Why I Left Atheism

By: John N. Clayton
1555 Echo Valley Dr.
Niles, MI 49120-8738

Of all the lessons that I present concerning the existence of God and of all the material that I try to make available to people to learn about God's existence, the present lesson, "Why I Left Atheism," is the lesson in the series that I frankly do not like to present. I guess none of us like to look back in our lives to a time when we made poor judgments and foolish mistakes--when we took rather really idiotic positions--and admit this, especially to people we are not well acquainted with. I present this lesson, however, because it is my fervent hope and prayer that perhaps by exposing my mistakes and by pointing out the things that were a part of my early life, some who might be following the same paths (to a greater or lesser extent) might not make those same mistakes. Someone once said that nobody is totally useless; if we cannot do anything else, we can at least serve as a bad example. That is sort of my situation. I am hoping that by presenting these materials and telling you something about my early life, some of you may be able to recognize the lack of wisdom and perhaps the poor judgment that is involved in rejecting God and living a life that demonstrates such a rejection.

Most of the time when I speak to religious groups or to people who believe in God, someone will ask me somewhat incredulously, "Well, were you really an atheist? Did you really not believe in God?" I want to start by asserting that the answer to that question is a very affirmative "Yes." At one time in my life, I was totally and firmly convicted that there was no such thing as God and that anybody who believed in God was silly, superstitious, ignorant, and had simply not looked at the evidence. I felt that believers in God were uneducated and were just following traditions, superstitions, and things that really made no sense to a person who was aware of what was going on around them. Of course, that kind of life and conviction led me to do and say things and to be something that was really very unpleasant. I lived a life that was immoral and which reflected a lack of belief in God. I lived in a way that was very self-centered and that satisfied my own pleasures and desires regardless of whether or not other people were hurt in the process of what I was doing. In the process of doing this, I did a lot of things that affected me through my whole life. It is because of this that I present these materials hoping that perhaps some of you will not make the mistakes and suffer the consequences that I have suffered. I cannot clearly remember all of the events that took place or the proper sequence of events because I was not taking notes. I never expected that I would be trying to recall these things, much less tell someone else about them. Still, I can recall in a general way much of what happened, and I am very sure of the concepts. The concepts are what will be most useful to you.

I guess the reason that I was an atheist is the same reason that many of you are believers in God if you are. That was because I had been indoctrinated in that particular persuasion. My background, the variables that were exposed to me as a child, led me very strongly in that direction. Just as many of you believe in God because your parents believe in God and because they instilled this belief in you, I also questioned, challenged, and rejected God because that was the kind of indoctrination that I received as a child. I can remember my mother saying to me as a child something like, "Do you really believe there is an old man, floating around in the sky, blasting things into existence here upon the earth? Do you really believe that there is a hole in the ground that I am going to be thrown into and burned eternally if I do not live just the way some preacher thinks I ought to?" Of course, I could not conceive of these things as a child and did not know enough to realize they are not what the Bible teaches. Consequently, I came to believe that anybody who believed in God was just silly, superstitious, ignorant, and unlearned. You may wonder how it would be possible for a person coming out of this type of background and kind of learning situation to become a strong believer in God today, devoting his life to trying to help people to understand that there is a God in heaven and that the Bible is His literal and verbally inspired Word. It is the purpose of this booklet to try and point out at least some of the things that entered into my acceptance of God, Yeshua Messiah, and the Bible as God's Word.

My high school career was one in which I grew quite rapidly academically. I enjoyed science and decided that I wanted to be a scientist of some kind. I entered Indiana University majoring in the field of physical science. It was actually at this point that one of the great changes that occurred in my life took place. I enrolled in a course in astronomy at the feet of one of the great astronomers of our day. In that particular course, we were studying the problem of origins--the creation of matter from nothing. As we discussed this particular subject, we went into all those theories that are in that particular material. We talked about the big-bang theory, the quasistatal theory, the continuous generation theory, the planetessimal theory, etc.

When we got to the conclusion of that discussion, I asked the professor which of the particular theories was the one that is most acceptable and that satisfactorily explains the creation of matter from nothing. He leaned over the desk and looked me straight in the eye and said, "Young man, you need to learn to ask intelligent questions." That rather upset me. I did not appreciate that and I said, "Well, what do you mean?" He said, "This is not a question that a scientist tries to answer. This is a question for the philosopher or theologian, but this is not something that falls into the realm of science." In today's discussions of black holes and parallel universes, things have not changed. The basic question of the creation of matter/energy from absolutely nothing is not an area that can be scientifically explored. I was very disturbed by that answer. I had always felt that science could ultimately answer all the questions that man had--that there was nothing that science could not eventually take care of as far as what man might challenge and want to know about. Yet this learned man, an expert in his field, said that this was an area that the scientist should not even try to answer--that it was totally beyond the capacity of science to explain and explore.

That is what happened to me. I began to realize that science had its limitations--that science, in fact, strongly pointed to other explanations than natural ones to certain questions.

It was about this time when another thing happened in my life and that was that a woman entered it. A lot of things begin with women (some things end with them, too). In this particular case, this young lady was by all means the most bull-headed, stubborn, cast-iron willed individual I had ever met in all my life. I can make those statements because some six years later I married her. This was the first girl I ever met that I felt I could respect. Sometimes you will hear preachers, who know absolutely nothing about what they are talking about from the role of experience, make statements such as, "If you hold on to your virtues and maintain your moral standards, a man will respect you more." Let me tell you, as one who has lived on the other side of the fence and has thought as one who is alienated from how God thinks, that statement is true. I will guarantee you that I never thought seriously about marrying anyone until I met this girl whom I could respect--who really stood for something. Not only did she stand for something morally, she believed in God and read her Bible. Though she could not answer all my questions, she kept going back to the Bible. I also learned quickly not to let her know what I was really like morally. I knew if she really knew that, she would have nothing to do with me. I did not seem to be able to break her faith as I had been able to do with other people and the thing that happened was that as a result of her stubbornness and refusal to reject the Bible, she forced me to read the Bible.

I read the Bible through from cover to cover four times during my sophomore year in college for the explicit purpose of finding scientific contradictions in it. By that, I mean statements in the Bible that were false that I could throw back at her to show her how ridiculous it was to believe in God. I had even decided to write a book called All the Stupidity of the Bible. Something amazing happened as I did this. As I considered and thought about these things, I found that I could not find a contradiction--to find some kind of scientific inaccuracy in the Bible. I just simply was not able to do it. I gave up writing the book because of lack of material! It is amazing to me that as I talk to people, I find many who claim to be Christians and who perhaps claim to have been Christians for many years who have not read the Bible through cover to cover once. I find it hard to believe that they believe in God very much if they do not even want to know what He has to say.

As I read the Bible through again and again, I began to realize that not all of the things I had been told about God and religion were what the Bible said. They may have been what organized religion said or what some men taught, but not what the Bible itself said. For example, the Bible did not say that God was an old man floating around in the sky, blasting things into existence here upon the earth. The Bible said, "God is a spirit:..." (John 4:24) and that God is not flesh and blood. Yeshua made the statement, "...for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 16:17). There are many people today who do not understand this. A Russian astronaut once made the statement, "See, I told you there was no God; I didn't see him when I was in orbit." The question might be, "What was he looking for?" I began to recognize that God was not an old man in the sky. I had an anthropology professor who made the statement in all dead seriousness,

I began to recognize that the believer life was not an altruistic life. I had been told by several people as a child that if you ever become a believer, you cannot ever be happy, you cannot ever own anything, and you have to walk around with a long sad face and your chin dragging on the ground. Yet when I read the Bible, I read statements like, "So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it,..." (Ephesians 5:28-29). I read about the Ethiopian eunuch who went on his way rejoicing because he had found Yeshua Messiah and the happiness that went with that acceptance of Yeshua in his life. I have had many problems come into my life, but all I have to do is to look back at how miserable life was without Messiah and I can realize that life, as it is now with Yeshua, is beautiful in comparison.

I began to recognize that the congregation was not a building. I can remember that when we lived in Alabama, there was a meeting place of some religious group just down the street from us. My mother used to point to that as we drove or walked by and say, "Look at that. How could anybody believe in God when the congregation looks like that." I realized that the Bible did not teach that the congregation is such a structure. First Corinthians 3:16 makes the statement, "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God...." As an atheist, I recognized that you could meet on the moon, in a submarine, out in the desert, or any place else and still be the congregation. The congregation was not a building. What a tragedy it is that so many today have invested enormous amounts of money in edifices and buildings, while other human beings have gone hungry nearby.

