Truth Really Matters

buy Gabapentin tablets “Am I claiming that the tragedy of human existence is evidence that God exists?  No.  Instead, I am claiming that the tragedy of human existence absolutely and finally strips us of any claimed right to apathy.” 

So argues Neil Shenvi in his 2022 book, Why Believe?  A Reasoned Approach to Christianity.  The world is, and always has been, filled with injustice, corruption, disease, poverty, misery, and . . . and certain death, sooner or later, for everyone who draws a breath from Earth’s air.  Accordingly, the truth claims of the Christian faith, with a frightening judgment for lost sinners who reject the Gospel, and eternal life on a New Earth for those who  humble themselves and find forgiveness in Christ, are awesome in their import.  It is irrational to say, “Christianity might be true or it might not be, but it doesn’t really matter to me.”

This is not Pascal’s wager, which suggests that it is far better to believe, since the consequences of unbelief are tragic and the consequences of belief are infinitely rewarding if the Bible is true, but if the Bible is false, then nothing is lost.  Frankly, you cannot become a born again child of God by playing the odds and hoping for the best.  Salvation requires sincerity and genuine humility, repentance, and trust.

I’ve met many unbelievers with the “Whatever” attitude.  Spiritual zombies.  Walking dead men and women.  There is far more hope for the argumentative anti-theist.  At least there you might have a conversation and a discussion about evidence and moral realities.

C.S. Lewis:  “Christianity . . ., if false, is of no importance, and, if true, of infinite importance.  The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.”

The existence of God, the biblical God, is “a question of death and life,” Shenvi asserts.  We are dying men and women, justly condemned for our willful sins which manifest throughout the corrupt world we see around us, yet we are offered not only forgiveness and a resurrection body (eternal life), but also sonship in God’s family.  “If this claim is even possibly true, we ought to take it very seriously.”

Secular philosophies, including those of political parties, sell hope through reformed educational systems, ‘better’ government, social activism, or therapy.  Religions offer redemption through good deeds, moral codes, prayers, and ritual practices.  The common deceit is that we can fix ourselves.

In stark contrast, the Gospel claims that we need a Saviour, a Rescuer, and there is nothing we can do to please God apart from Him – the Lord Jesus Christ.  But if we come His way, then we’ll be aligned with others pointed in the same direction, and we can actually live productive lives.  The Bible provides details on how to relate to God and to others.  Becoming a Christian is not a “bare intellectual exercise.”  “Jesus is a real Saviour for people desperately in need of rescue . . . people like us.”

Shenvi’s book includes a variety of arguments from traditional apologetics, but also some less traditional.  Consider the field of onomastics – the study of the history and origin of names.  For example, the most popular name for a Jewish boy in 1^st century Israel was Simon; for girls the favorite was Mary.  A study of names found in the first five books of the New Testament shows a strong correlation with historical records, including names found on ossuaries.

Why does this support the historical validity of the Gospel accounts?  Shenvi suggests you enlist four different American authors to write novellettes set in Honduras during the Vietnam War, involving about twenty characters.  What are the chances that the names chosen by the authors would match statistically the name frequencies of actual Hondurans during the 1970s?  Apart from the internet (a very recent invention), “how accessible are foreign census records from a half century ago?”

Shenvi encourages skeptics to read the Gospel accounts carefully.  They might be in for a surprise.  The modern view of Jesus is shaped by Renaissance art (he would not have had long hair), TV preachers (most of which are not actually born again Christians), dim recollections from youth of Sunday School (watered-down lessons), and pop culture (Jesus is love, Jesus is cool).  Read the Gospel accounts and yes, you will find Jesus to be compassionate and gentle, but also speaking with power and authority.  He publicly and loudly condemned religious hypocrisy.  He embraced outcasts, caring for their souls – not for their social standing.  He warned of God’s wrath, teaching more about Hell than anyone else throughout the Bible.  Jesus simply did not fit conventional stereotypes.  “Never man spake like this man,” reported the soldiers who had been ordered to arrest Jesus, but came back empty-handed.

The Bible itself is the ultimate challenge to the skeptic, because these matters are spiritual and God’s word is designed to touch the spirit of man.  John 20:31 – “But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.”

In his chapter on the Resurrection, Shenvi makes the evidential case, and deals with the various naturalistic explanations that have been offered.  Interestingly, he cites atheist Jeff Lowder who cautions Christians that “. . . apologists need to recognize that, until atheists are shown that theism is plausible, atheists will continue to regard the resurrection as a highly implausible event.”

In short, the rejection of the resurrection by atheists is a simple consequence of their belief that God does not exist.  The resurrection is not the preeminent miracle (intervention by God) reported in the Bible.  Rather, the prime event is Genesis 1:1, the fiat creation of everything.  Given Genesis 1:1, the resurrection is no stretch at all.  Shenvi:  “The most common reason that people reject the resurrection . . . is a commitment to naturalism.”  Under naturalism, miracles are impossible, not just unlikely.  (I have designed a tract for the committed atheist, entitled “Who are you?”, which you can find on ThinkTracts.com.)

