The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

by Timothy J. Keller

If we believe God exists, then our view of the universe gives us a basis for believing that cognitive faculties work, since God could make us able to form true beliefs and knowledge. If we believe in God, then the Big Bang is not mysterious, nor the fine-tuning of the universe, nor the regularities of nature. All the things that we see make perfect sense. Also, if God exists our intuitions about the meaningfulness of beauty and love are to be expected.

“If all cultures are relative, then so is the idea of universal human rights, so how can I decide to impose my values on this culture?” But she doesn’t answer her own question. She has just said that her charge of oppression is based on a Western concept of individual freedom, but she has no answer for this conundrum.

Rights cannot be created—they must be discovered, or they are of no value.

If there is no God, then there is no way to say any one action is “moral” and another “immoral” but only “I like this.” If that is the case, who gets the right to put their subjective, arbitrary moral feelings into law? You may say “the majority has the right to make the law,” but do you mean that then the majority has the right to vote to exterminate a minority? If you say “No, that is wrong,” then you are back to square one. “Who sez” that the majority has a moral obligation not to kill the minority?

If the world was made by a God of peace, justice, and love, then that is why we know that violence, oppression, and hate are wrong. If the world is fallen, broken, and needs to be redeemed, that explains the violence and disorder we see.

infinitesimally

Contrary to the legal model, the essence of sin is not [primarily] the violation of laws but a wrecked relationship with God, one another, and the whole created order. “All sins are attempts to fill voids,”

Sin is the despairing refusal to find your deepest identity in your relationship and service to God. Sin is seeking to become oneself, to get an identity, apart from him.

So, according to the Bible, the primary way to define sin is not just the doing

of bad things, but the making of good things into ultimate things.

But everyone is building their identity on something.

He argues that human society is deeply fragmented when anything but God is our highest love. If our highest goal in life is the good of our family, then, says Edwards, we will tend to care less for other families. If our highest goal is the good of our nation, tribe, or race, then we will tend to be racist or nationalistic. If our ultimate goal in life is our own individual happiness, then we will put our own economic and power interests ahead of those of others. Edwards concludes that only if God is our summum bonum, our ultimate good and life center, will we find our heart drawn out not only to people of all families, races, and classes, but to the whole world in general.14

Sin is not simply doing bad things, it is putting good things in the place of God.

Everybody has to live for something. Whatever that something is becomes “Lord of your life,” whether you think of it that way or not. Jesus is the only Lord who, if you receive him, will fulfill you completely, and, if you fail him, will forgive you eternally.

If you are avoiding sin and living morally so that God will have to bless and save you, then ironically, you may be looking to Jesus as a teacher, model, and helper but you are avoiding him as Savior. You are trusting in your own goodness rather than in Jesus for your standing with God. You are trying to save yourself by following Jesus. That, ironically, is a rejection of the gospel of Jesus.

Religion operates on the principle “I obey—therefore I am accepted by God.” But the operating principle of the gospel is “I am accepted by God through what Christ has done—therefore I obey.”

the motivation is one of gratitude for the blessing we have already received because of Christ.

I do not think more of myself nor less of myself. Instead, I think of myself less. I don’t need to notice myself—how I’m doing, how I’m being regarded—so often.

The Christian’s identity is not based on the need to be perceived as a good person, but on God’s valuing of you in Christ.

Evil has been done to you—yes. But when you try to get payment through revenge the evil does not disappear. Instead it spreads, and it spreads most tragically of all into you and your own character.

Forgiveness must be granted before it can be felt, but it does come eventually. It leads to a new peace, a resurrection. It is the only way to stop the spread of the evil.

“Why did Jesus have to die? Couldn’t God just forgive us?” This is what many ask, but now we can

see that no one “just” forgives, if the evil is serious.

Forgiveness means bearing the cost instead of making the wrongdoer do it, so you can reach out in love to seek ...

Why did Jesus have to die in order to forgive us? There was a debt to be paid—God himself paid it. There was a penalty to be born—God himself bore it. Forgiveness is always a form of costly suffering.

On the cross, in agony, he cried out the question, “Why!?” Why was he being forsaken?11 Why was it all necessary? The answer of the Bible is—for us.

The gospel, however, is not just a moving fictional story about someone else. It is a true story about us. We are actually in it.

However, if you disbelieved the resurrection you then had the difficulty of explaining how the Christian church got started at all.

corroboration.

Additionally, the accounts of the resurrection in the Bible were too problematic to be fabrications. Each gospel states that the first eyewitnesses to the resurrection were women. Women’s low social status meant that their testimony was not admissible evidence in court. There was no possible advantage to the church to recount that all the first witnesses were women.

It is not enough for the skeptic, then, to simply dismiss the Christian teaching about the resurrection of Jesus by saying, “It just couldn’t have happened.” He or she must face and answer all these historical questions: Why did Christianity emerge so rapidly, with such power? No other band of messianic followers in that era concluded their leader was raised from the dead—why did this group do so? No group of Jews ever worshipped a human being as God. What led them to do it? Jews did not believe in divine men or individual resurrections. What changed their worldview virtually overnight? How do you account for the hundreds of eyewitnesses to the resurrection who lived on for decades and publicly maintained their testimony, eventually giving their lives for their belief?

Defending the faith

The message of the resurrection is that this world matters!

endemic,

When Jesus said you must lose yourself in service to find yourself (Mark 8:35), he was recounting what the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have been doing throughout eternity. You will, then, never get a sense of self by standing still, as it were, and making everything revolve around your needs and interests.

The purpose of Jesus’s coming is to put the whole world right, to renew and restore the creation, not to escape it.

What does it mean, then, to become part of God’s work in the world? What does it mean to live a Christian life? One way to answer that question is to look back into the life of the Trinity and the original creation. God made us to ever increasingly share in his own joy and delight in the same way he has joy and delight within himself. We share his joy first as we give him glory (worshipping and serving him rather than ourselves); second, as we honor and serve the dignity of other human beings made in the image of God’s glory; and third, as we cherish his derivative glory in the world of nature, which also reflects it.

indelible

In short, the Christian life means not only building up the Christian community through encouraging people to faith in Christ, but building up the human community through deeds of justice and service.

Content issues: Are there any parts of the Christian message—creation, sin, Jesus as God, Cross, resurrection—that you don’t understand or agree with? Coherence issues: Are there still doubts and objections to the Christian faith that you cannot resolve? Cost issues: Do you perceive that a move into full Christian faith will cost you something dear? What fears do you have about commitment?

That means we should repent not only for things we have done wrong (like cheating or lying), but also for the motivations beneath our good works.

Why? It is not the strength of your faith but the object of your faith that actually saves you. Strong faith in a weak branch is fatally inferior to weak faith in a strong branch.