Does religion really work? Dr. Ravi Zacharias quotes two of his heroes, both brilliant English journalists. G.K. Chesterton said that it was not that Christianity has failed; it has not been tried. For instance, have you really tried to “go the extra mile”, “turn, the other cheek: or “love your enemy” as Jesus commanded?
Malcolm Muggeridge spent most of his life as a skeptical hedonist, “licking the earth” as he said, before he came to Christ. He said that the depravity of man is the most empirically verifiable and intellectually resisted truth of all. If you doubt it, just look at the 20th Century, which killed more people than all previous centuries combined. The perpetrators of all this evil were not ignorant savages, but actual or practical atheists, who were worshipped as if gods by their followers. They and their governments had no one above them to answer to, and became idols for millions, and enslaved and killed millions more. As a theologian put it, The human heart is an idol factory, and In the human heart is a God-shaped blank. We all worship someone, or something.
As my favorite prof said, The main reason people reject Christianity is not an intellectual one, but a moral one. In other words, it allows them to live the way they want to. This is well documented in Paul Johnson’s book Intellectuals, which describes how badly so many highly educated people actually lived. One of them, a “post-modernist”, left a trail of children behind him who he never cared or provided for one whit. He was one of many in this age who believe there are no absolute truths. They are called “relativists”; but if you challenge them, and ask them if their theory is true, they might pound the table and shout, “absolutely!”
Zacharias is a brilliant native of India who attempted suicide at 17 and then read the Bible and committed his life to Christ, and has been an itinerant defender of the Faith and evangelist for the last 40 years. He has another take on why people turn away from Christianity: the Problem of EVIL, of world-wide suffering. (Watch him on YouTube). It was expressed by David Hume and other thinkers: God is all knowing, all powerful and all loving—So whence evil?
While I agree with these assertions, There may be another reason people turn away from the living God: resentment, feeling disappointed in God. “If God were real, He would not have allowed that bad thing to happen to me or my family . . ..!” (A concrete example of Hume’s problem?)
An example of the underlying thinking involved here is what my late Filipino wife said: If a home invader came to the door to rob you, God should reach down and knock the gun out of his hand! What do you think of that idea?
This idea rests upon two theological mistakes. First, God’s “omniscience” means God knows everything. It is true that God knows everything that exists, but He cannot know what does not yet exist, ‘though he can predict what will likely continue to exist. He is like an eagle-eyed man sitting up on the edge of the Grand Canyon, watching the rafters down below. He knows what they’re always thinking, but He doesn’t know exactly where they will choose to land. The only way he would know this, is if he controlled their thinking.
But that would violate their free will, wouldn’t it?
The second mistake involves the idea of “omnipotence.” If God literally has all (“omni“) power (“potencia”) then where does that leave us? No, he shares power with people, and rather than force them to do the right thing, works upon the world through persuasion, as the philosopher Whitehead and process theologians maintain. (Although He at times works miracles.) Influence trumps force. Jesus’ washing the disciples’ feet is more powerful than all the tyrants of the world.
Yes, God is indeed loving, He “is love” as 1 John maintains, and many other passages, like Romans 5: 8: God proves his love to us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Because God respects free will, and is love, He takes the enormous risk in creating people who could turn against him, as happened in Eden.
True, He has an over-arching plan, almost like the man on the high bank of the river really being the raft owner who wants all the rafters to reach their goal safely. He does not force them to turn here or there, but could trigger new ideas in their brains. The Holy Spirit works like that; as Romans 8 sings, “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.” And “We know that nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This love is a lure always pulling us forward into new ways of thinking, acting, loving, experiencing the Kingdom of Heaven, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1: 27).
Knowing God through Jesus’ Cross and the Resurrection: the only real answer to our deepest doubts and problems.