A few nights ago, upon revisiting a certain blog, I was surprised to see that the author had become an Atheist since I'd last visited! Apparently, his de-conversion came on the heels of me first visiting his blog and corresponding with him via email. As you might imagine, when I returned to his blog to see how he was doing, I was horrified to see him deny the very existence of God!
Having been an Atheist prior to my conversion, I know the darkness and hopelessness that accompanies that worldview. It's a place I could never see myself returning to again. My whole rejection of theism in general was that I thought there was no evidence for God's existence.
After being a Christian for 9 years, I now know that I was previously blind to all the evidence of God's existence. Now see it all around me. After having known God -or rather, being known of Him- I cannot fathom what it would be like to claim He does not exist. For me to ever say that would be as much of a lie as me trying to claim I never knew my mother, or my wife and children!
To see this bright young man openly denying the existence of God; to read his writings about how liberated he feels since casting off Christianity, it truly hurt me to the core. Hundreds of questions raced through my mind. As I read through some of his recent articles, it almost brought me to tears.
As I sat there mourning and mulling over this fellow's apostasy, I decided to conduct a cursory reading of his entire blog archive to see if I could find anything to help explain what happened to him. What I found was quite interesting.
His family religious background was Roman Catholicism. After his "conversion", he gets wrapped up with somewhat cultic denomination that largely teaches against Sola Fide. Then I saw where he's being influenced by Brian McClaren and the Emergent movement. Not long after that, I found him flirting with -and then embracing- Universalism! From there I see him jumping on every wind of doctrine and questioning foundational truths. It even seemed like he was being drawn to a different movement with each passing month.
Finally I got to the root of the problem: Theodicy, also known as "the problem of evil." In fact he finally admits, "I am no longer a Christian because I cannot reconcile the existence of a loving God with the superfluous nature of evil in our world. "
Is that it? Is this topic such a horribly difficult problem that it can overthrow the faith of a Saint in whom the Holy Spirit is supposed to dwell?
The problem of evil is indeed a big problem for human beings outside of Christ, but I assure you, evil is no problem for God! Not a sparrow falls from the sky apart from the Father's will and we can be certain that not one sin occurs in this Universe that's outside of God's sovereign control. Moreover, there's not one sin that God will ultimately fail to judge and punish!
Can we as Christian be so faithless as to think that just because God doesn't eradicate suffering and evil -according to our desires- that He therefore must not exist? Where were we when God framed the Heavens? Are we His councilors? Does God have to dance to our tune?
The way I see it, what we have in this case is a man who decided to judge God according to his flawed human abstraction of "good" instead of trusting that God is in control. Because this man could not reconcile his abstraction with how God runs the Universe, he takes it upon himself to decide that God doesn't exist. My reply to such thinking is summed up well by the words of C. S. Lewis:
"A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship him than a lunatic can put out the Sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell."(1)
I know my non-Calvinist friends might disagree, but as I read through the articles of this apostate blogger, what I see is a false convert. I see somebody who never had the enduring, saving faith that enables a Christian not only to deal with theodicy, but die for the faith if God wills it.
Had I read through his entire blog a few months ago when I first found it, I probably would have been able to predict what was going to happen. The one or two articles I read back when I first visited didn't have anything in them that caught my attention, but had I read more I would've seen that the marks of unbelief were there all along.
This man may have been converted to "Christianity", but I'm certain he never really knew Christ...
"They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us." (1 Jn 2:19 ESV)
(For more information on theodicy, I recommend getting a copy of God and Evil: The Problem Solved, by Gordan H. Clark. and also listening to Albert Molher discuss the issue on his radio program.)
Notes:
1. C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, p. 41. Quoted in Tabletalk, Jan '08
Image to the left above is the Greek word for atheist, linked back to the wikipedia page where I found it.
