Highlands Post Column May-2014

1st May 2014 Highlands Post (Outreach Media)

Of all the different worldviews competing for our attention, I want to defend Christianity as the most reasonable explanation for the way things are today and the sweep of human history that has brought us to this point. Let me say at the outset that I will not be able to convince you by reasoning alone that this is so; it is never a case of ‘seeing is believing’ but only of ‘believing is seeing’. But let me hasten to add that this applies to every worldview – even atheism has ‘faith’ as its starting point! It requires as much faith to insist that there could not possibly exist a supreme Being who is super-natural (ie outside our limited ‘natural’ or ‘time-space’ framework) as to believe that there is such a Being. There is no way of either ‘proving’ or ‘disproving’ either proposition; we decide on a starting point by ‘faith’. When I look at both the vast extent and the minute complexity of the Universe, I am much more comfortable with the assumption that it was design and put together by an intelligent Being than that it just ‘happened’, by ‘chance’, out of ‘nothing’. To me, to believe such an unlikely and purposeless event as required by this latter proposition puts far more pressure on my rational thought processes than believing in a Creator God.

But if there is such a ‘God’, then how can I explain the confusing contrast between the existence of so much good and beauty in the Universe on the one hand, and so much evil and ugliness on the other. This is where it seems to me there is much more reasonable argument in favour of the God who has revealed himself in the Bible and in his Son, Jesus Christ, than of any other attempt to ‘know’ this God. We have just celebrated at Easter the death and resurrection of Jesus. The Bible (God’s self-revelation) tells us that the evil and ugliness in the world is due to Man’s rebellion against his Creator, and that, in Jesus, God became a Man and then took upon himself the condemnation we deserve and died in our place. In the three years before this event he proved beyond doubt that he was God by his amazing love and care for those in need, by the great wisdom of his teachings, and supremely by the miracles he performed that defy explanation if he were not God. The climactic miracle of his resurrection, and the way this transformed his small band of disciples, is the ultimate ‘proof’. These uneducated fishermen then went out and transformed the world by proclaiming the truth about Jesus to a generation who had actually heard him speak, had witnessed his miracles first-hand, and could have rejected all their claims by producing the decaying body of this enigmatic figure if it existed. The Apostle Paul even made the claim that “[God] has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17:31). The Christian worldview gives us a hope for the final restoration of all things, based on God’s power and grace alone, that no other worldview can match. Instead of being haphazard, unpredictable and meaningless, on this scenario human history has meaning, purpose and a goal that is good and wonderful. I’ll opt for a worldview based on the Bible any day! Why not test it out for yourself by reading, say, the Gospel of Luke?

Bruce Christian.