The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

by Timothy J. Keller

First, since our respective views of reality are based in great part on faith, we must stop expecting the rest of the world to simply bow its knee to our particular set of faith assumptions.

First, each side should accept that both religious belief and skepticism are on the rise. Atheist author Sam Harris and Religious Right leader Pat Robertson should each admit the fact that his particular tribe is strong and increasing in influence. This would eliminate the self-talk that is rampant in each camp, namely that it will soon be extinct, overrun by the opposition. Nothing like that is imminently possible. If we stopped saying such things to ourselves it might make everyone more civil and generous toward opposing views.

There will always be a remnant!

Believers should acknowledge and wrestle with doubts—not only their own but their friends’ and neighbors’.

At the end of each process, even if you remain the skeptic or believer you have been, you will hold your own position with both greater clarity and greater humility. Then there will be an understanding, sympathy, and respect for the other side that did not exist before.

After they wrestle with doubts and objections to Christianity many come out on the other side with an orthodox faith that doesn’t fit the current categories of liberal Democrat or conservative Republican.

Many see both sides in the “culture war” making individual freedom and personal happiness the ultimate value rather than God and the common good.

“If Christians are right about Jesus being God, then Muslims and Jews fail in a serious way to love God as God really is, but if Muslims and Jews are right that Jesus is not God but rather a teacher or prophet, then Christians fail in a serious way to love God as God really is.” The bottom line was—we couldn’t all be equally right about the nature of God.

Most people who assert the equality of religions have in mind the major world faiths, not splinter sects.

This illustration backfires on its users. The story is told from the point of view of someone who is not blind. How could you know that each blind man only sees part of the elephant unless you claim to be able to see the whole elephant?

In his book A Rumor of Angels Berger recounts how the twentieth century had uncovered “the sociology of knowledge,” namely that people believe what they do largely because they are socially conditioned to do so. We like to think that we think for ourselves, but it is not that simple.

If you insist that no one can determine which beliefs are right and wrong, why should we believe what you are saying?

The idea that it is wrong to do so is deeply rooted in Western traditions of self-criticism and individualism.

Skeptics believe that any exclusive claims to a superior knowledge of spiritual reality cannot be true.

They believe the world would be a better place if everyone dropped the traditional religions’ views of God and truth and adopted theirs.

We are all exclusive in our beliefs about religion, but in different ways.

It is a set of beliefs that explain what life is all about, who we are, and the most important things that human beings should spend their time doing.

Even the most secular pragmatists come to the table with deep commitments and narrative accounts of what it means to be human.

But all of our most fundamental convictions about things are beliefs that are nearly impossible to justify to those who don’t share them.

She takes as an article of faith that people are more valuable than rocks or trees—though she can’t prove such a belief scientifically.

Ironically, insisting that religious reasoning be excluded from the public square is itself a controversial “sectarian” point of view.

Tucked away within the assertion that the world is filled with pointless evil is a hidden premise, namely, that if evil appears pointless to me, then it must be pointless.

Just because you can’t see or imagine a good reason why God might allow something to happen doesn’t mean there can’t be one.

If our minds can’t plumb the depths of the universe for good answers to suffering, well, then, there can’t be any!

The fallacy at the heart of this argument has been illustrated by the “no-see-ums” illustration of Alvin Plantinga.

most of what they really needed for success in life came to them through their most difficult and painful experiences.

Though none of these people are grateful for the tragedies themselves, they would not trade the insight, character, and strength they had gotten from them for anything.

If you have a God great and transcendent enough to be mad at because he hasn’t stopped evil and suffering in the world, then you have (at the same moment) a God great and transcendent enough to have good reasons for allowing it to continue that you can’t know. Indeed, you can’t have it both ways.

But how had I got this idea of “just” and unjust”?…What

The nonbeliever in God doesn’t have a good basis for being outraged at injustice, which, as Lewis points out, was the reason for objecting to God in the first place.

A [secular] way of looking at the world has no place for genuine moral obligation of any sort…and

In response the philosopher Peter Kreeft points out that the Christian God came to earth to deliberately put himself on the hook of human suffering.

We cannot fathom, however, what it would be like to lose not just spousal love or parental love that has lasted several years, but the infinite love of the Father that Jesus had from all eternity.

He had to pay for our sins so that someday he can end evil and suffering without ending us.

It can’t be that he doesn’t love us. It can’t be that he is indifferent or detached from our condition. God takes our misery and suffering so seriously that he was willing to take it on himself.

So, if we embrace the Christian teaching that Jesus is God and that he went to the Cross, then we have deep consolation and strength to face the brutal realities of life on earth. We can know that God is truly Immanuel—God with us—even in our worst sufferings.

We also need hope that our suffering is “not in vain.”

In Revelation 21, we do not see human beings being taken out of this world into heaven, but rather heaven coming down and cleansing, renewing, and perfecting this material world.

The Biblical view of things is resurrection—not a future that is just a consolation for the life we never had but a restoration of the life you always wanted.

My joy had been greatly magnified by the nightmare.

Embracing the Christian doctrines of the incarnation and Cross brings profound consolation in the face of suffering.

They say of some temporal suffering, “No future bliss can make up for it,” not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.

If you say all truth-claims are power plays, then so is your statement.

Each is based on common beliefs that act as boundaries, including some and excluding others. Neither community is being “narrow”—they are just being communities.

We should criticize Christians when they are condemning and ungracious to unbelievers.14 But we should not criticize churches when they maintain standards for membership in accord with their beliefs. Every community must do the same.

Kathy was delighted they were both there, but she hoped they wouldn’t meet each other before they had heard the sermon!

As Walls indicates, while every culture has distortions and elements that will be critiqued and revised by the Christian message, each culture will also have good and unique elements to which Christianity connects and adapts.

Disciplines and constraints, then, liberate us only when they fit with the reality of our nature and capacities.

In many areas of life, freedom is not so much the absence of restrictions as finding the right ones, the liberating restrictions.

If we only grow intellectually, vocationally, and physically through judicious constraints—why would it not also be true for spiritual and moral growth?

To experience the joy and freedom of love, you must give up your personal autonomy.