I began to recognize that hypocrisy was not confined to religion. I had the idea that every hypocrite in the world sat in a pew on Sunday morning, and thus that everybody who was not sitting in a pew was not a hypocrite. I remember the lesson I learned on this. There was a young man who would sit elbow to elbow with me arguing against the religionist from time-to-time. He was in the hospital once with a very serious ailment. I went up to visit him and as I opened the hospital door, I saw him down on his knees praying to God. I stood at the door of that hospital room screaming at him, "You hypocrite--you dirty hypocrite!" until I was escorted out of the hospital. It slowly began to dawn on me that hypocrisy is a function of humanity, not religion. You deal with hypocrites at the grocery store, at the filling station, on the job, at school, and at the golf course (maybe more there than anywhere else). You do not quit buying groceries because the grocer says one thing and does another.

You do not quit your job because your employer tells you to do something that he himself would not touch with a ten-foot pole. You do not deprive yourself or your child of a good education because a teacher teaches one thing and lives something else. You do not quit playing golf because your buddy takes a stroke in the rough and does not count it when he thinks you did not see it. Sure there is hypocrisy in the congregation, because there are human beings in the congregation, and as long as you deal with human beings, you are going to deal with hypocrisy. Do you want to get away from hypocrisy?

Dig a 20-foot hole in your back yard, jump in, let someone cover you with dirt, and even then you are going to be sitting down there in the bottom of that hole with one hypocrite. There is not a one of us breathing air that is as consistent as we ought to be, but the person who says, "I'm not going to be a believer! I'm not going to serve God! I'm not going to get involved in the work of the congregation because there are hypocrites in the congregation," is just logically inconsistent! We do not use that kind of thinking anywhere else in our lives. How can we do it in our relationship to God? There were many, many misconceptions that I had to get rid of to understand truly what the Bible really teaches.

Another thing that I think needs to be mentioned here as we discuss some of the things that led me to believe in God were things that had to do with my happiness. I remember that as a young person, I had what would be an ideal home by worldly standards. My parents were marvelous people; there was no divorce, unfaithfulness, or neglect in my family. We did things as a family. We enjoyed each other, yet I ran away from home. I was rebellious and antagonistic. As I look back at God's Word today, I can see why these things happened. In Colossians 3:20, for example, the Bible says, "Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well-pleasing unto the Lord." Obedience was not a characteristic of John Clayton as a young man. Living in Bloomington, Indiana, Indianapolis was known as the party town, and if I wanted to go to Indianapolis, I went. When my mother said she did not want me to go, I disconnected the speedometer and went. I did anything and everything I wanted to do. After all, there was no God. All my parents were doing was restricting my fun and enjoyment in life; why should I obey them? I lived a life that was totally antagonistic to everything that my parents stood for. It is amazing to me today that some parents, who do not believe in God and demonstrate this lack of belief to their children by what they say or the way they live, wonder why their children will not obey them. Why should they? They have removed the only source of authority that they have, and no child is going to obey a parent who has destroyed that source of authority. I am convinced that much of our law and order problems center around this very question.

Years ago I was talking to a young man in Michigan who had been a participant in some of the riots at the University of Michigan. He made the statement to me that he had done these things and I asked him why he had not obeyed the law. He said, "What law?" and I said, "The law of the land--the law that God has instituted." He looked at me and laughed and said, "Man, I don't believe in God." I do not believe we can have law and order when we remove the source of the authority to that law and order. Certainly, my rebelliousness and failure to obey my parents brought a great deal of unpleasantness and misery not only into my life, but into theirs as well

When I read passages in the Bible like Psalm 53, for instance, I sometimes feel like God is describing John Clayton some years ago. Psalm 53:1-3 says:

The fool hath said in his heart, "There is no God." Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity: there is none that doeth good. God looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek God. Every one of them is gone back: they are altogether become filthy; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

Another statement, made by Solomon in Ecclesiastes 1:2-3, 14, says:

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?...I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

I have tried almost everything you can imagine to find pleasure and happiness. I will not try to tell you that I did not find pleasure using my own system of following my own desires, but I can guarantee you that I did not find happiness. I tried every conceivable thing you can think of. I tried all kinds of things--things that were immoral, that were wrong, that hurt other people, and things that I would not even want to describe. I did those things because I was trying to find pleasure and happiness and, as I say, I found pleasure sometimes. However, I never went to bed at night satisfied or happy with my life and enjoying my living. I never got up in the morning looking forward to a new day. Life was just one long chain of misery.

As perhaps you are beginning to realize as we get into this discussion more thoroughly, there were a variety of things that led me to believe in God. One other thing that I think ought to be mentioned is the fact that I entered a period of military service about this time. For the first time in my life, I came in contact with death. I began to think about the reasonableness of death as I Iooked at it as an atheist. Perhaps a more accurate way to describe this was the way that I had to look at life because of death. As an atheist, I realized that I had to look at life with all of its problems, difficulties, and terrible things that I experienced as the best thing that I could ever look forward to. Yet I realized that as a believer, I would be able to look at life with all of its joys, beauties, and wonderful things that we all enjoy as the absolute worst that I was ever going to have to experience. Yet from a philosophical point, I began to realize that believers offered a great deal in this particular area. I did not get scared into believing in God, but I think this area together with all these other things helped me to realize that there really was quite a change in my understanding of what believers and God are all about. I began to recognize that perhaps there were some things about the congregation and what it had to offer that were important to me.

About this time in my life, I decided that other religious systems might be as good as the Bible. To check them out, I began reading the Vedas, Koran, Sayings of Buddha, writings of Bahaullah and Zoroaster and found that other religions taught many things I could not accept. There were teachings in their writings concerning what life was like after this life that were unrewarding and unrealistic and there were descriptions of God that were illogical and inconsistent. There were also many scientific inaccuracies in their works. There were many teachings about life and how to live it that were not workable.

This included the role and position of women in the Koran, the Holy War concept of Mohammed, the pantheism of nearly all other systems, reincarnation, idol worship, polygamy, and a myriad of ideas which I had expected to find in the Bible, but did not. I began to realize that nothing matched the Bible's system of life. Only in the Bible could I see statements which would stand in the face of the scientific facts that I knew to be true and only the Bible offered a system of life that I felt was reasonable and consistent. I decided that if I ever came to believe in God, it would be a belief based upon the Bible.

The next question was that if I ever became a believer in God, which of all the religious organizations claiming to be believers would be the correct one. I recognized that I did not want to be a part of all these traditional religious bodies that taught the error that I had been taught and had believed in my early years, so I started visiting the various religious organizations in southern Indiana at that time. I visited almost every religious organization that I could get into, to try and see what they taught, to see if they followed the Bible and if they understood what the Bible had to say or if they followed men's theologies. My experience was that as I went from one to another, each of them taught something that was not in the Bible. They honored some men above other men, they taught that unreligious writings were equivalent to the Bible and they did not follow the Bible literally and verbally. I had had enough of religious confusion and error. I did not want any more of that sort of thing, so I continued looking. In a real sense, I guess you could say I am still looking--I am still trying to find that true congregation. I did find the religious group that seemed to me to follow the Bible very closely. In Bloomington, there was a group of people who met on the corner of 4th and Lincoln streets. They were called the congregation of Messiah. These people still did not totally follow what I understood to be the biblical system. This group did have the doctrine of believers pretty well restored as I understood it. I recognized that passages like 1 Peter 3:21 ("The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us....") had to be interpreted as meaning what it said, and this group did interpret that in a way that I felt was consistent with that passage. This group did interpret Acts 2:38 ("...be baptized every one of you in the name of Yeshua Messiah for the remission of sins,...") in a way that I felt was consistent and they did reject men as their source of authority.

As a matter of fact, I remember hearing one of the first lessons that I ever heard in that building preached by a man named Raymond Muncy. Mr. Muncy said, "Now, don't you ever listen to anything any preacher says," and I said amen to that. He went on and talked about how we should not rely upon man and I want to tell you here an now that you should never believe anything any preacher says. Do not ever listen to any preacher, under any circumstance, unless you can find for yourself in the Bible that what that man says is consistent with God's Word. This is, in essence, what Mr. Muncy was saying and I was very impressed by it, but that group of people did not give as they were prospered. Yes, they worshipped according to God's format, but they did not give as they were prospered. They were not involved in teaching their neighbors about Yeshua Messiah. There was a very small percentage who were active in the work and they certainly did not manifest the kind of love and appreciation for each other that I understood the Bible to teach. The generation before you has restored the doctrine of believers--I believe that. However, they have yet to restore the spirit of New Testament believers and that is your challenge. Restore the spirit of New Testament believers--the love and the concern for the souls of others that the early congregation had. I recognized that the congregation of Messiah was the closest thing that I had seen to what the Bible taught. I determined that if I ever became a believer, I would become a member of this group--a group that was trying to follow the Bible literally and verbally, that would not accept the teachings of men and would not try to be influenced by the traditions of the past.

