Equipping Members of the Next Generation of Christians to Defend Their Faith and to Embrace a Biblical Worldview, Part 11a
The basic problem of the Christians in this country in the last eighty years or so, in regard to society and in regard to government, is that they have seen things in bits and pieces instead of totals.
—Francis Schaeffer in A Christian Manifesto, published in 1981—
Cultures can be judged in many ways, but eventually every nation in every age must be judged by this test: how did it treat people?
—Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop in Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, published in 1979—
Key points: Although the Christian worldview has many components, two that are especially significant are that the God of the Bible exists and that He has created human beings in His image. We can’t overstate the importance of these two truths, the implications of which are both profound and eternal.
You can find links to all the articles in this series here.
Note: Due to the length of this article, we will split it into two parts. This time we will consider God’s existence, and next time His creating human beings in His own image.
A college freshman made his way home from school to talk to his pastor about how tough it had been to keep his faith on campus. During his first semester, Alan Wilson experienced an all-out assault on his Christian beliefs. In fact, his faith even was shaken a bit. He wanted to know how he could be certain God is real and the Bible is true.
In particular, Alan saw his fellow students live as if no one ever can know the difference between right and wrong. Right and wrong don’t even exist, Alan! Today everybody makes up his own truth! He’d heard those lines quite a few times, for sure.
Free sex, LGBT pride, abortion, and numerous other attitudes and practices pervaded the culture of the campus. Moreover, a great deal of what Alan heard in the classroom justified this “liberated” approach to life. This included theories of origins that said life on earth came into being as a result of random forces at work over millions of years. As a member of a family who regularly had attended church since before he was born, Alan had been brought up to believe that many of the things he’d seen on campus were immoral and wrong.
Hey, Alan! Come on, man! You’re your own man now! Live it up! Yes, the temptations were strong, but so were Alan’s reservations. If right and wrong don’t exist, Alan wondered, can God really exist? After all, He’s the one who gave us the Ten Commandments!
Alan and his pastor, Matt Thomas, had a long conversation Alan found to be extremely helpful. Among other things, Pastor Matt helped Alan see the big picture on moral truth and right and wrong. Relativism teaches that each individual can make up his or her own truth, but as we soon will see, relativists don’t always practice what they preach.
Element One: The God of the Bible Exists
After Alan shared with Matt the ideas that were assaulting his faith, Pastor Matt
began by advising him to make sure that in assessing his situation he didn’t see issues simply in bits and pieces. “In other words,” Matt said, “the conflict you’re experiencing isn’t merely a clash of differing perspectives on a lot of separate things like homosexuality, abortion, premarital sex, cohabitation, or whatever. You’re witnessing a clash of two very different belief systems. Sometimes we call a belief system a worldview. It’s the lens through which a person sees life and reaches conclusions about it. On one side is a worldview that assumes God doesn’t exist, and on the other is the one your upbringing has encouraged you to embrace. That one assumes God is—that He does exist, is personal, and will hold people accountable for how they live.
Matt continued, “It’s important to remember that a worldview can’t be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. Worldviews require faith. Someone may think they are really throwing their weight around when they ask you how anyone can be certain a particular lifestyle choice or action is wrong, but on what authority does he base his conclusion that no one can speak with such certainty? His belief that that no objective standard of right and wrong exists rests on his assumption that God doesn’t exist—or at least on his adherence to a belief system that assumes God’s nonexistence. Sure, he may say he believes in God, but think about it—the God in which he believes permits people to do whatever they feel like doing. That doesn’t sound like much of a God, does it?” Alan nodded, indicating to Matt that what he was saying made a great deal of sense.
While a belief in absolute truth has theistic implications, a belief that absolute truth does not exist has atheistic implications. Both theism and atheism are presuppositions. Neither can be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. The question is, Based on the evidence, which belief is reasonable?
Evolution: An Atheistic Religion that Doesn’t Fit the Real World
Matt also helped Alan understand that claims evolution is based solely on science are misleading.
