The Fool
“The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’"—Psalm 14:1
I was having dinner with my college student friend about the claims of Christianity. He had once been an active member in his high school youth group, but once he got to college, abandoned his faith. He wanted to talk to me about Christianity and why he now embraced a “modern” viewpoint. In our discussion, he said that he was an agnostic because it is impossible to know for sure who God is. He had taken some classes on the psychology of religion. He highlighted various things he was learning from his professors and finally said, “You have faith, I have facts.”
When I asked him about the “facts” and where he learned them from, he answered, “My professors and the books that I read.” I questioned him further, “Do you think that they are teaching you what is true?” He said, “Of course.” I responded, “But what about those within that same field, who have the same ‘facts,’ yet come to a different conclusion? What about them?” He hadn’t thought of that. I then said to him, “We both have faith.” He didn’t like what I was saying and I could tell that he disagreed. I said, “Whether you like it or not, we both have faith, it’s just the object of our faith that’s in question. You have placed your faith in science and different theories, even though they can’t be proven, especially when trying to prove God’s existence. And I have placed my faith in something that can’t be proven by the scientific process. I believe that God sent His Son as revealed in the Word of God. So, we both have faith. I believe in Jesus Christ and what He has done. You believe in what science teaches. The real question is, do you want to wait until eternity to find out who is right and who is wrong? That’s a gamble I don’t want to take.”
Everyone has faith in something, in a person, a belief, an ideal, a system. In the mid-twentieth century, the USSR was under the veil of communism because many people believed that the system would lead to a better life, but it was a vain, foolish, wrong, and costly belief. My friend believes that we cannot know who God is because there is not enough evidence, but the Word of God disagrees. The fingerprints of God are on display all over creation, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork”—Psalm 119:1.
Everything in our world has been created by someone or by something. The watch didn’t just appear, but was made by a watchmaker. The same goes for a meal. The meal didn’t just “appear” at my table. I might be able to examine every single ingredient that makes up my meal, but that doesn’t tell me how it all came to be on my table at that precise moment, hot and cooked to perfection so that I might eat of it.
God has made Himself known through His creation so that anyone who wants to know who God is can see plainly for themselves,
“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse”—Romans 1:19-20.
To say that we can’t see God at work in our world is like reading Romeo and Juliet and saying that Shakespeare didn’t exist because we can’t see him. That’s ridiculous and foolish. We see him in every word, because he is the author. He is everywhere in the story. To say that he didn’t exist is to deny the very words of the story that make it up.
C.S. Lewis explained this so wonderfully in his fabulous book, Mere Christianity, when he wrote,
“There is a difficultly about disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes: you could not be right and He wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its own source. When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on”—Mere Christianity, Book II, Chapter 3.
We can’t deny God’s existence any more than we can deny our own. God has revealed Himself in His creation, His Word, and supremely through His Son Jesus Christ so that we might be saved. “He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you”—1 Peter 1:20. He sent His Son as one giant act of love. “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him”—1 John 4:19.
Jesus truly lived as a literal human being, the God-man assuming flesh, the great mystery in which God came near, the Creator came to us, the sinful creation. “Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory”—1 Timothy 3:16.
God doesn’t want us to play the fool, but to come to the knowledge of Him, placing our faith in Him and what He has done for us. May we rest in the life-giving knowledge of Christ our Savior, knowing that He exists and will reward those who earnestly seek Him (Hebrews 11:6). Amen.
I was having dinner with my college student friend about the claims of Christianity. He had once been an active member in his high school youth group, but once he got to college, abandoned his faith. He wanted to talk to me about Christianity and why he now embraced a “modern” viewpoint. In our discussion, he said that he was an agnostic because it is impossible to know for sure who God is. He had taken some classes on the psychology of religion. He highlighted various things he was learning from his professors and finally said, “You have faith, I have facts.”
When I asked him about the “facts” and where he learned them from, he answered, “My professors and the books that I read.” I questioned him further, “Do you think that they are teaching you what is true?” He said, “Of course.” I responded, “But what about those within that same field, who have the same ‘facts,’ yet come to a different conclusion? What about them?” He hadn’t thought of that. I then said to him, “We both have faith.” He didn’t like what I was saying and I could tell that he disagreed. I said, “Whether you like it or not, we both have faith, it’s just the object of our faith that’s in question. You have placed your faith in science and different theories, even though they can’t be proven, especially when trying to prove God’s existence. And I have placed my faith in something that can’t be proven by the scientific process. I believe that God sent His Son as revealed in the Word of God. So, we both have faith. I believe in Jesus Christ and what He has done. You believe in what science teaches. The real question is, do you want to wait until eternity to find out who is right and who is wrong? That’s a gamble I don’t want to take.”
Everyone has faith in something, in a person, a belief, an ideal, a system. In the mid-twentieth century, the USSR was under the veil of communism because many people believed that the system would lead to a better life, but it was a vain, foolish, wrong, and costly belief. My friend believes that we cannot know who God is because there is not enough evidence, but the Word of God disagrees. The fingerprints of God are on display all over creation, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork”—Psalm 119:1.
Everything in our world has been created by someone or by something. The watch didn’t just appear, but was made by a watchmaker. The same goes for a meal. The meal didn’t just “appear” at my table. I might be able to examine every single ingredient that makes up my meal, but that doesn’t tell me how it all came to be on my table at that precise moment, hot and cooked to perfection so that I might eat of it.
God has made Himself known through His creation so that anyone who wants to know who God is can see plainly for themselves,
“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse”—Romans 1:19-20.
To say that we can’t see God at work in our world is like reading Romeo and Juliet and saying that Shakespeare didn’t exist because we can’t see him. That’s ridiculous and foolish. We see him in every word, because he is the author. He is everywhere in the story. To say that he didn’t exist is to deny the very words of the story that make it up.
C.S. Lewis explained this so wonderfully in his fabulous book, Mere Christianity, when he wrote,
“There is a difficultly about disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes: you could not be right and He wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its own source. When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on”—Mere Christianity, Book II, Chapter 3.
We can’t deny God’s existence any more than we can deny our own. God has revealed Himself in His creation, His Word, and supremely through His Son Jesus Christ so that we might be saved. “He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you”—1 Peter 1:20. He sent His Son as one giant act of love. “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him”—1 John 4:19.
Jesus truly lived as a literal human being, the God-man assuming flesh, the great mystery in which God came near, the Creator came to us, the sinful creation. “Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory”—1 Timothy 3:16.
God doesn’t want us to play the fool, but to come to the knowledge of Him, placing our faith in Him and what He has done for us. May we rest in the life-giving knowledge of Christ our Savior, knowing that He exists and will reward those who earnestly seek Him (Hebrews 11:6). Amen.
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