A Plea for Sanity

At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” (John 8:9-11, NIV)

There is no doubt she was guilty. There was no doubt that, according to the Law, she deserved to die (Lev. 20:10). She had no defense. She could offer no excuses. What is more, there is no indication that the woman caught in adultery even so much as asked for mercy or forgiveness.

It is easy to get caught up in all the theology and scholarship surrounding the text. Why wasn’t the man brought with her? What was Jesus writing on the ground? What exactly was going on in the Pharisees’ mind? How were they trying to trap Jesus? What about the relationship of this passage to the rest of the Gospel of John? Is it part of the original writing? Who wrote it? Does it belong in the Bible? How does it fit into the context?

All of these are important questions, and I think we should be sure to offer answers to each of them. We should not, though, get so caught up in those questions that we miss the force of the story. For whatever value those questions have, there is one far more important we should be asking ourselves:

How is it that, if the one and only man who ever had a right to condemn anyone chose not to condemn this obviously guilty woman, we are so comfortable condemning others? Put differently, if the perfect Person didn’t condemn an imperfect person, why do imperfect people confidently condemn other imperfect people every day?

I ask this of myself just as I ask it of you. And as I ask it, I’m reminded of Alice’s conversation with the Cheshire Cat:

Alice didn’t think that proved it at all; however, she went on `And how do you know that you’re mad?’
`To begin with,’ said the Cat, `a dog’s not mad. You grant that?’
`I suppose so,’ said Alice.
`Well, then,’ the Cat went on, `you see, a dog growls when it’s angry, and wags its tail when it’s pleased. Now I growl when I’m pleased, and wag my tail when I’m angry. Therefore I’m mad.'”

If only we were as insightful as that old Cat. It is certainly mad to do precisely the opposite of what the sane person does. If Christ, then, does not condemn; indeed, if He does not even require our defenses and excuses, but simply looks at us in all our miserable guilt and does not condemn; still more, if far from condemning, He takes our condemnation on Himself in an act of pure love; then is it not pure insanity for me to think for one moment that I should, or even could, judge someone just as sinful as myself? To issue such a judgment seems to me to stand in the very place of God. More, it is to judge God Himself, for it is to tell Him that our judgment is more just than His. So yes, perhaps we’re all a little mad.

Ministry Endorsement! Christ Alive Care Ministries

Acts 17:2 Ministries is very proud to endorse Christ Alive Care Ministries. First, in their own words:

Welcome to Christ Alive Care Ministry’s Website. We hope the information available to you will be helpful and that you will be motivated to keep us in your prayers as we circle the communities with the Love of Jesus Christ. Founded by Rev. Wilson Varkey and Pastor V.U. Varghese, the ministry has been consistently dedicated to sharing the Good News of the Gospel in the Indian villages and exerting valuble services to the orphans and poor in the community.

The goal of the organization is to do its part in fulfilling the Great Commission of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” Also the ministry is dedicated to serve the poor in the community by rendering their requirements and fostering the helpless. We are registered in India as a non-profit, charitable organization and are now partners with Touch The World Ministries based out of Morganton, North Carolina in our child sponsorship program. Our main focus is building partnerships with local and international churches for the recruitment of faithful brothers and sisters who have a desire to reach the unreached and come work with us in village outreach where we do open air evangelism. We wish to offer you and your church the oppurtunity to be a part of these Great Commission works and invite you to contact us regarding how you can show Christ to others and share with them the love and plan of salvation.

I discovered the ministry through my friendship with Adam McNutt, who serves as their director of North American operations. I have always believed in the importance of missions, even if God has not called me to personally go and serve in another nation. Yet I am convinced, if not by anything more than my own experience, that people are more effective at sharing their faith in their own cultures. I am certainly in favor of sending missionaries to foreign lands! Yet over and over again, we have found native missionaries can do in a few weeks or months what foreign missionaries may have to spend years, or even a lifetime, accomplishing. If you don’t think so, just imagine how much more uncomfortable you would be around, say, a Buddhist from another country, dressed in traditional Buddhist garb, trying to tell you about the benefits of Buddhism, as opposed to if someone from your own town were to have that same conversation with you!

When you support CACM, you are supporting local, native missions. These are people who have a deep desire to reach their own, and if Western Christians can provide them the financial means to do so, I think God expects no less!

But further, please specifically pray about sponsoring a child. Before we say anymore about that, take a few minutes and watch this brief video (not produced by CACM) that presents, I think, a fantastic strategy to fulfilling the Great Commission:

Why has the Church spent so little time on child evangelism? If we can reach children for Christ in areas that are not Christian, they can tell their friends about Him, and a whole generation can grow up to become native evangelists!