I guess the real straw that broke the camel's back occurred some six months later. I was enrolled in my first geology course at Indiana University. The professor was a brilliant, well-known atheist. On the first day of class, in response to a discussion, he made a statement something like, "I'm going to show you that the Bible is a bunch of garbage," and I thought, "Now this is going to be great," because I was getting concerned. I was still saying that I was an atheist to those who knew me well. I was still rejecting God and holding on tenaciously to my lack of belief. It is hard to change a life that has gone a certain direction for years and all of a sudden make it go another direction, I was not ready for that. I thought this man was going to be able to provide me with some arguments that would finally defeat this girl that I had been dating all these years. She was a believer--although perhaps not as strong as she might have been. I was going to show her that this religion stuff was really a lot of bunk and I was even convinced that I might even be able to show Ray Muncy that belief in God was not realistic. Mr. Muncy was a man who had great patience and knowledge, but he had not been given much of an opportunity to convince or teach me much of anything.

The professor started the class out by showing us the various methods of dating rocks and other parts of the creation. He then asserted that everyone knew that the Bible said the earth was 6,000 years old. I asked where it said that. He replied that he believed it was in Genesis the 52nd chapter. I started looking, not knowing much about the Bible, to Genesis 40, Genesis 49, Genesis 50, Exodus 1--I said, "Wait a minute; Genesis only has 50 chapters." He sputtered around a few minutes, but he never did find that passage. Of course, the Bible does not say the earth is 6,000 years old. The Bible is totally silent on the age of the earth and I realized that. This man made the statement that the Bible says that God created two cocker spaniels, two English terriers, and two German shepherds. We all had a good laugh when we figured out how big the Ark would have to be to hold the 20 million groupings of this kind. Once again, I asked where the word kind was defined in that way. It did not seem to me that the word kind meant that. We looked at it and he finally said he guessed that maybe it did not. First Corinthians 15:39 is the only definition of the word kind and that is a very broad definition ("All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another fishes, and another of birds."). Genesis 1 uses the same terminology and the same break-down as 1 Corinthians 15. To make a very, very long story fairly short, when I turned in my final exam the last day of class, I said to this learned professor, "Sir, you have not really shown me any contradiction between what we have studied in this course and in what the Bible has to teach." He jerked my paper away from me and said, "Well, I guess if you really study it, there is no contradiction." I was shocked! I was appalled! Here was a man who had a Ph.D. and was a leading atheist, yet he could not answer the silly questions from an ignorant college junior who was on his side. I remember that February day very clearly. I walked back to my room in the dormitory in a state of shock. I could not believe what had happened. I got to my room about 11:00 and sat on my bed thinking what a stupid, ignorant fool I had been. I had rejected God; I had been dishonest. I had actually been stupid in my response to the evidence available to me. I did not like people who refuse to look at the evidence and draw intelligent conclusions. I did not like people who could not break free of their parents' thinking and do their own thinking. I had always accused the religionists of doing this, yet I recognized that I had been guilty of the same thing. I had refused to be honest--to look at the evidence. I had refused to make comparative choices based upon what was available to me. I was miserable.

Supper time came and I was sitting there. My roommate came in and said, "Are you ready to eat?" I said, "No, I'm not hungry." He said, "Are you sick?" I said, "Yes, I'm sick of me!!! I'm sick of being selfish, I'm sick of using people, I'm sick of being dishonest, I'm sick...." I was still telling him what I was sick about as he left for supper. At the time, I did not understand what was happening, but I do now! That is what repentance is all about--to get sick of a selfish, egotistical, destructive life and turn to God's way--to turn to a life that has value, meaning, and direction. My roommate went on to eat and I just sat there determined that I had to do something. I could no longer sit back and be dishonest and continue to refuse to accept the obvious evidence that was available to me. About 6:30, I got up and started walking toward the building where the congregation of Messiah met on Wednesday nights. The invitation was extended at the congregation of Messiah that evening for anyone who wished to accept Messiah and come forward. I went forward, understanding that I now believed totally and completely in God. I recognized that I needed to start a new life and be willing to tell people that I accepted the existence of God and believed that Yeshua is His Son. I also realized that I was totally and completely lost in my sins and that I needed to be baptized to have forgiveness (as the Bible commanded). I started down the aisle that night and Raymond Muncy went into a mild state of shock. I remember the expression on his face. I do not think he believed that the power of God could ever reach a man as divorced as I was from anything good, decent, and godly. I was baptized into Messiah that evening for the remission of my sins, as I understood the Bible to teach. To show you how far I was from God, I called this girl, I had been dating for some six years at that time. I said, "Phyllis, I've become a believer!" She said, "I don't believe you. You quit lying to me." I had to have the preacher's wife talk to her to convince her that I had, in fact, become a believer. There are people today who still do not believe it--that the power of God could change a man that was as divorced and alienated from God as I was--but I want to tell you that in many respects, this is just the beginning of this story. God promised His help to those who are His followers. Having a close personal relationship to God and to other followers enable us to conquer enormous problems and do things we could not possibly do on our own (see Philippians 4:13).

I had a lot to overcome. I could not talk without swearing. You could not go to the preacher's house and say pass the @$#%& potatoes. I had to learn a new way of talking, a new way of living, a new set of values, and a new morality, because I had lived in opposition to God. I asked God's help in these things and I found I was able to overcome things I had never been able to overcome before. I have a whole new set of problems--a whole new set of things that I have to work on--but the problems I have today are nothing like the problems I had in the past. If anyone had told me twenty years ago that I would be openly using my limited abilities to publicly convict disbelievers of God's reality, I would have thought they were insane. Nonetheless, God has blessed my feeble efforts in spectacular ways--totally beyond anything I could have ever done.

I want to close this lesson by asking you a very simple question--a question that you need to answer for yourself and that each person needs to answer I suppose nearly every day. Are you an atheist (not perhaps as man would define it, but as God defines it)? Are you an atheist? Oh, I realize you may not be the kind of atheist that I was. Perhaps you are not immoral or hurting people or dishonest or doing the kinds of things that I did. I am thankful that you are not, but do you realize the way Yeshua views an atheist? Matthew 12:30 says, "He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad." What is He saying? He is saying that you are either for God or you are against God. You are either an atheist or a believer; you cannot be both. I can understand how a man can be an atheist. I have been an atheist a good part of my life. As an atheist, I believed (and still believe) that my life was consistent, reasonable, and defendable.

For a few years now, I have been trying to live what I understand to be the believer way of life. Once again, I believe my life is consistent, reasonable, and defendable with what I believe, but I will never understand (and if you understand, I wish you would explain it to me) how a man or a woman or a boy or a girl can say, "Yes, I believe in God. Yes, I understand that the Bible is God's Word," and then not do everything and anything within their power to make sure their lives conform to what that God teaches. That is not consistent, not reasonable, and not defendable, yet I am sure there are many people who know that their life is not consistent with God's way of living. Yeshua said, "He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad." Are you for Messiah? Are you working for Messiah? Is your life radiating the kind of living that Yeshua taught? Are you really a believer or are you an atheist? There is no middle ground. It is my hope that by revealing to you the kind of person I have been and the mistakes I have made, you have realized that God is the only way. It is my prayer that you have realized that there is nothing that can be a part of your life that God cannot help you overcome and that you also realize that there is no better time than right now to begin the believer way of living. Will you not give yourself to God and live Messiah's Way? If you do not know a person or group of people in your community following the Lord, write me and I will try to help you.

A PRACTICAL MAN'S PROOF OF GOD

The existence of God is a subject that has occupied schools of philosophy and theology for thousands of years. Most of the time, these debates have revolved around all kinds of assumptions and definitions. Philosophers will spend a lifetime arguing about the meaning of a word and never really get there. One is reminded of the college student who was asked how his philosophy class was going. He replied that they had not done much because when the teacher tried to call roll, the kids kept arguing about whether they existed or not.

Most of us who live and work in the real world do not concern ourselves with such activities. We realize that such discussions may have value and interest in the academic world, but the stress and pressure of day-to-day life forces us to deal with a very pragmatic way of making decisions. If I ask you to prove to me that you have $2.00, you would show it to me. Even in more abstract things we use common sense and practical reasoning. If I ask you whether a certain person is honest or not, you do not flood the air with dissertations on the relative nature of honesty; you would give me evidence one way or the other. The techniques of much of the philosophical arguments that go on would eliminate most of engineering and technology if they were applied in those fields.

The purpose of this brief study is to offer a logical, practical, pragmatic proof of the existence of God from a purely scientific perspective. To do this, we are assuming that we exist, that there is reality, and that the matter of which we are made is real. If you do not believe that you exist, you have bigger problems than this study will entail and you will have to look elsewhere.

THE BEGINNING

If we do exist, there are only two possible explanations as to how our existence came to be. Either we had a beginning or we did not have a beginning. The Bible says, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Genesis 1 :1). Most atheists maintain that there was no beginning. The idea is that matter has always existed in the form of either matter or energy; and all that has happened is that matter has been changed from form to form, but it has always been. The Humanist Manifesto says, "Matter is self-existing and not created," and that is a concise statement of the atheist's belief.

