AGNOSTIC, ATHEIST OR CHRISTIAN (2)

Why do you believe in God? I have already written in my previous post about my first reason: the human mind. Our consciousness of this life, our reasoning and imagination logically requires an eternal perspective.

But secondly, I believe in God because of Moral Sense. All human societies have standards of right and wrong in order to survive. Most of us recognize the difference between what is just and what is unjust. We are aware of the values of sympathy, fairness, self-control, and duty. We condemn selfishness, cruelty, abuse, and violence. We experience consciousness of sin, shame and guilt. We need forgiveness. The Bible calls this moral sense: conscience – the requirements of God’s law is written on our hearts.

When outsiders who have never heard of God’s law follow it more or less by instinct, they confirm its truth by their obedience. They show that God’s law is not something alien, imposed on us from without, but woven into the very fabric of our creation. There is something deep within them that echoes God’s yes and no, right and wrong. (Rom 2:14-15, The Message)

Yes, some people suppress the truth of their conscience, harden their hearts against God and goodness, and give themselves over to evil. Peter Hitchens has written, “The Rage Against God: how atheism led me to faith.” In contrast to his atheist brother Christopher Hitchens, he tried atheism as a radical youth but was cured of it through experiencing what communism did to the morality and manners of the Russian people when he was a resident correspondent in Moscow during the collapse of the Soviet Union.

I grew up in the aftermath of World War II. Living in New Zealand we were aware of the danger of being invaded by the Japanese. We could not comprehend the cruelties that were inflicted on so many people who were interned and made prisoners of war in Malaya, Singapore and, what were then, the Dutch East Indies. (See Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption. The riveting saga of Louis Zamperini who endured the horrors of Japanese brutality in POW camps.)  When our soldiers returned from overseas they brought many stories of horrors they had experienced from enemies who did not seem to share the same moral code that we had been raised in as Christians. As a result, my mother would never buy anything made in Japan.

Many people find that the problem of evil in our world, the moral evil of the Holocaust for example, or the senseless suffering of children, makes it impossible for them to believe in God. To the contrary, I find that there is no answer to the problem of evil outside of a belief in the ultimate justice of God and eternal salvation. With God we are all accountable and personally responsible. If there were no evil in this world, and terrible things did not happen, I doubt that everyone would automatically give God credit and believe in him. I believe that our only hope in overcoming evil is in the kingdom of God: So we pray as Jesus taught us: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”