You can sponsor a child for as little as $15 per month. Further, because we believe in the ministry of CACM so much, we are offering a free copy of our twelve week course (complete with twelve MP3 commentaries!) To Give A Reason For Our Hope to anyone who sponsors a child, PLUS two free months of membership in our private correspondence program (normally $30 per month).

Please go to their website now and consider sponsoring a child. Tell a friend (or two), and share some of the blessings God has given you with the “least” of His children.

Main Site: http://www.cacmindia.org

Sponsor a child: http://www.cacmindia.org/sponsor.php

Has Lot’s Wife Been Found?

[H]asn’t there been actual physical evidence to prove the story of Lot’s wife being turned to salt?

This is, unfortunately, one of those stories that gets repeated a lot (pun intended) without people doing much fact-checking. Sodom and Gomorrah, which God destroyed for their wickedness (see Gen. 19), were near the Dead Sea. As it happens, there is a rock formation that looks like a woman looking behind her, and that formation has been called “Lot’s Wife.”

There are reasons, however, to reject the claim that this is actually the woman whom God turned into salt for disobeying Him. The most obvious is that the rock is simply much larger than any human being. The second is that there is no reason to believe that a rock formation in the shape of a human would have survived thousands of years, and even if it did, it is less likely that it would still look like a person all these years later.

Apparently, such rock formations, from small to large, are not uncommon in that area. It’s certainly possible that one of them could be Lot’s wife, but it would be impossible to identify which one it would be.

While we’re on the subject of Lot’s wife, though, I would like to point out one more common misunderstanding. Gen. 19:26 says, “But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.” Most people argue that she “looked back” because she longed for her life back in Sodom, and that is the real reason for her judgment. Such an idea is certainly consistent with the rest of Scripture. James 4:4 says that to be friends with the world is to be enemies with God. But I think a closer examination of the passage teaches a much deeper lesson.

Lot took his wife and two unmarried daughters with him (Gen. 19:15), and most people just assume that these were the only children Lot had. Yet the same story also says that Lot tried to warn his sons-in-law, but they thought he was joking (Gen. 19:14). That means that Lot had other daughters who were married, which means it is still further possible that he had grandchildren. So why did Lot’s wife turn back? It is certainly possible that she may have longed for her life in Sodom, but try to put yourself in her shoes just a moment. It was not just her home and social life that was being destroyed. She had children and possibly grandchildren still in the city. Her emotional devastation at losing them clouded her judgment.

There is a direct correlation in the New Testament to this. Jesus said in Luke 14:25-27,

Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

God demands absolute love for Him. Few Christians appreciate just how radical this really is. It is easy to say that we should love God more than our families when our families are, with us, striving to please God. But what happens when following Him puts us at odds with them? Christians throughout the centuries have learned the hard way that sometimes they have to choose between Him and their loved ones. Lot’s wife experienced just such a choice. Would she obey God, or would she disobey Him for the sake of her family? Her sin was not that she loved her children so dearly. It was that she chose them over the will of God.

There is a lot that we can learn from her story. Whether or not we ever find her physical remains, her judgment stands in our mind as a firm reminder of the dedication God requires from His children.

Can God Create A Rock So Big He Can’t Lift It?

One of the most common charges atheists make is that the concept of God is incoherent, that is, that is contradicts itself. For example, a married bachelor is incoherent because the two terms are mutually exclusive. If I am married, I can’t be a bachelor, and if I’m a bachelor then I can’t be married. That is a simple example of incoherence, but others are very complicated. For instance, it is common to hear politicians accusing one another of being incoherent. Recent examples in American politics include Democrats accusing Republicans of worrying about deficits while blocking tax-increases and Republicans accusing Democrats of being for the lower and middle class while both blocking energy policies that would decrease gas prices (i.e., off-shore drilling) and simultaneously proposing policies that would increase them (i.e., “cap and trade”). If a position is incoherent, it can’t really be true.

Arguments about whether or not “God” is a coherent term run from very simple to very sophisticated. The simplest of these is to ask questions such as, “Can God create a rock so big He can’t lift it?” The implication is that if God is able to do anything, then He should be able to create such a rock. Yet if He does, then He would not be able to lift it, which would mean that He wasn’t really able to do anything. Or some may ask, “Can God remember a time He didn’t exist?” to imply that God is either omnipotent or omniscient, but He can’t be both.