The way we decide whether the atheist is correct or not is to see what science has discovered about this question. The picture below on the left represents our part of the cosmos. Each of the disk shaped objects is a galaxy like our Milky Way. All of these galaxies are moving relative to each other. Their movement has a very distinct pattern which causes the distance between the galaxies to get greater with every passing day. If we had three galaxies located at positions A, B. and C in the second diagram below, and if they are located as shown, tomorrow they will be further apart. The triangle they form will be bigger. The day after tomorrow the triangle will be bigger yet. We live in an expanding universe that gets bigger and bigger and bigger with every passing day.

Now let us suppose that we made time run backwards! If we are located at a certain distance today, then yesterday we were closer together. The day before that, we were still closer. Ultimately, where must all the galaxies have been? At a point! At the beginning! At what scientists call a singularity! In 1999, it was discovered that the galaxies are accelerating in their expansion. Any notion that we live in an oscillating or pulsating universe has been dispelled by this discovery. The universe is not slowing down, but speeding up in its motion.

A second proof is seen in the energy sources that fuel the cosmos. The picture to the right is a picture of the sun. Like all stars, the sun generates its energy by a nuclear process known as thermonuclear fusion. Every second that passes, the sun compresses 564 million tons of hydrogen into 560 million tons of helium with 4 million tons of matter released as energy. In spite of that tremendous consumption of fuel, the sun has only used up 2% of the hydrogen it had the day it came into existence. This incredible furnace is not a process confined to the sun. Every star in the sky generates its energy in the same way. Throughout the cosmos there are 25 quintillion stars, each converting hydrogen into helium, thereby reducing the total amount of hydrogen in the cosmos. Just think about it! If everywhere in the cosmos hydrogen is being consumed and if the process has been going on forever, how much hydrogen should be left?

Suppose I attempt to drive my automobile without putting any more gas (fuel) into it. As I drive and drive, what is eventually going to happen? I am going to run out of gas! If the cosmos has been here forever, we would have run out of hydrogen long ago! The fact is, however, that the sun still has 98% of its original hydrogen. The fact is that hydrogen is the most abundant material in the universe! Everywhere we look in space we can see the hydrogen 21-cm line in the spectrum--a piece of light only given off by hydrogen. This could not be unless we had a beginning!

A third scientific proof that the atheist is wrong is seen in the second law of thermodynamics. In any closed system, things tend to become disordered. If an automobile is driven for years and years without repair, for example, it will become so disordered that it would not run any more. Getting old is simple conformity to the second law of thermodynamics. In space, things also get old. Astronomers refer to the aging process as heat death. If the cosmos is "everything that ever was or is or ever will be," as Dr. Carl Sagan was so fond of saying, nothing could be added to it to improve its order or repair it. Even a universe that expands and collapses and expands again forever would die because it would lose light and heat each time it expanded and rebounded.

The atheist's assertion that matter/energy is eternal is scientifically wrong. The biblical assertion that there was a beginning is scientifically correct.
THE CAUSE

If we know the creation has a beginning, we are faced with another logical question--was the creation caused or was it not caused? The Bible states, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Not only does the Bible maintain that there was a cause (a creation) but it also tells us what the cause was. It was God. The atheist tells us that "matter is self-existing and not created." If matter had a beginning and yet was uncaused, one must logically maintain that something would have had to come into existence out of nothing. From empty space with no force, no matter, no energy, and no intelligence, matter would have to become existent. Even if this could happen by some strange new process unknown to science today, there is a logical problem.

In order for matter to come out of nothing, all of our scientific laws dealing with the conservation of matter/energy would have to be wrong, invalidating all of chemistry. All of our laws of conservation of angular momentum would have to be wrong, invalidating all of physics. All of our laws of conservation of electric charge would have to be wrong, invalidating all of electronics and demanding that your TV set not work! Your television set may not work, but that is not the reason! In order to believe matter is uncaused, one has to discard known laws and principles of science. No reasonable person is going to do this simply to maintain a personal atheistic position.

The atheist's assertion that matter is eternal is wrong. The atheist's assertion that the universe is uncaused and selfexisting is also incorrect. The Bible's assertion that there was a beginning which was caused is supported strongly by the available scientific evidence.

THE DESIGN

If we know that the creation had a beginning and we know that the beginning was caused, there is one last question for us to answer--what was the cause? The Bible tells us that God was the cause. We are further told that the God who did the causing did so with planning and reason and logic. Romans 1:20 tells us that we can know God is "through the things he has made." The atheist, on the other hand, will try to convince us that we are the product of chance. Julian Huxley once said:

We are as much a product of blind forces as is the falling of a stone to earth or the ebb and flow of the tides. We have just happened, and man was made flesh by a long series of singularly beneficial accidents.

The subject of design has been one that has been explored in many different ways. For most of us, simply looking at our newborn child is enough to rule out chance. Modern-day scientists like Paul Davies and Frederick Hoyle and others are raising elaborate objections to the use of chance in explaining natural phenomena. A principle of modern science has emerged in the 1980s called "the anthropic principle." The basic thrust of the anthropic principle is that chance is simply not a valid mechanism to explain the atom or life. If chance is not valid, we are constrained to reject Huxley's claim and to realize that we are the product of an intelligent God.

THE NEXT STEP

All of these questions and many more are answered in the same way--by looking at the evidence in a practical, common sense way. If you are interested in pursuing these things in more detail, we invite you to contact us. We have available books, audio tapes/CDs, video tapes/DVDs, correspondence courses, and booklets/pamphlets and all can be obtained on loan without cost. You can get more information on what is available from our catalog online or by requesting our catalog from the address below. Click this link for a PDF copy of this article (it will print on 8-1/2 x 14 inch paper). You can request a printed copy of this pamphlet from:

DOES GOD EXIST?
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A HELP IN UNDERSTANDING WHAT GOD IS

To help the reader comprehend the nature of God, I would like to borrow an analogy from the book Flatland by Edwin Abbott.* Abbott was a mathematician and the model is geometric in nature. It was originally written in the 19th century for the purposes we are using it for here. Flatland is the story of a man who lives in a two dimensional world--like a sheet of paper. In the surface of the paper there is only length and width-there is no such thing as thickness. You and I are three-dimensional beings-we have length and width and frequently considerable thickness. You cannot get me, a three-dimensional being, into a two-dimensional sheet of paper. You can draw a front view of me (a portrait), but that is not the whole me. You can draw a top view of me which because I am bald, ends up being three concentric circles, but that is not the whole me. If you and I were to look at the man in Flatland, we would see him as a profile (see figure 1). He would be outlined but have no thickness.

Figure 1: The man in Flatland.

One day the man in Flatland is visited by a sphere. The sphere is a three-dimensional object just as we are, and it just so happens that it crosses Flatland right in the man's living room. Now if you will think about that for a moment, you will realize that for the man in Flatland a rather incredible thing has happened. A dot appears on the man's floor with no cause that the man in Flatland can understand. A dot in Flatland is matter! In figure 1, the man, himself, is made up of a series of dots. Just as a tennis ball dipped in paint and touched to a sheet of paper would produce a dot on the paper, so too has our dot which the man in Flatland calls matter appeared out of nothing (see figure 2). As the man in Flatland watches, the dot becomes a circle which continuously grows in size (see figure 3). You will see if a plane truncates (or slices) a sphere, it will produce a circle; and the deeper the sphere sinks into the plane, the larger the circle will become.

Figure 2: A sphere tangent to a plane produces a dot on the plane. The man in Flatland sees only the dot.

Figure 3: A plane truncating a sphere. The man in Flatland sees a circle.

The circle becomes so large it is about to fill the living room of the man in Flatland. He is terrified because he does not understand what is happening. All of the laws of science which state that matter cannot be created nor destroyed are being violated. What he sees is for him a true miracle. Just as he is about to run in panic from the room, the sphere reaches its equator, passes its equator, and gradually sinks out of the plane. So what happens to the circle in Flatland? It begins to shrink, and it becomes smaller and smaller until finally it is just a dot on his floor and then it is gone! Another violation of the laws of science! Matter cannot be destroyed and yet the man in Flatland has seen it happen. The man in Flatland is being confronted with miraculous and ghost-like events which violates his science and his common sense.

Let us suppose now that the man in Flatland begins talking to the sphere, and he says to the sphere: "What is it like to be a sphere? The sphere says, "I'll tell you what it's like; draw a circle on your floor." This is not easy for the man in Flatland to do. His perception of a circle is a constantly curving line that returns to its origin, but he cannot see all of the circle at once. He can only see the side of the circle facing him. The only way he could see a whole circle would be to be inside the circle, and if he got inside he could never get out. People in Flatland commit suicide by drawing circles around themselves that they can never get out of. Because of this it takes along time for him to draw the circle. The sphere is most impatient with all this because he could have done it instantly. Finally the circle is completed and the sphere says, "Now what I want you to do is to rotate the circle! What he has in mind is that the man in Flatland will rotate the circle about its diameter producing a sphere, but what the man in Flatland does is to rotate the circle about its circumference, spinning it like a record on a record player. "No, no--rotate it the third way,' says the sphere. "There is no third way you fool," cries out the man in Flatland, and for him this is true. There is no third way, no up and down in a thickness direction, and absolutely no way for him to comprehend what the sphere is talking about or what the sphere is. The only thing that he can understand is the world or dimension in which he lives.