Shenvi observes that many people ask why God doesn’t prove Himself by miraculous signs?  What if He has?  In the middle of human history, the resurrection of Jesus validated His person, His ministry, and His mission.  Everything changed for His crushed and defeated followers, and for all history to follow, when He raised Himself from the dead.  Raising yourself from the dead – that’s credibility!  Many have studied the circumstances and history around that single historical event and have been transformed from skeptics to Christians.

Shenvi suggests that if the message “God exists” were scrawled across the moon in fiery letters, some skeptics might turn to theism, but there would be nothing to tell us what God is like or what He expects of us.  I would guess that skeptics would more likely invoke an alien visitation.

But if Jesus was intended by God to be God’s personal revelation to humanity, then His resurrection and the biblical record serve just fine, thank you, for provoking a worldview-changing response . . . if the skeptic can get past his “Whatever” attitude.

I do recommend Shenvi’s book, but have a cautionary note:  He’s a Big-Banger.  He argues, logically, that if all space, matter, and time came into being with the Big Bang, then the cause must be outside of nature.  Christians, Jews, and Muslims assert that this cause is God.  He cites the famous quote by astronomer Robert Jastrow who closes his book God and the Astronomers:

“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream.  He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

He goes on to discuss fine-tuning arguments in a conventional way.  More interestingly, he mentions the “weirdness” objection to theism, that it’s “absurd” to imagine an immaterial Mind who designed and created the universe when it is simpler and more “plausible” to embrace the idea that nothing is “there” except what we can see, hear, and touch.

I would use the word “outrageous” to describe the Christian / theist’s position. Also that the atheist / evolutionist’s worldview is “outrageous” – that nothing became everything and that everything is ordered into spiral galaxies and planets in stable orbits around stars and that our planet is filled with an ecosystem that is based on outrageously brilliant nanotechnology.

The point is that whatever you decide to believe, it is outrageous.  But something is true, so get over it and figure out what makes the most sense.  That leads directly and with overwhelming evidence and logic to biblical Christianity.

By the way, as a PhD-educated physicist, I can attest to the weirdness / outrageousness of relativity and quantum mechanics, which describe how the universe works at the most basic level, yet don’t connect to common-sense experience in many ways.  As Shenvi notes, “We balk at the existence of immaterial realities but seem curiously unconcerned with the proliferation of ten-dimensional strings, parallel universes, closed-time loops, and nonlocal entanglement.”*  Also, “The presence of actual angels or ghosts in Star Trek would be exceptionally jarring, even in a fictional account.  But if the captain announces that a ‘hyperdimensional tachyon-based life-form has materialized on the bridge,” we can suspend our disbelief.

*Note:  All but the last are purely speculative ideas, yet are believed ‘real’ by many scientists, while the last item seems real, but nobody understands it.

Shenvi writes a thoughtful chapter on morality as evidence for God as revealed in the Bible.  A typical atheistic position was voiced by Bertrand Russell:  “The question whether a [moral] code is good or bad is the same as the question whether or not it promotes human happiness.”  Similarly, Sam Harris:  “Questions of right and wrong are really questions about the happiness and suffering of sentient creatures.  If we are in a position to affect the happiness or suffering of others, we have ethical responsibilities toward them.”

What is the foundation for morality in a materialistic universe?  Russell and Harris suggest a calculus that measures net happiness as a determinant for moral policy.  The devil is in the details, though.  Would the suffering of one fellow outweigh the flourishing of a hundred?  Is slavery or organ harvesting justified if it brings pleasure to enough people?  Perhaps it’s the ‘important people’ whose happiness is most valued.

Why are humans valuable at all?  Materialistically – atheistically – we are just bags of chemicals moving about, interacting with other bags.  Besides, who am “I” and who are “you” if your alleged thoughts and observed actions are merely the results of random brain chemistry?  Personhood requires a soul, a spirit.

Atheist French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was honest about all this:  “God does not exist and all possibility of finding values in a heaven of ideas disappears along with Him . . . Everything is permissible if God does not exist.”  Sartre lived accordingly, self-centered and mistreating the women in his life.

In his 2010 essay, “An Amoral Manifesto (Part 1),” atheist philosopher Joel Marks clarifies:  “A ‘soft atheist’ would hold that one could be an atheist and still believe in morality, but the religious fundamentalists are correct:  without God, there is no morality.”

If human beings are persons with free will and rationality, made in the image of God and accountable to Him and to others, well, that changes everything, doesn’t it?

Since postmodernism began to dominate the culture and the institutions about 30 years ago, ethical subjectivism holds sway in the minds and hearts of many.  Briefly, everyone sets his own moral standards.  It matters not how evil you think are the actions of another; if he asserts his actions are moral, you have no ground for criticism.  Identity chaos in politics and sexuality is built on the same quicksand.  In ethical subjectivism the laws and standards of a community or a nation are determined by who can amass power and enforce his preferences.  Yes, it’s ultimately all about power.

In practice, Shenvi notes, no one actually lives consistently as a moral relativist.  It’s wrong to molest babies for fun.  It’s wrong for my spouse to cheat on me.  It’s wrong for someone to steal from me.  I’ve observed over the years that the most despicably evil political leaders tend to avoid bragging about the wrong that they do.  Instead, they cover up or lie about what they did, knowing that the vast majority of people will judge them evil if they are forthright about their relativistic ‘moral’ code.

