God's Not Dead: Evidence for God in an Age of Uncertainty (7 page)

—F
RANCIS
A. S
CHAEFFER
,
H
OW
S
HOULD
W
E
T
HEN
L
IVE?
²

IT WAS ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED MOVIE OPENINGS IN history:
The Dark Knight Rises
. Literally millions of people around the world counted the days until the premier of Christopher Nolan’s final film in his Batman trilogy. In Colorado, a real dark night was rising. Bursting into Theater 9 was a twenty-four-year-old man,
dressed as the Joker, the central villain of the second Nolan film. Wearing a gas mask and a bulletproof vest, he began firing a gun randomly into the panicked crowd, killing twelve and wounding fifty-eight. Terrorized
children
and their parents huddled in horror and prayed to be spared from this madman’s attack. I recall a survivor saying in one televised report, “I’ll never look at life the same again.”

Once evil has touched our lives, we never look at life the same either. These tragedies are like birth pangs that seem to be coming more frequently. The outcry in the aftermath of the tragedy was voiced in questions such as, “How could something like this happen?” and “What is wrong with our world?”

There are real answers to these questions. The short answer? Evil exists. So many used the adjective
surreal
to describe the shooting in Colorado. Why describe it this way? Maybe it’s an attempt to say that this happens in movies all the time, but it’s not supposed to jump off the screen into the real world. Sadly, these kinds of acts are gradually becoming more common because of the decreasing presence of the
knowledge
of God in society. This knowledge is an immune system in our souls. The less of that knowledge in people’s minds, the more evil rises in any culture. The apostle Paul knew this: “Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice” (Romans 1:28–29
NIV
). This is an apt description of the daily headlines of depravity, hate, and cruelty carried out by those who have learned to shut down their consciences.

When people dismiss belief in God as illusory, they tend to view the concepts of good and evil as illusory as well. Larry Taunton, a Christian author and debater, recounted a conversation with Richard Dawkins at his home in Oxford, England, and asked him whether humans were intrinsically good or bad. Taunton recounted his response: “Predictably, Dawkins deemed notions of good and evil to be mere artificial human constructs, opting instead to speak of ‘genetic
predispositions
.’ ”
³

Most of the world is not so naïve. If nothing else, the record of human history gives testimony to humanity’s proclivity toward evil. The real mystery is in understanding what is good. Taunton summed it up: “God also blesses mankind by restraining our evil nature.”
⁴
Although evil exists, there is also a force of good that keeps evil at bay. As astronomer Hugh Ross explained, “Evidently, God designed the
laws of physics
so that the more depraved people become, the worse consequences they suffer.”
⁵
In the case of the shooting rampage, police arrived and kept the crazed person from destroying everyone present. In reality, the existence of good is actually a bigger question to answer than the problem of evil.

N
O
G
OD
—N
O
E
VIL

Once I sat next to a distinguished gentleman on a flight and struck up a pleasant conversation. He taught philosophy at a major university in England, so I had many questions about his favorite writers, although I was a little nervous about not confusing the philosophers and their philosophies. Finally I asked him if he had any religious faith, to which he replied with a smile, “I’m
a
militant atheist
.” I also smiled and shook his hand and thanked him for being so straightforward about it.

My next question was easy: “So why are you a militant atheist?”

He replied, “Two reasons. First, I believe in evolution.” We talked about fossils and
genetics
and Darwin for several minutes, and I even pulled out the motion sickness bag and drew pictures on it to illustrate the geological layers of the earth. It wasn’t long until I realized that he wasn’t really comfortable with the details of evolution. Just because someone has a PhD doesn’t mean he is an expert in every area of life; he may be a microspecialist in only one or two subjects. The reality was, this professor of philosophy had not done his homework on the one thing on which he was basing his entire worldview and belief system. The professor changed his course, announcing that evolution was not his main reason for rejecting God.

I paused for just a moment in anticipation of what his real reason for rejecting God might be. I actually braced myself for some incredible philosophical challenge I had never heard before, as if I were about to take a punch from Mike Tyson himself. When he finally told me his real reason for not believing, I was completely surprised.

“If there is a God,” he said, “why is there so much evil in the world?”

I didn’t say it, but I sure thought very loudly in my mind,
That’s it? Is this the real reason for you being a militant atheist?
I was ready for this one. I turned over the motion sickness bag and wrote the words “No God—No Evil.” Borrowing the logic of theologian Cornelius van Til, I explained to him, “If there is no God, there is no such thing as evil.”
⁶
You see, without God evil
doesn’t really exist. The unbeliever can’t describe the world we live in without borrowing the biblical concepts of good and evil.

In the end this thoughtful atheist said I raised an excellent point, a concession that happens rarely from the ranks of the militant atheists.

A
LL
M
ORALS
A
RE
N
OT
C
REATED
E
QUAL

The American
Declaration of Independence
declares that it is “self-evident, that all men are created equal,” yet it is also self-evident that the morals they live by are not equal. To say that everyone’s beliefs are equally valid is self-refuting. Not everyone can be right. But without God, the absurd notion that everyone’s morals are true becomes a living nightmare. Someone who says it is permissible to hurt
children
or neglect the disabled and infirmed does not have the same moral status as someone who protects children or the disabled, elderly, and infirmed.