Now the reason that I have told you this little story is to give you a foundation by which you can understand God. When you read, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Genesis 1:1), you are reading a description analogous to Flatland. The concept is that, a God, who is in a higher dimension than are we, a God who has the same kind of relationship to us which the sphere had to Flatland, that, this kind of being touched our little "Flatland," so to speak, and in violation of all of our laws of science created matter out of nothing. God is so superior to us, he exists in such a higher dimension than do we that what is natural and ordinary to him is miraculous to us. The Bible recognizes this concept and uses it in every single description of God.

* Edwin Abbott, Flatland, (Dover Pub. Inc., 1952).
Reprinted from
The Source-Eternal Design or Infinite Accident

And as Yeshua passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, "Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?" Yeshua answered, "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him" (John 9:1-3).

One of the great problems and one of the great mysteries of life is the problem of human suffering and the problem of death. I suppose there is more pain and suffering today than there ever has been on the face of the earth-if for no other reason than the fact that there are more people than ever before. Not only is there more physical pain, but there is also more emotional and mental pain than there has ever been. Almost every time that I am involved in a lectureship on a college campus or a similar place I have people--young people usually--who will come to me and say, "Well all right, you've shown us that there is some evidence for God's existence, but if there is a God and if he is a loving and merciful God, how do you explain the problems of suffering and death and all the tragedies that happen to people?" Why is it that these things occur? I believe any question that man can ask has a reasonable answer-at least an answer that is as consistent with God's existence as it is in opposition to God's existence. And so, in the problem of human suffering and the problem of death and tragedies-things that happen to all of us--there are answers. It is not going to be possible in this booklet to give an answer to every conceivable situation that one might conjecture could occur or has occurred. But there are some things that can be said and some points that can be made that are useful and helpful in better understanding the problem of human suffering and in demonstrating that these things are not inconsistent with a loving and merciful God, such as the God we read of in the Bible.

There are some things that are obvious enough and that are simple enough to understand, that there is no need to go into great detail. So, I just want to mention them very briefly.

For instance, there are those who say there is no such thing as pain. There is a school of thought that says that pain does not really exist, that it is all in your mind, that if you experience pain, it is because you are weak or because you are psychologically not properly oriented or because you are not spiritual enough or whatever it might be--that pain is an illusion. But I doubt very sincerely if too many of us take this point of view seriously. Medically we know that the brain makes responses to a pin prick in the finger. There are very few of us that when we stick ourselves with a pin or cut ourselves do not thoroughly and completely believe that pain is real, and so I do not intend to go into this in great detail.

Although there are many things that could be said, I do not think it is necessary for us to get involved in long and protracted discussions about the things that we experience as far as pain and suffering go as a result of our own deliberate sin. In short, if you jump off a bridge you should not get too upset with God when you hit the bottom. We have examples of this in the Bible: Saul, David, Cain, Adam and Eve--individuals who suffered because of their transgressions of what God has said to do and what not to do. Certainly, in today's world we see this. The people who drink alcoholic beverages can expect to have problems getting their brains to function properly in old age. They are people who can expect to have problems with liver cirrhosis and things of this kind. They can expect to have difficulties that are a result of having taken this material, this poisonous intoxicant material, into their bodies. People who smoke can expect to have problems with their lungs (emphysema, lung cancer, things of this type). The person who commits adultery can expect the consequences of that--the psychological damage, and disappointment. The person who drives too fast, uses drugs, or lies--is involved in things that naturally precipitate problems for us and they fall in the category of jumping off the bridge. I believe that if we abuse ourselves, we cannot be angry with our Creator for not stepping in and helping us avoid the consequences of these things. It would be unreasonable to expect God to stop us from hitting the bottom when we jump off a bridge. And so if we persist in taking chemicals into our body, in doing things that are contradictory to what God has told us to do, we can expect to suffer. I do not believe that it is inconsistent with the nature of God for a man to expect to suffer when he tampers with nature or when he fails to heed the situations that occur when our natural situation is abused.

When man was put upon the earth he was told to be fruitful, to replenish the earth, to subdue it. His first responsibility upon the earth (his only responsibility when he was first here) was to "care for the garden," to take care of the earth, to make sure that the earth was properly nurtured and properly supervised. The essence of that command still exists. Man still has the responsibility to take care of this beautiful creation that God has given us. Much of the suffering and tragedy man experiences is because he has not discharged this responsibility.

Man's persistence in polluting the water, for example, has caused disease and other problems which in some cases have been tragic. Man's unwise use of the land has caused floods and tornadoes that have brought great tragedy and great suffering upon man. When we violate the natural environment that God has given us, we cannot expect God to allow the consequences of this violation to occur. We know that emphysema and some of the other diseases that we have come in contact with have been, at least in some cases, caused by our violation of the air that God has given us originally in a state that did not cause these things. We have evidence that even leukemia may be related to man's indiscriminate use of nuclear energy.

Another aspect of the problem of suffering is seen when we fail to heed the warnings of nature and thus reap the consequences. I think there are many classic illustrations of this. In California, for example, there is an area near Los Angeles where the earth is under great stress, and where there are a tremendous number of cracks, or faults as they are called. Geologists have warned the builders in that area that this is a place where they need to be extremely careful not to build tall buildings and that they should not construct structures that are sensitive to earthquakes and to cracks and shifting of the earth. Yet at this time there is a building under construction to replace a hospital that was knocked down by an earthquake not too long ago. This building is suppose to be sixteen stories tall and has no earthquake provisions of any real consequence in it. It is being partially financed by the Federal Government, and is straddling the very fault that knocked down the hospital that it is replacing. Now I'd like you to think for a minute, who will get the blame when an earthquake rolls through that area, knocking down the brand new hospital and perhaps killing ten million people, including everybody in the hospital? Who is going to get the blame? Well, I will guarantee you that there will be those people who will say, "If there was a God that wouldn't have happened". And yet the warning is there. If you build your house in the mouth of a volcano, it does not seem to me that you have too much to complain about when it erupts. A surprising amount of the problems we have fall into these categories that we have briefly examined.

First let us take a look at a few points that are related to this type of problem, at least in an indirect way. Let us see if we can make some sense of some of the things that you and I experience: some of the things that come our way in life that we sometimes find somewhat difficult to explain or somewhat difficult to rationalize or to work out in our own minds. There are some, for example, who suggest to us that pain is something that should not occur if there is a God. And yet, physical pain and other types of pain are absolutely necessary if we are to survive in a physical way. There was a story in Reader's Digest about a little boy in India who was born without the nerve endings of the extremities of his body connected to his brain. In simple terms, this child could not experience physical pain. Now you know, we might think that would be marvelous to never have a stubbed toe, a headache, a backache, or all the other aches and pains that bother all of us. But this is a very tragic, unpleasant story. This little boy was about 10 or 11 months old, just beginning to walk around hanging onto things, when his mother was kneading bread over on the counter and smelled the odor of burning human flesh. She turned and saw her little boy with his hands on the hot furnace in the center of the room, and the doctors were just barely able to save his hands by skin grafting. You see, that child could not know that the furnace was hot, and the natural reflex built into each of us was not operative in this child. Consequently he was not protected by experiencing normal pain. Any normal child would probably have never touched the thing, and if they had they would have jerked away immediately. They would have experienced pain. They would have screamed and would have gotten help immediately without a serious bum. But this child did not have that protection. A few months later the child came in one day and collapsed in the doorway of the hut, and when the mother picked him up she noticed his foot was badly cut and he had an obvious loss of blood. Once again his life was saved by transfusions but you see his body could not say to his brain, "You've been hurt! Get help! You need attention quickly." We need physical pain. The tragic end of the story came when the child was barely eight years old. He came in one day and laid down on the mat in the corner of the hut as is the custom in that country. The mother went over to check on him a few minutes later and found he was dead. An autopsy revealed he had died of a ruptured appendix. You see his body could not say to his brain, "You're sick. You need help. You're in trouble." Consequently, survival was not possible.

The writer says in Psalm 139:14, "I will praise thee for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well." Indeed this physical body that I live in, ugly as it may be on the outside, is a marvelous machine--and if properly cared for might run as long as a hundred years without a valve job or a new transmission or even a change in oil. (Some of us may sometimes feel like we need a new transmission, but the fact of the matter is that we are fearfully and wonderfully made.) Physical pain is a part of being fearfully and wonderfully made; physical pain is that which protects us and enables us to survive in the environment in which we live.