Shenvi observes that skeptics often use the very  existence of evil in the world, whether caused by natural events or by people, as an argument against God.  Rather, he argues, the despair caused by evil in the world is an argument for God.  If the world is strictly materialistic, why is there any distinction between evil and good?  It’s all just molecules in motion.  There is no ‘justice’ in clumps of molecules that collide with each other.  That’s just physics.

But if we are all persons, image-bearers, then justice and tragedy have meaning.  Biblically, evil occurs in the world because this world is currently in a fallen state due to sin.  The Fall accounts both for natural evil and for man’s crimes against man.  The Christian has an assured hope that this will change.  A judgment is on the horizon for everyone and everything.  A New Heaven and a New Earth await the redeemed, wherein dwelleth righteousness.  In materialism, of course, there is no hope.  None.

Furthermore, but secondarily, some of the evil, particularly the trials of life, serve to produce character and dependence on God.  Shenvi:  “But if God is less interested in our physical comfort and more interested in producing in us a certain kind of character, then it makes much more sense that we face trials, hardships, and suffering that can produce in us forbearance, bravery, mercy, and compassion – virtues that wouldn’t exist . . .”, if God made the present Earth into a “a sunny beach with an endless supply of snacks and free WiFi.”

The Bible has much to say about how to walk with God and endure the trouble we all experience in this life.  The biggest trouble, by far, is death, of course.  Death overwhelms all other troubles.  What is the materialist’s answer for those who face death?  Facing that question does not prove the Christian faith, but it certainly highlights the infinite stakes attached to whatever reality is.  By the way, what lies beyond death for the materialist is far, far worse than he imagines.

Shenvi poses a poignant challenge to the skeptic.  Suppose that Jesus visited you, performed miracles in your presence, and proved to you that He is who He says He is.  Let’s say you are convinced now that the Bible is true and Jesus is Lord and Saviour.  So how do you feel about Him?  Will you now choose to be His disciple, to seek His will in all your big decisions?  Will you repent from the cherished sins in your life?  Will you submit to God’s standards for sex, marriage, business, relationships?  Will you make your life’s mission one of telling others about Him, warning them of a coming judgment, pleading with them to repent and trust Christ to become born again children of God?

Will you do and be all that?  Shenvi:  “God’s purpose is to change hearts, not merely to change minds.”

In evangelism we must not miss this emphasis.  Avoid the sidetrack of evidential apologetics when the real problems are heart problems, when the real reason that skeptics avoid Jesus is their love for their favorite sins.  Yes, sometimes an evidential or historical or scientific or philosophical issue is a genuine stumbling block.  Then by all means use, gently, the best apologetics arguments to help tear that barrier down.  But the main thing is to preach law, sin, judgment, repentance, faith, the cross and the resurrection, and the new birth.  The main thing is the heart.

Preaching the Gospel and making the conditions for salvation personal is the ultimate apologetic, as Shenvi argues in his final chapters.  There is a compelling moral logic in the obvious sinfulness of everyone and the fouled-up consequences we can all see around us . . . and especially in our own lives.  Sin is a violation of the moral order God designed into us.  There is a moral logic and a soul-deep relief in the Gospel message, that we need a Rescuer and should be fearful of the ultimate Judge.  That salvation is a gift not to be earned is glorious news, not a feature of any other religion or philosophy on Earth.  That the price for this gift was paid by God Himself, who became one of us(!) is so familiar that we’ve forgotten how incredible this truth is.  That in a moment of time you can pass from death to life, from damnation to salvation, from lost to a born again child of the King of the universe . . . There is no competition to these truths from any other philosophy or narrative throughout human history.  There are no other players in the ballpark.  Game over.  Choose victory and glory or choose death.

Shenvi reviews other religions to compare their messages and promises.  Nicely done.  Only the Christian faith is honest about the reality of the human condition and realistic about the solution.  It’s just not hard to figure this out.

Shenvi:  “According to the Bible, our primary problem is not a lack of self-affirmation, a bad environment, or even material poverty; our primary problem is our sin.”  Contrast this point with everything you hear in the culture and from politicians.  They will identify as problems (for which only they have the solutions) everything under the sun . . . except sin!  The only solution for sin – which by individual choice afflicts everyone – is repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  The new birth changes not just your eternal destination, but your hope and attitude and actions for every day of this life.  No politician or media pundit or academic is going to go there!

Neil Shenvi’s book is both informative and encouraging, especially the last few chapters.  It’s worth having.  I’ll close with one of his final thoughts:  “If Christianity is true, what is the only rational response to a God like this?  Worship.  Utter delight, awe, praise, and amazement.  A repentant heart supremely values this infinitely good God not merely because He commands it, but also because He is so consummately worthy of it.  In contrast, an unrepentant heart is not merely wicked; it is irrational.  Anyone who would trade the eternal, certain, and infinite pleasure of knowing and delighting in God for the fleeting, uncertain, finite pleasures of this life is a madman.”

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com