Christianity As a Contemporary and Realistic Option

A widespread myth is that new ideas and options are routinely better than old ones. In contrast to prior centuries, many people in western society say they do not believe a God exists. Some, quoting the opinions of celebrity scientists who scathingly attack Christianity in the name of science and therefore pawn off on the public their personal opinions as if they opinions were based on science, now proclaim they are atheists. They also assert that any enlightened person knows that traditional religion is but a carryover from the Middle Ages. Adding to their aversion to religion, recent terrorist events have convinced them that all religion is categorically harmful. and society would do well to get rid of it.

Some people claim to be spiritual but want nothing to do with organized religion. If you ask them to explain what they mean by spiritual, they may respond only with vague generalities. Some express interest in eastern religion, but have only a cursory understanding of it and ignore concept of reincarnation that lies at the center of many such religions. They may be drawn to it because it appears to capture a sense of the cosmic, akin to what some nineteenth-century Protestants theologians described as feelings of the “oceanic.”

Many people who claim to be spiritual but do not participate in traditional religion are on the right track. They intuitively sense there is a God.

Some people assert that science has replaced religion, which sometimes turns science into a religion and places excessive faith in its power. Science will surely reveal more and more about how the physical world operates. But science cannot imbue life with meaning, and those who suggest that it can are, knowingly or unknowingly, smuggling philosophic or religious ideas in through the side door. Science qua science cannot even determine if life has any meaning.

There are glaring problems when scientists insist there is no God. Among them is that these scientists do not distinguish between a scientific question, which by definition concerns the physical world, and a philosophic-religious one. Another is that, if they do understand the difference, they present anti-religions beliefs as if they were based on science, and in so doing engage in a kind of intellectual fraud. Still another is that, although it might make sense for a scientist to claim to be agnostic—not to know if there is a God—it makes no sense for anyone to claim to know with absolute certainty there is no God, which is logically impossible. The most anyone can justifiably claim is that they have not found God, and perhaps based on their experience, find the existence of God improbable. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Christians claim God entered the world two thousand years ago, and that through the teachings, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God self-disclosed the divine nature. Along with the gift of free will, God gave humans the capacity to reason and thus to imagine and evaluate alternatives. God also gave us the ability to experience different states of consciousness and form constructive relationships. To misuse these gifts is to wrong the one who gave them. We default on our obligations to God by refusing to worship God as we should, and we wrong God by mistreating other human beings, since he created, owns, and loves them.

Errant creatures that we are, we resemble children. When we refuse to honor God or mistreat others, it like throwing a rock through God’s front window, which puts things seriously out of kilter. As a child, we have no ability to repair the window, or even to pay for a replacement. Only God in the person of Jesus can do this and in the process forgive us for breaking it in the first place. This is why God surrendered his son “as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). Those who embrace him as Lord are no longer held accountable for the broken class because God the Father accepts what Jesus accomplished on our behalf as suitable restitution. He has paid for all the glass we have broken through life—and we have all broken plenty of it.

With the gift of human freedom comes inevitable pain and suffering. God showed his love for us by refusing to remain aloof. He participated in human pain and suffering by allowing, and in fact ordaining, the greatest miscarriage of justice imaginable, the vile execution of his sinless son for us. In the person of Jesus, God experienced what we experience. God resurrected his son, and Christians live in the confident expectation that God will give similar resurrected and eternal bodies to those who acknowledge and love the Father and the Son for who they are.

We need only accept that God did this, come to terms with how we have defaulted on our obligations to both God and man, and embrace God as a forgiving father. And, of course, stop rebelling against God and start loving our fellows. The twenty-seven documents comprising the New Testament can be traced to many more sources than any other collection of ancient writings. These documents center on Jesus, who its authors claim to be our savior. It is difficult, and may be impossible, to engage with their profound and potentially life-changing message if you have never read them. The message of the New Testament is as relevant today as it was in ancient Jerusalem, and encountering God through its pages could change your life.

If you think about the trajectory of world politics, there may be little reason to believe that humanity, left to its own devices, are going to make things better. Since humankind seems to progress technologically far more rapidly than it does morally, they may be more likely to make it worse. A growing number of countries seem intent on developing nuclear weapons, and a single miscalculation and misuse of such a device could annihilate huge swaths of the globe. We may well need God’s help to avoid this. The fact that to date no terrorist has used a nuclear device may suggest God is already providing it.