I would like to suggest to you further that this same type of thing is true in the emotional sense. What kind of man would it be who could not experience guilt and sympathy and compassion and who could not relate to the needs of fellow human beings? We have had some famous people who were like this. They wear names like Hitler, Mussolini and Eichman--men who could watch innocent women and children by the tens of thousands walk to their death in the gas chamber and apparently not be moved. These men apparently were not able to feel sympathy or compassion or guilt in any way.

If you are a young man dating a young woman who cannot be moved by the saddest of human experiences (if she can watch the saddest movie and a tear does not come to her eye; if she can hear of the greatest plight of human beings and if she can observe the suffering and pain of others and not be moved) you had better think very seriously about what kind of a wife this girl is going to be. Is she going to be able to relate to your needs? Is she going to relate to your feelings? Is she going to have compassion for what you need in life? And when you fail, is she going to be sympathetic and understanding? Is she going to be a "helpmeet", or is she going to be "millstone" dragging you down, one who has no capacity to relate to you and to help you when you need help?

Perhaps even a greater need is the reverse direction. If you are a young lady dating a young man and if this young man somehow has the distorted, perverted idea that masculine strength depends on not being sensitive and not being able to relate to the needs of other human beings, you had better think very seriously about what kind of husband this man is going to be. If he can watch the saddest movie and not be moved and if he can watch the greatest tragedy of human life and not be disturbed, you can be sure he is going to be a husband who is totally unable to relate to you in the difficult business of being a woman and the more difficult business of being a mother. Do you really believe he is going to feel for your needs and be sympathetic to your problems? Is he really going to be helpful to you when you need help?

I am convinced that one of the greatest tragedies of our society today is the fact that somehow we have equated the ability to be sympathetic, the ability to be compassionate, the ability to relate to the needs of our fellow human beings as weakness--when, in fact, it is a sign of strength.

A man of strength is a man who can stand above a cold impersonal city and with tears in his eyes say, "Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together even as a hen gathereth her chicks under her wings, and ye would not!" There is a man of strength; there is a man who was not afraid to get involved; there is a man who paid with his life for his ability to relate to the needs of other people; and there was the Son of God--Yeshua Messiah! We need to get over this idea that somehow the man who can do this--the man who can be sympathetic and compassionate, who can move into people's lives and try to help them--is a weak man. In fact, just the opposite is true.

I am also convinced that one of our great problems in this area of pain and suffering and death is brought on by ignorance. And I suppose that this is true of death more than anything else. Ignorance has caused us to throw away one of the great blessings that we have in being a believer. My little girl taught me a great lesson in this area when she was five years old. We had a little puppy that had grown up with our children. One day the little puppy was attacked viciously in our garage by three very large dogs and was badly injured. When I came home from work I found my children gathered around a blood-soaked blanket with the dog inside it. I took the dog to the veterinarian knowing full well that there was very little hope for her survival, and in fact, there was none. As I went back home, I kept wondering what I was going to say to my children. How was I going to explain to them that this little puppy that they had grown up with and that they loved, was no longer alive? I came into the living room and sat down, and with tears coming from my own eyes I said to my children, "I have some bad news for you, children. Susie is no longer alive. She's dead." Cathy, the little five year old looked up at me and said, "Well, Daddy, I'm so glad." And she smiled. I said, "Cathy, honey, you don't understand. You're never going to see Susie again. Susie is dead." Cathy looked at me and said, "Well, Daddy, I didn't want to see Susie go on suffering like that." You talk about feeling an inch high! I realized that my five year old had a better hold on some aspects of death than I did.

In fact, is it not a marvelous thing that when those we love are no longer able to exist realistically in a physical way that they do not have to go on suffering. God has provided a means by which the spirit can be separated from the body and the physical pain that we endure now fades into insignificance. It is interesting to me that the apostles rarely used the term death to describe the end of life. They talked about being "asleep in Yeshua," about being "absent from the body," about being "at home with God," and so forth. I have known people who when they lost a husband or a wife, a mother or a father, a child, a brother or a sister, have somehow seemed to quit living themselves. They atrophy and are no longer able to be happy, useful, and productive. This is a great tragedy. I pointed out in one of my other lectures that as a believer we ought to be able to look at life much more positively because of death. As an atheist, as a disbeliever, as one alienated from God, a person has to look at life with all of its problems, with all of its suffering, with all of the pain, with all of the terrible things that one has to endure as the absolute best that he is ever going to experience. And yet, if we are wearing Messiah, if we are a part of Yeshua, we can look at life with all of its joy, with all of its beauty, with all of the wonderful things that we all enjoy as the absolute worst that we are ever going to have to endure. Can't we see that the difference is as different as left and right, as black and white, as night and day? If there was no other reason for us to believe in God but this one, it would be a compelling reason. Ignorance is one of the great curses of man. Ignorance of death is one of the great curses of the believer.

I am sure all of you have heard lessons from one time or another of the value of pain and suffering in people's lives. I think that it would be important for us here to make just a comment along these lines, even though it is a point you have undoubtedly heard. I think perhaps the best illustration that I have heard is a very old story but one that illustrates the point very well. There were five brothers out west somewhere who at one time had attended the services of the congregation, but had become indifferent because of lack of involvement. They were not in attendance, not faithful, and were completely inactive.

The story goes that at one time the oldest brother, John, was out behind the barn and he got bit on the arm by a rattlesnake. Of course the other brothers were greatly concerned. They called the elders and the preacher and anybody else they could get to pray for John. They made all kinds of promises of the things they were going to do. It was not too long until John began to recover. As he recovered, he reflected upon his condition and his rejection of God and his lack of involvement and the fact that he had not been faithful to the Lord. So he turned away from the kind of life he had been living, and he came to God.

The story goes that one Sunday the preacher, in the process of a prayer, said, "Lord send us four more rattlesnakes that we may reach John's four brothers."

I am sure that no preacher would want to bring that kind of pain and suffering into a man's life, but the fact of the matter is that sometimes it takes pain, sometimes it takes suffering, sometimes it takes a tragedy to make us realize that we need God. Pain humbles us. Somebody has said, "Humility is a funny thing. Just when you think you have it, you've lost it." Certainly that is true in 2 Corinthians 12:7 Paul said, "...lest I should be exalted above measure.... there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure." The apostle Paul apparently had a problem. The pain and suffering (the thorn in the flesh, whatever it was) helped Paul. It helped him overcome any sense of egotism that might have been part of his life. Sometimes it takes a tragedy to make us realize we are not self-sufficient. Sometimes it takes a disease to make us realize that no matter how much money we have, no matter how vocal we are, no matter how many friends we have, no matter what our situation in life might be, that sometimes there is no one who can help us but God. "...Whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's" (Romans 14:8).

The last point that I wish to make in our discussion is probably the most important point--a point that I think each of us needs to think about very, very seriously and understand very completely--especially as far as the believer's situation connected with pain and suffering is concerned. The point deals most precisely with the passage of Scripture from John 9:1-3 that we read earlier in our discussion. Every now and then, I will discuss this subject with someone who will say, "Well, if God were real and if everything was as you say it is, then certainly Christians following God's system would not have to experience pain and suffering." I think if we consider that point of view for a few minutes we see that obviously this is not a realistic position for a number of reasons.

First of all, if becoming a believer would automatically unravel all the various problems that confront a person in life, then we would have people flocking to religion to get away from their problems. The way it is, there are some people using religion as an escape mechanism when that is not what God intended. God wants us to serve him because we love him, not out of fear. It would be unreal and unrealistic for us to really believe that somehow being a believer ought to exempt us from the problems that other people have to endure.

But I think even far more fundamental and far more important than this is the fact that if Christians did not suffer, they would be totally and completely incapable of doing what they were put here to do. God intends for his followers to communicate with the world, to bring Yeshua Messiah into the lives of people. You cannot communicate with a man unless you are enduring or have endured some of the same things that he has endured. As a matter of fact, I believe that the bad experiences that you and I have to put up with and that we all undergo from time to time are actually talents. They are actually things that enable us to communicate with our fellow man and meet his needs. I hope you will pardon this very personal reference but I do not really know any other way to present what I am trying to say here than to show you in my own life what God has done and how things have worked to his glory.