But if there is no God, there couldn’t possibly be a transcendent
morality
that everyone should obey.
Good and evil would simply be illusions
, man-made and arbitrary. Certainly without a transcendent God or source of moral
authority
, it comes down to whatever are the opinions of the majority. So from where does this universal
sense of right and wrong
come?

C. S. Lewis said, “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”
⁷
Because there are things that are wrong, regardless of the country or context, there is a real moral
law that we did not invent and from which we cannot escape. We no more invented morality than we invented numbers or even reason itself. These are things that are written on our hearts by our Creator.

The problem of evil has plagued the minds of men and women since the
beginning
of time. Yet God intends for us to understand its source, not just be aware of its existence. The real challenge is this: whether you are a believer or an unbeliever, atheist or theist, evil is not just around us—it is in us. That is why it is safe to say the existence of evil is not evidence of God’s absence in the universe but evidence of His absence from our lives. Rejecting God won’t necessarily make you some horrible criminal, just like saying you believe in God won’t automatically make you a saint. The Bible says, “You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble!” (James 2:19). Just because you believe the highway patrol exists doesn’t necessarily mean you obey the posted speed limit. People who merely believe God exists and don’t follow His commands receive the highest condemnation from Jesus Himself. “Why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46).

9/11/2001

If evil has an anniversary, this might be the date. It was on this day that our world changed forever. Lives were lost because of the acts of terror; our vulnerability was exposed. Everyone alive knows those images of planes crashing into the
World Trade Center
, people fleeing in terror, and New York’s Finest searching
for survivors. The scenes of hundreds of people holding posters of their missing loved ones and friends are still etched in my mind. Time and time again we all wondered,
How could something like this happen?

That moment sparked a new mission in my heart, a mission to help the people of New York in the best way I knew how: starting a church in Manhattan that would minister to the city on a daily basis. Week after week we watched people grow stronger in their faith in God and in their battles over fear. That was really the big issue—fear. After all, the goal of terrorists is to inflict terror that lingers beyond their acts of violence.

For atheist writer Sam Harris, 9/11 was the moment that convinced him to launch his own attack—against religion. In his book
The End of Faith
, he calls for the recognition of the evil of religion and the reality that faith is a bad thing, picking up Lennon’s theme in “Imagine.” Harris wrote, “The men who committed the atrocities of September 11 were certainly not ‘cowards,’ as they were repeatedly described in the Western media, nor were they lunatics in any ordinary sense. They were men of faith—
perfect
faith, as it turns out—and this, it must finally be acknowledged, is a terrible thing to be.”
⁸

Harris takes the reader through a discourse on the difference between
rational thought
and what he calls “
blind faith
” (as we discussed in
chapter
2
), gathering the worst aspects of various expressions of faith into one big picture of what he calls “religion.” Indeed many cries against religious extremism came after the 9/11 attacks in New York and rightly so. However, people such as Harris and Maher used the events of that tragic day to call for the end of all religion, demonstrating their own form of irrationality and extremism. Somehow these people
can’t tell the difference between a suicide bomber and a Sunday school teacher.

I
N
S
EARCH OF A
M
ORAL
F
OUNDATION

Knowing that
morality
must be grounded in some authority, the skeptics’ desperate struggle is to find any alternative other than God. The real issue becomes identifying the basis for morality.

So if God does not exist, why think that we have any moral obligations to do anything? Who or what imposes these obligations upon us? Where do they come from? It’s very hard to see why they would be anything more than a subjective impression ingrained into us by societal and parental conditioning.
⁹

While the New Age movement, characterized by a belief in the spiritual
world
where all beliefs are equal, offers
God without morals
, the new atheists attempt to offer a world with no spiritual
dimension
and give us
morals without God
. This creates an extreme dilemma. If you try to build a world without God, something else will take His place.

When humans play God they usually act in their own self-interests, not the interests of others. Harris proposes that science be the source and arbiter of ethics. Others in the atheist camp think that science can tell us what is good and evil. Most academics would admit that ethics is in the arena of philosophy, not science. However, when you hold to a worldview that only science can give you truth, you’re forced to look to it for all your
answers. This again is the philosophy of scientism. As Melanie Phillips said, “Take those scientists who promote not science but scientism—the belief that science can deal with every aspect of existence. The scorn and vituperation they heap upon religious believers is fathomless. And yet their materialism leads them to say things which are just . . . well, nutty.”
¹⁰

C
AN
H
UMANITY
B
E
G
OOD
W
ITHOUT
G
OD?

The short answer to this question is yes, but not because humanity doesn’t need God to be good. God made us and put the moral law within us. That this moral law points to the existence of God was a central claim in the writings of C. S. Lewis. However, there is also the reality that though people know right and wrong, they many times don’t do what they should do. This is true whether they claim to be religious or not
.
Lewis would make this clear in his classic work
Mere Christianity
.

These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.
¹¹