These types of questions focus on God’s omnipotence by defining it as “the ability to do anything.” It is important to acknowledge here that, in one sense, the critic is right. There are some things that God cannot do. Many Christians have been tempted to respond by saying, “No, God’s omnipotence just means that He can do anything that can be done.” On the one hand, technically, they are correct, but it leaves them open to rendering God impotent. For instance, this may allow someone to say, “Well, God can’t do miracles, because miracles aren’t things that can be done.” If we accept the fact that miracles are impossible, then the statement must be true, but a God that cannot do miracles hardly seems worthy of being called God, and, in any case, is not the God of the Bible.

It is better to maintain the definition of omnipotence as “the ability to do anything” and insist that we are actually talking about any thing. Incoherent concepts themselves aren’t really things, because self-contradictory things aren’t real. Married bachelors can’t possibly exist, so it is meaningless to talk about them. The “idea” turns out not to be an idea at all. We can’t ask God to make a married bachelor, because God can do anything, but married bachelors aren’t things.

In other words, omnipotence means that God can do anything that actually has meaning.

Self-contradictory ideas like a rock so big that an omnipotent being can’t lift it are self-contradictory and thus have no meaning. They may sound like they mean something, but actually they are just words strung together. Even God cannot violate the law of non-contradiction, not because He is under that law, but because that law derives its meaning from what God already is. God is One. God Himself does not be and not be at the same time, and since everything gets its being from Him, then nothing in the universe can both be and not be at the same time. To say that anything does is meaningless, and so to ask god to do anything that violates the law of non-contradiction is meaningless.

There are serious debates that can be had about the coherence of the God-concept. Silly questions like “Can God create a rock so big He can’t lift it?” isn’t an example of one.

Train Up A Child?

The NIV renders Proverbs 22:6, “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.” This verse has very often been a source of comfort for parents worldwide. Yet for the same reason it has been a comfort, ironically enough, it has also been a terrible burden for others. When children are young, these God-fearing people are promised that if they only make sure their children are raised in a biblical environment, then  whatever bumps may lie ahead, their children will remain faithful to the Lord. Unfortunately, as a great many godly parents can attest, things don’t always seem to work out that way. A large number of our youth are losing their faith in high school and college, and a great many never come back to the faith. These parents are forced to conclude that they didn’t, after all, “train [their children] in the way [they] should go” and that they were not the godly parents they hoped to be.

I would like to suggest, however, that we have completely misunderstood this verse. As wonderful as this promise may be to have, it simply isn’t found here (or, I would contend, anywhere in Scripture!). Even God, who is the perfect Father, found that the “children” He raised rebelled against Him (cf. Isa. 1:2).

The basic problem is with our translation of the Hebrew text. The word “should” is simply not found in the verse. The phrase in question is al-peni darkko, which is literally translated “according to his way” (see the margin of the NASB for evidence of this). The work derek literally means “a way.” When you add –ko on the end, it means “his,” and it is translated that way in many other passages (Prov. 8:22; 11:5; 14:8; 16:9, 17, etc.).

This means that far from being a promise, this verse is actually a warning, as it should be translated, “Train up a child according to his own way, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” In other words, if you don’t discipline a child when they are young, then when they are old, there will be no way to turn them from their self-destructive path.

This understanding not only has full support of the grammar, but it also as the full support of the theology found in Proverbs with reference to children. Prov. 19:18 says that if we discipline our children there is hope for them and if we don’t then we are actually taking part in their death. Prov. 22:15 says that foolishness has to be disciplined out of a child, and 29:15 says that discipline makes a child wise, but an undisciplined child is a disgrace to his parents. And, of course, we have all heard Prov. 13:24: “He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him,” from which we get the statement, “Spare the rod and spoil the child.”

The Bible doesn’t guarantee that if we raise our children to fear God then they will always be faithful.  Children are human beings with their own free will. It does promise (or warn), however, that if we don’t raise our children to fear God—if we don’t discipline them the way we should—then they will be hardened in their foolishness, and that, I’m afraid, is a “promise” we can count on. Parents of wayward children need not get down on themselves. Parents of young children should take this very seriously.

Isn’t That Just Your Interpretation?

How can we know our interpretation of the Bible is what God intended?

It’s common in Bible study to hear statements like, “that’s just your interpretation!” Sometimes, when we talk about the Bible, the objector is more sophisticated and will say, “Don’t confuse your understanding of Scripture with Scripture itself,” implying rightly that our understanding is fallible but wrongly that we can’t know what the Bible teaches.