“Evolutionists may claim that evolution is pure science and that all objections to it are totally religious and therefore invalid—but many of them cling to their belief in Darwinism with religious fervor. Just as theism is a religious belief, so is atheism.”
Matt went on to point out that those who say they don’t believe in right and wrong actually don’t live that way. They may say absolute truth doesn’t exist, but if someone steals from them, they will be the first ones to appeal to a standard, and on the basis of that standard, object. “All people,” said Matt, “appeal to various values and standards, even if they never realize they are doing so. Innately, each person has a standard of fairness he or she is quick to advocate.”
Thus, the idea that everyone makes up his or her own truth really is a myth. The actions of those who say they don’t believe in absolute truth reveal they really do!
Polar Opposites
Alan’s conversation with his pastor highlights numerous differences between the worldview that pervades our culture today and the biblical perspective on life and the rest of reality. For our purposes here, we’ll call the former belief system secularism or materialism and the latter the biblical or Christian worldview.
First, the two belief systems espouse contradictory ideas about God’s existence. Secularism believes God isn’t, and the biblical worldview states that God is.
Significantly, it isn’t just the Bible that testifies to God’s existence. All of creation does as well. In a letter to his employees, Christian businessman Robert A. Laidlaw explained why he believed in the God of the Bible. He wrote in part,
Every thoughtful person believes in a series of causes and effects in nature, each effect becoming the cause of some other effect. Now the acceptance of this as fact logically compels one to admit that there must be a beginning to any series—that is, there could never have been a first effect if there had not been a First Cause. This First Cause to me is Deity, and “I cannot tell where God came from” is not a satisfactory reason for denying that He exists, else I might as well deny the existence of the millionth effect which, for the sake of argument, might happen to be this world. You see, if I admit one cause as ever having existed, I am bound eventually by induction to arrive at the First Cause.
Although men have discovered many of the laws that govern it, the greatest scientists cannot really define electricity. Then why do we believe it exists? Because we see the manifestation of its existence in our homes and our factories and our streets. Though I do not know where God came from, I must believe He exists, because I see the manifestations of Him everywhere around me.
Though I do not know where God came from, I must believe He exists, because I see the manifestations of Him everywhere around me.
—Robert A. Laidlaw—
Evidence for God’s existence is more than emotionally compelling. It’s reasonable as well!
Second, without God, personal accountability to God cannot exist. With God, and with God as the source of life, personal accountability to God not only makes sense, but is expected. The Bible teaches that God exists and that He is the Creator of all things, including His highest creation, humanity. Accordingly, each individual is accountable to Him for how he lives and how he responds to God’s overtures inviting him into a relationship with Him.
Third, the secular worldview sees life, even human life, as resulting from random, materialistic forces. By contrast, the biblical worldview sees men and women, boys and girls, not only as having been created by God, but created by Him in His image. This makes them intrinsically valuable.
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”…Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.
—Genesis 1:26-28,31—
God could have set up statues of Himself as monuments to His existence, but instead He created living human beings who bear His image to testify, by their very presence, that God is real. Interestingly, God forbade the creation of statues to represent Him.1 We might think God took a great risk when He created men and women in His image when they could distort and misrepresent the truth about Him through their words and actions. Yet, even atheists give evidence that He is real, simply because God stamped them with His image. Despite any “risk” on God’s part, the Lord involved men and women, including the citizens of the nation of Israel, in His plan of redemption. That plan was fulfilled ultimately in Jesus Christ, the one who always represents God faithfully. He was and is “full of grace and truth.” People can take no credit for this plan, but God honored them nonetheless as He involved them in this most important quest.2
More to Come
We’ll stop here for now. Keep in mind we have a great deal more to learn. Next time, we will continue to explore the truth that God has created human beings in His image.
Stay tuned! We’re just getting started!
Part 2 is available here.
Copyright © 2018 by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. All rights reserved.
top image: Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture passages have been taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Notes:
1Jeff Myers, Understanding the Faith: A Survey of Christian Apologetics, (Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2016), 119.
2Ibid.
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