever disagrees with me regarding how old the earth is, how long man has been on earth or whether a whale swallowed Jonah or not, this does not take away from what God intends for us to learn from his Word. The Bible lends itself to using reason to interpret its true meaning if we understand that many other literary styles are used by the writers of the books in the Bible in addition to the literal. Rejecting Scripture as fictional because a person doesn’t believe that God and Satan had a divine conversation about allowing Job to be tempted, for example, is not a valid reason if we understand there’s a point to the story regardless of whether it is taken literally or not. The point is not to present a divine history, but to show us how suffering can occur and how we are to deal with it. The Bible is filled with such stories, and like a fable or a myth, always makes an important point. No other book tells such varied stories as the Bible tells us in relating the story of creation, the story of the history of the Jews and their prophets, the introduction of God’s law for his chosen people, and finally ends in where it began by telling the story of a man who actually existed in history, a story told by eyewitness authors who later gave their lives for refusing to admit the story they told was a lie. It’s the greatest story ever told, and that’s why I always tell people that it’s worth the read regardless of one’s beliefs.
Yes, the Bible was written by mere men, but these men were inspired by God to write his Word down correctly and accurately, and indeed, when we compare the books found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were written in the first century, with our Bible today, there’s a most certain correlation. More learned and studied men than aggressive, atheistic authors like Hitchens and Dawkins have been attacking the credibility of Scripture since the writings were introduced and the canon organized and not made their case. Unbelievers should at least agree with believers when we say that there is no other book like the Bible ever written. The canon totals 66 books written over 1,500 years by over 40 different authors, and it tells a consistent story about one man, a man who admitted to us that he was actually God, a man Christians believe died for our sins to justify us before the God who sent him to do this because “He so loved the world.” Even unbelievers admit that Jesus Christ was the most unique person in history, and admit that he was the perfect moral model and teacher. But then again, Christ doesn’t leave us with the option of believing he was just a good man, a perfect moral teacher but rejecting what he said about him actually being so much more than a good man; the part about him being God. If that’s a lie, he can’t be a good man or the perfect teacher of morality because good men don’t lie. So then, there’s that to consider.
Despite what the Catholic Church claims about the Bible being a difficult book to read and requires an infallible interpreter (like the Catholic Church proclaims to be) to tell its followers what it means, Scripture is really just a collection of writings about God’s grace, love, and Jesus Christ from Genesis through Revelation, and the message is really easy to understand: Believe in me and be saved. (John 14:6). I challenge every unbeliever to do as Augustine suggested we all do: Take up and read.”
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