Two Fools In One

Psalm 14: 1 The fool says in his heart, "There is no God."

If you are an atheist (and I once was) then Christianity is quite a puzzle. You are vexed that such an absurd religion could be so widely and broadly accepted and influence history so greatly. Some atheist scholars have delved so deeply into the "myth" of Christianity that they have grounds to dismiss the idea that Jesus ever even existed.

The essays on this thesis are massive and hard to wade through, so, in the interest of simplicity, I wanted to hone the argument down to its basics, so we could look at it in a New York minute.

I'll use an essay written in 1997 by Jim Walker entitled "Did a Historical Jesus Exist?" Here are the basic arguments he uses (and I found these to be typical):

1 ~ There is no historical evidence that Jesus even existed.
2 ~ No one knows who wrote the 4 gospels or when.
3 ~ Similarly, the authorship and validity of the epistles is in question.
4 ~ Later church officials probably tampered with the material.
5 ~ There is no mention of Jesus in the original documents of the historians of his time, including Josephus.
6 ~ No relics of the church have been substantiated.
7 ~ Christian historians work with scant or even nonexistent evidence.
8 ~ Contradictions within the gospels themselves.
9 ~ The fact that Jesus fits the ancient mythological archetype of the God-man myth.
10 ~ The idea that Jesus could have been invented to fullfill the Jewish Messianic prophecies.

Most of the essays I looked at tended to repeat or embellish these basic suggestions.

Atheists are indeed a frustrated lot: outnumbered in a world of idiots who believe preposterous and unfounded religious myths.

But it is interesting to me that the God-man in question, Jesus of Nazareth, did not write anything down nor did God see to it that we would now have a reliable historical person to believe in. On the basis of reason and the scientific approach to history, none of the monotheist religions which claim adherents from half of the world's population have a leg to stand on. Monotheism, in that sense, is monomythology.

Why is this?

My conversion to Christ from atheism was based on a miracle that occurred in response to my first real prayer. One moment I was high-flying on acid and the next I was stone-cold sober with no interest in drugs from henceforth. But this is a dubious testimony: purely my own experience and a possible self-deception.

Untold millions of people have zillions of "experiences" with God. So what? the skeptic would say. Raw empiricism would say, "Just the facts, ma'am."

And I would have to agree with that assessment. Experience proves nothing. The church has no proof to offer: no arks, no ossuaries, no shrouds, no goblets, no shards from the cross.
And who would believe them anyway?

All the church has is faith. And apparently that is all God wants us to stand on. It is faith that connects us to God. It is faith that turns an unbeliever into a believer. It is faith that separates the men from the boys.

In the end, an atheist has to come through the same faith-door everybody else does when they discover the reality of the Son of God. And even a C.S. Lewis cannot convince them empirically.

So I have been twice a fool in my life: I was a fool who said there is no God who became a fool for Christ. Whose fool are you?

1 Cor. 4: 10We are fools for Christ ~ Paul.