I am part of a group text where we post Scripture, messages, prayer requests, etc. A friend sent this to the group a couple days ago and I thought it would be a great post:
Thought I’d share something I heard on the radio today. The radio personality has spoken to many people. A big variety…
When speaking to a crowd of atheists, he said “raise your hand if you have ever had any doubts about your atheism”. Not one hand was raised.
When speaking to a crowd of Christians, he said “raise your hand if you have ever doubted God”. He suggested nearly everyone raised their hand.
He posed the question…”why do you think that is”?
So, I wanted to ask you, why do you think that is?
Just found this interesting and wanted to hear what you all thought?
My follow up question was, Doubt His existence or His ways?
Not being 100% certain of whether the question was His existence or His ways’ I thought we could discuss both.
An atheist, by definition, does not believe God exists. To ask them if they “ever had any doubts about their atheism” would be the equivalent of asking if they think they are wrong. If they thought they might be wrong in their conclusion that there is no God, they would no longer be atheist, they would be agnostic.
It has been my experience that many that call themselves atheist often fall into two groups:
1. Those that read much philosophy, books from atheistic college professors, and skeptics of the Bible. They consider themselves “well-read” and intellectual and are not going to be swayed in their stance.
This group is not likely to raise their hand in a crowd when asked, essentially, if they’ve ever doubted their intellect.
2. The second group has had much hurt and loss in their life and, in their anger and hurt, have concluded that, “if there was a loving God, He would never allow this to happen”. Thus, concluding that there is no God.
This group is not likely to raise their hand either.
As for the group of “Christians” that raised their hand, let’s consider what we know. There is a large percentage of people that claim to be Christians, but they are not truly born-again. Just as there are those that call themselves Muslim, yet do not practice any of the Muslim rituals and ways; there are those that call themselves Catholics, yet do not participate in the Catholic rituals, etc.
Jesus made it very clear, “unless a man is born-again, he will not enter the Kingdom of God”; in other words, if a man is not born-again, he is not truly a Christian. If a person is not truly a Christian, they do not have the Spirit of God in them.
So, let’s go back to our crowd. We can say for certain that Christians, “in name only”, would have doubted God, whether it be His existence or ways. In addition, those that are born-again Christians were not always born-again Christians, right? So, if they were not always born-again Christian it would be logical that every one of them would have “ever doubted God”.
The short answer is, we shouldn’t scratch our head as to why “nearly every hand went up”; the better question is, why didn’t every hand go up? After all, we were all non-believers at one point either doubting everything or believing we know everything, or a combination of both.
People often talk about faith as something mystical, abstract, or obscure. The reality is, the Christian faith is not mystical or abstract, it is very “concrete”. The Christian faith is about the object of our faith, not a mystical idea of what “we hope is out there”. The object of our faith is the “who” of our faith. We trust in Jesus Christ to save us from the Wrath of God that we all have “earned” because of our sin.
Years ago, I heard the analogy of trusting in a chair when we sit down, having faith in that chair to hold us. They likened this to trusting Jesus.
Then years later I heard someone say they didn’t like that analogy because we have an abundance of visual evidence of chairs holding people up, so it is not the same, the Christian faith is a blind faith. I thought, “hmm, that sounds right.”
But then recently I have been studying Jesus’ miracles and it dawned on me that the Christian faith is not a blind faith. Jesus performed signs and miracles to show His Authority over everything, He demonstrated His Authority and Power so the people would listen to Him. Essentially, He showed an abundance of evidence to prove that you could trust in the “chair” of Christ.
Back to the crowd:
You might pose the question this way; “For those that have trusted in Christ to save them, how many of you doubt He will save you?”
If you ask my children, “if you were in trouble, is there anything your dad wouldn’t do within his power or ability to help you?” They would not hesitate to say, “there is nothing he wouldn’t do.” They would say this because they have a lifetime of seeing the love of their father, and they know beyond any doubt that daddy would do anything for them. They trust their daddy; they have faith in their daddy to help them at all costs.
The cost to save the world was the Blood of the Son of God. He is the object of our faith. He is who we trust in because He has a track record of showing His Authority over disease, demons, afflictions, the sea, the wind, and above all, Authority over sin and death. There is no one else to trust for the forgiveness of my sin and the salvation of my soul. There is no one else with the track record of Authority and Power. It is as Peter said, “to whom shall we turn, Lord, You have the Words of Eternal Life.”
So, raise my hand if I doubt my King? No, I do not doubt my King, He will do just as He promised, He always has.