Some years ago my wife and I decided that as a part of service to the Lord we would adopt some children. We wanted to raise these children in a believer home. We wanted to love them as any parent loves their children, and help them find the happiness and joy that we have found in Messiah in our marriage together. We made the proper arrangements, and in a very short period of time, we were allowed to bring home a little boy as our own son. We were very, very happy. We named him Timothy, because I had great dreams for this young man. It was my sincere hope and prayer that this child might develop to be a great gospel preacher like the Timothy I read about in the Bible--that he might be able to do what I knew his daddy would never be able to do because of his background, his lack of training, and his ability. We had this child for about six months when we began to recognize that something was not developing normally in the child. One day we took the child to a doctor. When the doctor examined the baby he said, "Mr. and Mrs. Clayton, I hate to tell you this, but your child is blind. He can't see. He's got congenital cataracts and not only that, it also appears that there will probably be other difficulties. This child is apparently a rubella child. His mother apparently had German measles (rubella) during the pregnancy and he may have a heart defect. He will probably be retarded. There are a variety of things that could be wrong. As a medical doctor, I must advise you to put this child away in an institution, get another baby, and forget about him." We had had this child for about six months. He was as much our child as any child is anybody's child. You can imagine the kind of impact that this had on a man who had been a believer a very short time. That night we went out for a drive. While my wife went in to get something at a shopping center, I can remember sitting in the car holding this little baby in my arms, looking into that little face I had grown to love, and saying to God over and over, "Why Lord, why? Why would you do this to me? After I've come out of atheism: After I've sacrificed everything I know to sacrifice. After I've done everything I know to do, why would you do this to me?"

The answer did not come right away. We went through an agonizing period of time. Many people tried to tell us that we ought to institutionalize the child, and sometimes this is necessary. There are times when the best thing for the child, the best thing for the parents, and the best thing for all concerned is to institutionalize a child that has problems that cannot be met satisfactorily in a home situation. But we did not know what this child's situation was. I kept reading passages like John 9, "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him." I read passages that said that "...all things work together for good to them that love God..." (Romans 8:28). There had to be a reason for this! There had to be some kind of understanding that I could get that would make me realize why this thing had happened! We determined that at least until we knew what the child's situation was, we had to stick this thing out. People who did not share our convictions tried to influence us to wash our hands of the situation. We went through five surgeries on the baby's eyes. After three surgeries one eye was lost. The other eye has 20/200 vision in a tunnel, which is very poor vision and is considered legally blind. We found that the child was retarded but that the retardation was not as bad as it might have been. We are still working to the end that Tim has the potential of achieving some useful place in society. I suppose that even during these few years when we were going through all of this, I began to recognize some value in what had happened. Certainly, my wife and I were closer as man and wife because we had endured this thing together. We had to support each other and help each other through the problem. By having had this somewhat abnormal situation I am sure that we appreciate our so-called normal children (if any child is normal) a whole lot more.

Most of you have not had that experience. I hope you never do. It is a terrible thing to look at a child that you have planned great things for, that you love very much, and realize that nothing that you had dreamed about can really come true. It is a terrible thing, but it is something that I have been through and I could say to this young man and this young woman, "I know how you feel. You can have great joy and a great blessing in this thing."

Because of this experience, I began to realize that I had a talent. I had an ability. I had an opportunity to relate to people to whom no one else in my immediate area could relate. A couple months later when I was in New York I met an elder in the congregation who had a Mongoloid child. I could relate to him. I could help him realize that there were others who shared his burden and his problem. Sometime later in my own congregation a family that we loved very much had a child born with the same problem. Once again we could help, advise, and relate to their needs. We could help them get programs that were useful to them and to their child. You see I have a talent and an ability that nobody else has in my immediate area--to relate to people and to bring Messiah into the lives of people who are experiencing this kind of difficulty.

But I cannot go to a man who has lost his father and say I know how you feel, because at this time I do not. I cannot go to a man who has lost his mother, his child, his brother or his sister and meet his needs because I have not had those experiences. I cannot go to a teen-ager who has divorced parents and say I know how you feel, because I do not. I do not have the slightest idea how they feel. But some of you do. Some of you have had these experiences, and you have weathered the storm. You can go to people and relate to their needs. You can help them through their difficulties. You have a talent. What are you doing with that talent?

One time a young lady, a Red Cross nurse, was in Pennsylvania when a terrible train wreck occurred. People were injured, bleeding, and dying everywhere. She came before other medical help arrived, and began to meet the needs of these people the best she could. One of the first people she saw was a man in a business suit walking around in a state of shock saying over and over again, "My instruments, my instruments! If only I had my instruments!" She administered to his needs, and got him out of his state of shock. As she turned to leave him she said to him, "Sir, I just wondered if you could tell me something. As you saw all these terrible injuries you kept wailing around saying, 'My instruments, my instruments, if only I had my instruments!' What was going through your mind?" The man stood up and said to her, "Young lady, I better introduce myself." He told her his name. He said that he was a head surgeon in a hospital near there, and all he could think of as he looked around and saw all these terrible injuries was that if only he had his surgical tools (his instruments), he could help meet these people's needs and bring relief to their pain and suffering.

My friend, I wonder how many times God in heaven looks down at the problems this earth has, looks at you and looks at me and says, "My instruments, my instruments, if only I had my instruments!!! "

Are you an instrument of God? You need to answer that for yourself right now. Are you an instrument of God? Are you a tool of the Lord bringing joy, peace, and relief into the lives of people? Or are you a part of the problem bringing pain and despair because of your lack of involvement? You cannot be an instrument of God unless you are forged according to God's plan. The blacksmith cannot make an ax unless he uses a plan or a pattern. God said you must believe in him. Don't you believe? Are you willing to admit this belief, which we call confession? Are you willing to live God's system and repent and turn away from the world's way of life? Are you willing to be forged in God's system by being buried in water in baptism for the remission of your sins to become an instrument of God? Then, as an instrument of God, use your talents and your abilities to bring joy, relief, peace, love, and understanding into a world so desperately in need of these things? There are some of you who undoubtedly have been instruments of God at one time. But you are just like the ax that the blacksmith made. When he finished making it, it was beautiful, shiny, and new. Then somebody left it in the garden and it has been unused and been exposed to the elements and the forces of this world. Just like that ax, you have become rusty, corroded, something that nobody wants to have anything to do with, despicable because you are no longer a beautiful, shiny, clean useful instrument of God. Will you be an instrument of God? Will you be a part of the Lord's work? If you will be an instrument of God and if you will follow God's system you have the greatest promise that can be made to a person considering human suffering and pain and death. "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away" (Revelation 21:4). Be an instrument of God!

P.S.. Since the original writing of this booklet my wife and I have continued to wrestle with the problem of a visually handicapped mentally retarded child. In an attempt to reach out to people with the same kinds of difficulties we have written another book titled Timothy--My Son and Teacher which we would be happy to loan to anyone, or provide to anyone at our cost, who has wrestled, is wrestling, or knows someone who is wrestling with the problem of a damaged child. If you are interested in this book or anything else in the Does God Exist? materials please write us.

Sincerely,

John & Phyllis Clayton

Evil argues for good

How does the believer account for the existence of "natural evil" (the tragedy of destruction and death such as hurricanes and earthquakes cause) in a universe supposedly created by an all-loving, all-powerful God? In this issue I want to discuss how a believer can turn this question around and challenge the questioner. The notion of evil, far from disproving God, can actually be used as an argument in favor of the existence of God, the biblical God.

First, we must face the possibility that the person raising this challenge has concluded, usually in response to personal loss, that if God does exist, He is either limited in love or limited in power - in which case, he/she/it is NOT the God revealed in Scripture. Any discussion of the objective evidences proving that the God expressed in nature is the God revealed in Scripture will be difficult, if not impossible, until and unless the person is willing to talk about the loss, the hurt, that led to his or her conclusion about God.

If, on the other hand, someone argues that the existence of natural evil means the nonexistence of God, a discussion of the logic issues can lead to meaningful conversation. A helpful start may be to set forth two basic assumptions about godless reality: 1) the material, physical universe is the only reality, and 2) the universe is the product of blind, non-purposeful, physical (material) processes.

The head-on collision with logic becomes immediately obvious. Simply by labeling natural disasters as "evil," the challenger appeals to some kind of unseen, ultimate standard that transcends the physical world. Evil is a nonentity unless goodness is also real. How can someone imagine what "evil" is if there is no rod of "good" to measure it against?

By what standard, then, does the nontheist say that death resulting from natural phenomena is bad? How can anyone conceive of "bad" or "good" if reality is purely physical? Moral judgments - and the term "evil" clearly represents a moral judgment - are nonphysical.

The challenger may try to escape this line of reasoning by saying that morality is real by cultural consensus. Since humans corporately agree that death as a result of natural forces represents an "evil," it is evil. This statement, of course, argues for a completely arbitrary morality. Such a morality has no transcendent or obligatory quality. Majority opinion might change a hundred years from now and decide that evil is actually good. Once again, we face the inconsistency of labeling something as "evil" or "good" apart from an objective, nonphysical standard.

Ironically, the unfolding of purely natural and accidental events should not trouble a nontheist at all. To remain consistent within his worldview, he can only say that "death and destruction happen." His worldview assumptions disallow any moral evaluation of natural phenomena and their consequences. He can only describe phenomena and their impact in physical terms.

