The WidoW's mighT - Baptist Bible Tribune

we accept the fact that we are individuals, thatthere are other persons separate from ourselves,that there is a past, and a future, that somethings are right, and other things are wrong —all without what most people consider to be apurely rational argument for their existence —and all these concepts have generated moundsof philosophical thought and literature. Weroutinely trust intuition, memory, and perceptionas valid sources of knowledge. Is thisconsidered so very irrational, or does it makethe conclusions derived from these sourcesautomatically invalid?Of course not. But often the non-believerthinks this is the big gun to use against believers:because the believer must depend uponfaith rather than rational arguments for thecertain existence of God, there is no God. So,that’s the ground I am giving to the atheist/agnostic: you can’t certainly demonstrate God’sexistence by reason alone. But that is not as biga giveaway as it seems. For one thing, the nonbelieverhas a faith-thing going as well.In his book, The Reason for God, andlectures he gives on the subject, Tim Kelleroutlines why a person should believe in God,and the rest of this article will take a look at hissimple proposal. Think of a ladder with threerungs, a ladder takes someone from unbeliefto belief. A person on the first rung will realizethat it takes faith to disbelieve as well as to believein God. That’s something the non-believerhad not counted on, because he or she took itfor granted that the decision was very rationaland reason-based. However, take away the “reasons”for not believing, or remove the “proofs”there is no God, and you are left with faith.It gets tougher though. The second rung iswhere a person sees that it takes a larger leap offaith to disbelieve than to believe, and the thirdis the one calling for commitment in order toachieve certainty. But we will leave those tworungs for later. Let’s work on Keller’s first rung,the faith rung, where he takes care of what heconsiders some common arguments against theexistence of God.Argument 1 – The presence of evil and sufferingshow that God does not exist — theidea being that if an all-good and all-powerfulGod was truly there, He would remove allpointless evil and suffering. David Hume, theIs it true that believersare at war with science,or that scientists mustrenounce religious faith to beconsidered intelligent?famous 18th-century philosopher, framed theissue thus: “Is [God] willing to prevent evil,but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able,but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is heboth able and willing? Whence then is evil?”The argument still appears in popular bestsellinganti-God books, but the late Christianphilosopher William Alston said the effort touse evil as an argument to disprove God “is nowacknowledged on almost all sides in philosophyas completely bankrupt.” His own argument issimple: Because we cannot know or perceive areason for suffering or evil does not mean thatreason does not exist — our limited understandingand knowledge is not enough to saythere is no God on that basis.A friend recently gave me an example ofthis from his early life several decades ago. Hehad been a Christian a few years, but he hadwandered away from God. Working two jobsand barely getting by financially, he receiveda call from his mother that his father was veryill, and perhaps dying. He left work late atnight, and walking home, he was arrested andtaken by a squad car to a nearby house where awoman “identified” him as a peeping tom. Hewas placed in jail, all the while pleading thathe urgently needed to leave to catch a bus for along trip to be with his father. The police chiefwas merciful and allowed him to go, on thecondition that he report back to the station onhis return a couple of days later.He was allowed to go home and catch hisbus for the 400-mile journey. Over the weekend,the police checked him out and determined thathe was probably not the guilty party, but myfriend, not knowing this, left his dying father toreport to the police back home. That same day,his mother phoned again, and before he couldreturn to his father’s side, his father died. He wascrushed — innocent of the false accusations, butbecause of them he had been mistreated anddeprived of precious time with this dad.However, he related that during that firstevening, while he waited for his bus, he “didsome serious business with God at the Greyhoundstation.” As a result, he took his familyto Lockland (Landmark) Baptist Church inCincinnati, surrendered his life to the ministry,attended Baptist Bible College, and entered theministry 40 years ago.No one looking at the injustice sufferedat the time could have guessed that God hadhis hand in my friend’s life, and it only becameapparent later. To say there is no God becausewe cannot explain or find a reason for injustice,suffering, or evil is incredibly shortsighted.Ironically, biblical characters with the strongesthold on a belief in God were sometimes theones who themselves were the victims of muchsuffering — Job and Joseph come to mind. Andyet Joseph, after a lifetime of suffering injusticeat the hands of others, can say at the end, “Butas for you (his brothers), ye thought evil againstme; but God meant it unto good, to bring topass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.”Without Joseph’s suffering, Israel would nothave survived as a nation, and Messiah wouldnot have come to be the savior of the world.Argument 2 – Those who have believed inGod have often been guilty of much evil.FREALITLOGEMOT8 | Baptist Bible Tribune | February 2010