The central question is whether or not we can be objective in our interpretation. That is, can we understand what the text means in and of itself, apart from our pre-conceived notions. That last clause is extremely important. One of the hardest parts about getting the Bible right is getting rid of our presuppositions. For example, if you just presume that any reference to burning refers to Hell, you are very likely going to misinterpret Hebrews 6:4-6.

The vast majority of theorists, even in Evangelical circles, have concluded because of this that objectivity is impossible. They say that we cannot approach the text without presuppositions, and therefore, that objective interpretation is a myth. Unfortunately, what they don’t acknowledge is that if all interpretation is merely subjective, then there is absolutely no way to know what the Bible does teach. Truth cannot be known, so we may as well give up on “Thus saith the Lord.”

There are good reasons for thinking this is not the case, however. While it is true that we all approach the text with some presuppositions, two points are in order. First, when someone says that objectivity is impossible, they are assuming that they know something about the way the world works objectively. In other words, if all interpretation is just personal opinion, how can anyone know that all interpretation is just personal opinion? If that were true, then even the statement “all interpretation is just personal opinion” would itself subject to personal interpretation. We would have no way of knowing, and no reason to believe, that it represented reality at all. It appears, then, that objectivity really is possible on some level.

Second, the statement that all people come to the text with presuppositions is itself a presupposition. Now, if presuppositions can be changed (I can change my view of the idea of burning in the Bible), then what about the presupposition that all of us come to the text with presuppositions? Can that be changed? If not, then some ideas are immutable and necessarily true. And if some ideas are necessarily true, then we have an objective ground on which to interpret the text.

As it turns out, there are many of these unchangeable, necessarily true presuppositions. The law of non-contradiction is just one more example. Nothing can both be and not be in the same way at the same time. You can’t say that words “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” means both that God created the earth and that He didn’t create the earth in the same way. Both may be wrong, but both cannot be right.

And by the way, this principle isn’t just true for biblical studies. It’s true for everything. There are many people who actually argue that we can’t know anything, because everything we know is tinted by what we already believe. But, of course, is that is true, then we can’t even know that we can’t know anything, nor can we know that our beliefs effect what we know. All such claims are self-defeating.

Biblical interpretation isn’t easy. Some complain and argue that it should be, but the Bible was written two thousand years ago (and some parts much further back) in different languages, in different cultures, to different people with different problems. Those barriers can be crossed, however, and given the right tools, we can be confident that we know what it teaches. If two people disagree, they can examine their reasons for taking the text like they do and discover which one (if not both) has not considered an important piece of evidence. Biblical interpretation can be objective. It doesn’t have to be just your interpretation.

Why Would A Good God Allow Bad Things To Happen? (Part 2)

We have already taken a first look at the question “Why would a good God allow bad things to happen?” There, we argued rather simply that the question itself is based on a false assumption, namely, that humans are good and therefore don’t deserve to suffer (for if we did deserve to suffer, then no one could or would complain that God allows it!). In and of itself, that answer is sufficient, but I want to take some time and look at another aspect of that same answer.

The fundamental problem with the Problem of Evil is that it assumes equality with God. We have already seen how it assumes moral equality. There is, however, another way in which equality is assumed that is equally absurd, namely, that we are omniscient. It goes without saying that bad things happen on a regular basis and that often times this evil goes unexplained. So often, our general question is recast in the specific: “Why would God let this happen to me?”

Notice that the question looks to find a particular reason, a justification, for any given evil. Here, we have to distinguish between reasons why things happen and reasons why God lets things happen. The answers to the former are often much clear than answers to the latter. A man may know the reason he lost his job was because his company is losing money. A woman may know the reason her identity was stolen was that she accidentally used an ATM that identity-thieves were monitoring. But why would God allow a company to lose money or thieves to monitor an ATM in the first place? Why would He allow such evil to happen? We will offer a general answer in another post. For now, we will note that rarely we are able to discover the reason (see Joseph’s explanation of why God allowed him to be sold into slavery by his brothers in Gen. 50:20). But before we do that, it is more important to put the question in its proper context.

Even if no answer is given, it does not follow that no answer exists. A person cannot conclude that there is no answer just because he cannot find one.

And yet, people are willing to condemn God on a regular basis for evil, even when it is possible that He has a perfectly good reason of which they are unaware. The only way they can judge God in this fashion is to assume omniscience. Their argument must go:

1. I know of no reasons for this evil to have happened;
2. I know every possible reason this evil could have happened;
3. Therefore, there is no reason this evil could have happened.
   