When the nontheist raises "the problem of evil" as a challenge to believers, the believer can logically respond, "What 'problem of evil'?" Evil is neither a real problem nor worthy of discussion unless we first assume the believer's belief that an objective standard of "good" - and thus of "evil" - does indeed exist. Apart from God, the real and living essence of goodness, no moral judgment would be conceivable or possible.

The question about whether natural disasters can be judged as "evil" really constitutes a separate question, the question I addressed in last issue's article. What the question reveals, however, is the universality of our response to human death as a tragedy. Again, the nontheist betrays his intuitive awareness of biblical truth, the truth that life has meaning and purpose beyond mere physical function. Such concepts of "meaning" and "purpose" come from a reality beyond the physical universe. They come from the Source of the universe, the God who "intentionally" created it.

For further reading on the "problem of evil" see:

1. C. Stephen Evans, Why Believe? Reason and Mystery As Pointers To God, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996). This book contains one chapter with an entry-level discussion to the problem of evil.
2. Ron Nash, Faith and Reason, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House 1988).This book contains two chapters with an intermediate philosophical discussion of the deductive and inductive problem of evil.
3. Alvin Plantinqa, God, Freedom and Evil, revised edition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1977). This book is an advanced philosophical discussion of the problem of evil bv one of the world's leading philosophers.
4. Hugh Ross, "Extra-Dimensionality and Evil and Suffering," in Beyond the Cosmos, (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1996; rev. ed., 1999).

Natural evil versus moral evil

Why does God allow bad things to happen? How can He if He is good and all-powerful? These questions identify the “problem of evil” that for many people represents a significant challenge to God’s existence—and to personal faith.1

Philosophers and theologians recognize two kinds of evil: moral and natural.2 Moral evil stems from human action (or inaction in some cases). Natural evil occurs as a consequence of nature—earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, diseases, and the like.

Natural evil seems to present a greater theological challenge than moral evil does. A skeptic might admit that God can be excused for the free-will actions of human beings who violate His standard of goodness. But natural disasters and disease don’t result from human activity, they reason. Therefore, this type of “evil” must be attributed solely to God. Recent work, however, aimed at reducing cholera in rural Bangladeshi villages suggests how precarious this reasoning can be.3

Cholera, a disease characterized by diarrhea, extensive dehydration, and rapid death if not immediately treated, is caused by ingestion of the bacterium, Vibrio cholerae. This microbe naturally associates with a microscopic crustacean (copepod) that floats as part of the surface water zooplankton in Bangladesh. During the late spring and summer, phytoplankton blooms with rising water temperatures. This, in turn, leads to blooms of zooplankton and toxic levels of V. cholerae in rivers, lakes, and ponds.

Rural villages of Bangladesh rely heavily on surface water as a source of drinking water. As a (sometimes deadly) result, cholera outbreaks routinely occur in the fall after the zooplankton levels explode.4 Bangladeshi villagers cannot turn to wells for drinking water since over half are contaminated with arsenic. Boiling surface water is rarely an option because wood fuel, used to sterilize the water, is scarce and expensive. In light of this seemingly hopeless situation, skeptics and Christians alike are justified to ask, “Why would an all-powerful and good God create a world in which V. cholerae is inevitably a part?”

In response to the cholera crisis, an international research team developed a simple filtration procedure to remove zooplankton (and accompanying V. cholerae) from surface water and deployed it in sixty-five rural Bangladeshi villages. The research team instructed the villagers to use an inexpensive cloth commonly found in households to filter drinking water. Laboratory studies demonstrated that the folded cloth retained zooplankton and removed about 99% of V. cholerae from the drinking water. In the field, the cases of cholera plummeted by 50% over a two year span. Moreover, the cholera cases reported were less severe, since the disease’s impact depends on the amount of V. cholerae ingested.

The suffering caused by cholera—and other water-borne diseases—is rooted in man’s failure to act, not in God’s design. V. cholerae, a natural symbiont of zooplankton, comes into contact with human beings largely due to poverty and questionable resource and land management, not as an inevitable consequence of the natural order. Even then, a simple filtration process offers protection from this microbe’s devastating effects, allowing people to coexist with a natural realm that God pronounces good.

References:

1. Ronald H. Nash, Faith and Reason: Searching for a Rational Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1988), 177-221.
2. Nash, 178.
3. Rita R. Colwell et al., “Reduction of Cholera in Bangladeshi Villages by Simple Filtration,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 100 (2003), 1051-1055.
4. The problem is not limited to Bangladesh. In 2001, 58 countries reported 184,311 cases with 2,728 deaths, but the World Health Organization estimates that the officially reported cases represent around 5-10% of actual cases worldwide. From http://www.who.int/csr/disease/cholera/ihrnotification/en/; accessed May 9, 2003.

How can God be "perfectly good" yet command extermination?

Richard Dawkins, the world’s most famous atheist, asserts that the God of the Old Testament is “a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser.”1

Yahweh, the Hebrew name of the personal God of Israel in the Judeo-believer Scriptures, reveals himself to be the Creator of heaven and earth. As the one true Lord, he is an infinite, eternal, and morally perfect personal deity. Historic believers in Yeshua Messiah identifies Yahweh as none other than the Triune God who is more specifically unveiled in the New Testament as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Tension arises when examining the Scriptures. The Bible reveals God to be perfectly good (Psalm 145:8-9) and perfectly just (Deuteronomy 32:4) in the very nature of his being. However, the Old Testament states that God personally commanded the army of the Hebrews to destroy the Canaanite nations.

During the conquest of Canaan, God commanded the following to the Hebrews:
“When the LORD [Yahweh] your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy” (Deuteronomy 7:2).
“However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes” (Deuteronomy 20:16).

In response to this frightening divine command, the Hebrew army carried out the following:

“They devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys” (Joshua 6:21).

How can this seemingly brutal genocidal command be reconciled with God’s perfect goodness and justice?

Moral Justification for God’s Command
The following seven points help provide the moral context and justification for Yahweh’s command to destroy the Canaanites:

1. While God doesn’t always reveal all the details concerning his sovereign decisions, Scripture indicates that God’s moral will flows from his perfectly good and just nature. Therefore God has morally sufficient grounds for his commands even if those reasons are not fully revealed to humankind. However, in this specific case some of those reasons are evident.
2. God’s command to destroy the Canaanites was motivated by his intention to preserve Israel from the deep moral corruption that would have inevitably resulted through cultural assimilation with the pagan nations. God’s wrathful justice upon the Canaanites resulted in an act of mercy (protection) upon the Israelites. Therefore God’s command to destroy an entire people group nevertheless constituted a moral good.
3. The Canaanites were a morally decadent and reprobate people. Archaeological discoveries have revealed that they practiced such moral abominations as temple prostitution, child sacrifice, and bestiality.2 And for hundreds of years they consistently ignored God’s call to repent of their wicked ways (Genesis 15:16). In God’s eyes they were beyond moral rehabilitation.
4. Life in the ancient Near-Eastern world was extremely brutal. And the Canaanite nations viewed the Israelites as their enemies. In this context of warfare among nations God’s command to destroy the pagan peoples was a necessary act of war.
5. God, as the sovereign creator and sustainer of life, has the prerogative to take life at his just discretion (Deuteronomy 32:39; Job 1:21). Because the cosmos belongs to the Lord, he has the ontological right to do as he wishes with his creatures. His only constraint is his moral nature. God is therefore in a different moral category of being than his creatures. He is the ultimate judge of all things. As believer philosopher Paul Copan notes: “Like Narnia’s Aslan, Yahweh, though gracious and compassionate … is not to be trifled with.”3
6. God’s order to exterminate the Canaanites was not a command to murder (to take human life without just cause). Rather, it constituted a command of capital punishment on a grand scale and therefore reflected a retributive form of justice (the punishment matched the crime).
7. The divine command for the Hebrew army to destroy the Canaanites took place in a unique historical and biblical context. This was not a common or normative event in the life of God’s people. Yahweh is compassionate and patient and remains, in spite of this act, a God of mercy (Exodus 34:6).

Why Such Utter Devastation?

Yet while God had just cause to destroy the Canaanites for their wicked ways, was it necessary to kill all life? Couldn’t the innocent children have been preserved?

Unfortunately, the abominable evil of the Canaanite society had polluted the children as well.4 God, who knows the thoughts and intentions of people (Hebrews 4:12), knew that if these children had been allowed to live they would have inevitably infected God’s people with terrible iniquity. The Hebrews had to be “preserved” because they were the very people from which the Messiah would emerge. Additionally, it may be that God took mercy upon these children and granted them divine acceptance in the next life. God’s compassion is deep and wide even in the midst of temporal judgment.

An important lesson to be learned from this great and terrible event is that God loves his people and he will take extreme measures to protect them from moral and spiritual ruin (Romans 8:28).

References:

1. Richard Dawkins,
The God Delusion

(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 31.