timeimmortal

As a general rule, when atheists try and tell me that I choose to be a Christian because it is “comforting” to me and provides solace in the face of the harsh realities of the world and death, I tend to take that as a sign of the ignorance of the atheists themselves.

Because I don’t believe in any sort of cosmological “teddy bear hug”:

And as some spoke of the temple, how it was adorned with noble stones and offerings, he said,

“As for these things which you see, the days will come when there shall not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”
And they asked him, “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign when this is about to take place?”
And he said, “Take heed that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name, saying, `I am he!’ and, `The time is at hand!’ Do not go after them.
And when you hear of wars and tumults, do not be terrified; for this must first take place, but the end will not be at once.”

Then he said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom;
there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and pestilences; and there will be terrors and great signs from heaven.
But before all this they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake.
This will be a time for you to bear testimony.
Settle it therefore in your minds, not to meditate beforehand how to answer;
for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict.
You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and kinsmen and friends, and some of you they will put to death;
you will be hated by all for my name’s sake.
But not a hair of your head will perish.
By your endurance you will gain your lives.

Yup…comforting stuff, there. Okay, that last line is obviously a message of hope…but hope at what cost? I choose Christianity not because I need a cosmological hug, but because it is hard. I choose it because it does divide me from friends and family, because it does earn me new enemies (and also new friends), and because I may well suffer persecution one day for being a person of faith.

Comfort? There’s no assurance of that, because my salvation is not something I can say, with 100% confidence, that I have won. For all I know, I could be headed for a big loss…but I choose Christianity anyhow, because it is divisive and because it isn’t easy to be one. If I wanted to live the easy life, I’d be an atheist…and then I wouldn’t have to care about being nice to people, or about having sex before marriage, or about being faithful to my wife…because all I’d care about is “the now”. If there’s no God, and no final judgment, and (really) no ultimate arbiter of morality, then I’m on the hook to compose and uphold my own morality in whatever way and form suits me best, right? And who can really tell me that I’m doing something “wrong”?

Seriously…any atheists who attempts to argue from the “religion is just a comfort blanket” angle betrays his or her own ignorance in sufficient quantity as to turn any further discussion into nothing more than sport on my part. But notice, too, how the passage ends, and the many things Jesus forecasts will befall humanity in the interim between His resurrection and His return. It is passages like this that I think of when I dismiss — casually and off-handedly — the claims by atheists that the “problem” of evil in the world serves as an effective argument against the probability of the existence of God. Likewise, passages of this sort are the reason I laugh (heartily!) when atheists tell me that no Christian has ever given them a satisfactory answer to that supposed “problem”.

There’s a reason Christians don’t given an answer to the problem that is satisfactory to those people who actually think the “problem” of evil is a real problem. That reason is that the “problem” of evil is not a problem at all…it is merely a fact of reality and a logical consequence of the fact that God made man to be free, free to choose to love God (or not), and free to choose whether to follow God’s commandments (or not). Being an upright, moral person means nothing if there is not the possibility that one could be the opposite (i.e. an evil person).

And all that happens in the world that causes pain and suffering, all the evils and all the ill fortunes, happen for a reason in God’s plan for humanity (though perhaps not one that mere humanity can fathom), because God gave man the freedom to choose whether to commit evil or to act with righteousness. God made man able to recognize that murder was a moral evil…but the evil of murder is only apparent, and only has any meaning, because man can also choose to commit murder, and thus commit evil.

One would think the supposed champions of freethought and reason would be able to figure this one out, but evidently this is not the case. Instead, they create websites that prey upon the fears of the disabled (most vocal atheists tend to have a predatory streak, in my experience), and resort to other methods of argumentation that forget the very principles of science and rationalism that they purport to uphold.

Come to think of it, though, that’s not a surprise at all. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that reality forecasted in Scripture as well, in something St. Paul once wrote.

~ by Kenneth on November 19, 2007.