   The Sanhedrin put God on trial two-thousand years ago. Amazingly, both Christians and non-Christians still do so every day.

The second statement, however, is obviously a claim to omniscience. Who among us can possible claim that they know everything about anything? Humans are barely capable of processing all the ramifications of what we intend to do. When we add all the contingent possibilities of what might happen if other people were to do other things in light of what might or might not happen in any given case, the potential reasons may as well be infinite. In essence, then, to say categorically that God was wrong in allowing something to happen is to assume complete knowledge of all reality, both actual and potential. It is, in other words, to claim to be God Himself.

This same problem presents itself when people accuse God of not preventing the most disastrous events in human history, be they man-caused or natural. Perhaps we could agree that God is within His rights to allow minor suffering, but He certainly could and should have prevented the worst of evils. But, again, this makes an unfounded claim to knowledge. How do we know that God has not stopped more catastrophic events? If He did, we would likely never know of them. There is always a “worst.” Perhaps the Holocaust or the Cambodian Killing Fields rank a full ten on the “evil scale,” but what if that is only because God has prevented far worse events? In other words, what if God had prevented those specific things. Then the things that would rate, say, an eight or nine on our hypothetical evil scale would be perceived by us as a ten, since then they would be the worst things experienced by humans.

In short, we don’t know the extent of what God has or has not done on our behalf. We don’t know why He might or might not have allowed things to happen. To pass judgment, then, on God for allowing evil is tantamount to a jury passing a guilty plea before hearing the first witness. We simply do not, and never will, have enough information to be justified in declaring God guilty of anything!

Finally, we should note that this is God’s own defense. In Job 38:2-3, He asks the defiant Job, “Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.” He then proceeds to barrage Job with questions he is completely unable to answer. The point is clear. If Job’s knowledge is so limited, what right does He have to challenge the reasons of an omniscience God?

People would do well to remember God’s challenge. Evil and pain hurt. They are, however, no basis on which to judge God. To do so is to stand in His very place and claim the right to sit on His throne, and that is a position that no one except He is qualified for.

Does God Hear the Prayers of the Lost?

It is often said from pulpits that the first prayer God hears from a person is their prayer of salvation. Is this true? Does God hear the prayers of the lost? In one sense, the obvious answer is yes. God is omniscient and omnipresent. It is not as if God is unaware of what non-Christians are saying or doing. Of course He hears their prayers. But when people ask the question, they seem more to have in mind the question of whether or not God honors the prayers of the lost.

There are several aspects that need to be considered. First, it seems that God does not particularly honor the unbeliever’s prayers. Isa. 45:20b says, “They have no knowledge,  who carry about their wooden idol and pray to a god who cannot save.” If nothing else, this definitely shows that prayers to anyone except the True God are worthless. Yet at the same time, Jesus says in Matt. 5:45 that God “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” Thus, although God may not specifically honor prayers to false gods, that does not keep Him from showing His kindness to everyone. In other words, God doesn’t make a person’s life miserable just because they refuse to worship Him. Instead, He allows them the same graces He provides humanity in general (even though humanity in general rejects Him).

Two other passages offer more details on this issue. First, in Rom. 10:9-10, Paul says that whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. We have already discussed why this isn’t referring to salvation from Hell in another post, so we will limit our remarks now to recognizing the fact that it is those who believe in Jesus and call upon Him who are delivered from danger. This implies that one must be a believer if his prayers for deliverance are to be heard. And yet in Jonah 3:6-10, Nineveh, after hearing Jonah’s prophecy of doom, repented of their sins and were spared. Many have taken this as a reference to their individual salvation, but the text says nothing about that one way or the other. Actually, the entire point of the story of Jonah is that God wants to have mercy on all mankind, whether they follow Him or not. How do we square these two passages?

The answer tells us a great deal about the way God answers prayer generally. The context of Rom. 10:9-10 is Paul’s discussion of Israel and their rejection of Christ. They were about to be destroyed as a nation if they did not turn to Jesus (as it happened, they were destroyed a few years later in AD 70). It is important to note that while Israel may have been unbelievers, unlike the Gentiles, they still had (and have!) a special relationship with God. Their destruction was punishment for a particular sin: the rejection and crucifixion of their King. Nineveh, on the other hand, averted their destruction by doing what Israel would not, namely, turning for their sin.

