Does God Exist? (Part 2)
We live an age of contradictory belief systems made all the more controversial by the ease of information through television and the Internet. Two centuries ago someone living in the State of Franklin never considered Islam, Buddism, atheism, etc. Today the Fox news Internet site is highlighting a Hamas children’s program much akin to America’s Nickelodeon except the show’s 11-year old star/interveiwer wants to be a martyr and encourages other children to join her in extricating Israeli girls and boys from their homes.
For more reasons than can be named in a short paragraph it is imperative that Christians know what they believe and why they believe it. We must clarify issues in our own minds and then learn to ably present them to people whose worldview differs from ours. Yes, to people different from us. We must intentionally place ourselves in (for most people this happens naturally in work or school situations) positions that call for a clear understanding of the Christian perspective on everything in life. Why is it wrong for an 11-year old child to advocate murder?
Christian theologyis based on “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27) and our doctrines are derived from “the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). What’s that? Truth!? Truth matters! What we believe about the existence of God and Who that God is shapes our view of reality (metaphysics), how we perceive knowledge (epistemology) and eventually our ethics (morals).
No one’s values exist in isolation. We often spend most of our time trying to correct someone’s behaviour or ideals without any consideration for what makes them ‘tick’ like that. Fundamentally, what someone believes is real and how (if) people define truth determines their actions.
Ultimately, the Christian worldview is the only perspective that correctly interpets life. Consider our friends who live without any concept of God which leads them to philosphically deny moral absolutes. I say ”philosophically” because they will quickly claim moral absolutes if you try to steal from them or lie about them. See, they can’t even define stealing or lying without a relationship to ownership or truth which which forms their point of reference for what stealing is and lying is. People who deny moral absolutes are self-contradictory because moral absolutes are inescapable. How can one absolutely deny absolutes with any assurance if they don’t simultaneously believe in absolutes? To deny absolutes is to be sure of nothing. Absolutistic relativism is impossible minus the absolutes which immediately prove relativism false.
In other words, how can a world in any form exist without an absolute at its beginning or as its foundation? It cannot. We can’t even be holding this conversation without the absolutes of grammar, language, science, technology, etc. All of this doesn’t bode well for evolution which exists as random or chance making anything absolute, absolutely impossible.
At the base of right and wrong is a moral God Whose personality is reflected in justice, mercy, forgiveness…all the Christian virtues. “No one is good but God alone” (Mark 10:18). God’s character is the foundation of our ethical outlook. The atheist can claim morality but in reality has no basis for it from an evolutionst perspective. Not if he’s going to claim consistency in his thinking. In reality, he can make no judgemnts abut right and wrong, beauty and ugliness, timeliness and tardiness, etc. Everything falls apart just as it came together in atheism. Only Christ makes sense of the world. “ He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3). His creation of everything and His sovereignty over everything provide the fundamental basis for morality, beauty, goodness, etc. Without it, life is just a blob and no one can truly say that 11-year old martyrdom is any better or worse than the death of a heroic firemen in the World Trade Center. There is no basis for making the claim or explaining the difference without God as the Absolute for everything in the world.