It seems, then, that while God does not honor the prayers of the lost generally, He certainly judges all men according to the common sense of right and wrong inherent in us all (cf. Rom. 2:14-15). Unbelievers are just as capable of turning from their sin, and thus from their judgment, as believers are.

Yet this does not mean that just because a person is a believer that God is going to honor their prayer, either! Two examples should be enough to demonstrate this point. Isa. 1:10-20 is startling in its sharpness. God was extremely angry with Israel, and during His warnings, He says specifically, “When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood” (Isa. 1:15, NIV). God clearly refused to hear the prayers of a sinful Israel. And yet a similar warning is repeated in a very specific application in the NT. Peter warned husbands against mistreating their wives “so that nothing will hinder your prayers” (1 Pet. 3:7). The fact that sin hinders prayers is consistent with what we read in Isaiah. God honors not the prayers of the believer, but the prayers of the righteous, which is to say, those who walk before Him. James says this explicitly in James 5:16b, “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” He said that after five chapters of explaining what it means in practical terms to be righteous.

So does God hear the prayers of the lost? A more appropriate question is whether or not God hears the prayers of the unrepentant heart. God may hear all, and He may cause His grace to fall on all in general terms, but those who are living in sin can expect to be essentially put on ignore by Heaven. This includes both believers and unbelievers. Only those who walk daily in faith and righteousness can expect God to honor them so that if they ask they will receive, if they seek they will find, and if they knock the door will be opened (Matt. 7:7).

Who Has the Burden of Proof?

In the 1970s, Anthony Flew, one of the world’s leading atheists who converted to deism late in life, wrote a book called The Presumption of Atheism that changed the atheist/theist dialogue forever. In it, he argued that atheism should be assumed until theists prove that God exists. In other words, in the absence of strong evidence for God, one should be an atheist. Further, one was not required to put forward arguments in favor of atheism, because it was, he believed, the default position.

Modern atheists have taken his argument further. Traditionally, the word “atheism” referred to the belief that God did not exist. It is a standard rule of debate that if a person makes an assertion, they are required to provide evidence for its truthfulness. Therefore, if an atheist declares “God does not exist,” he is required to give reasons for his disbelief. The word was redefined, however, to mean “a lack of belief in God’s existence.” Under this new scheme, atheists began to argue (and still do today) that they don’t have to justify their disbelief for the simple reason that they do not positively disbelieve; they simply lack belief. Therefore, since they make no positive assertions, they need not prove their case. It is the theist, they say, who has the burden of proof. Since we advocate God’s existence, we are the ones who have to prove our case.

Between these two arguments, atheists have built a defense system that is often difficult to penetrate. On the one hand, the atheist (as it is now defined) does not have to defend his or her position. They are content to deny arguments for God’s existence, which, according to this system, ends up justifying their disbelief as atheism is the assumed position. What makes this particularly difficult is that atheists themselves are often unclear on what qualifies as sufficient proof to justify belief in God.

In general, there are two strategies theists can employ when they find themselves talking to someone who holds this view.

First, we can point out that one who merely lacks belief has been traditionally understood as an agnostic, which is one who does not know whether or not God exists. Whether or not they accept the label, once they admit that they do not hold to a positive belief in God’s non-existence, we can hold them to that position when citing future arguments. For instance, if we use the Moral Argument and they insist that morality must be subjective because God doesn’t exist, we can remind them that they can’t assert God’s non-existence. In other words, we hold them to their stated neutral position.

Second, we can challenge their basic position. Do they really just lack belief, or do they positively belief God does not exist? In reality, they probably hold something of a middle ground. If they were to rate their disbelief on a scale of one to five, with one being complete neutrality and five being convinced that God is impossible, most self-professed atheists would admit to being somewhere around a three (at least, in my experience). But in that case, any degree to which the atheist moves away from absolute neutrality, they are required to give evidence for their position.

Beyond all this, we can argue that Flew was simply mistaken, and that a prima facie case may be made for the presumption of theism. No culture in human history has ever been discovered that was naturally atheistic. Human beings, as modern science is now finding, seem hardwired for belief in God. While the atheist can attempt to explain that as a factor of evolution, the theist may point out that shy of any good reason to believe that is the case, there is no compelling reason to believe that every culture is wrong. In fact, if God really does exist, we would expect Him to make Himself known on at least some level to everyone, which seems to me exactly the case. Further, when we consider the basic human desire for purpose and meaning, and when we realize such things are empty without God, their presumption–that is, the assumption we should make before we get to the evidence–certainly should be that God does exist.

Many arguments can be put forward to offer evidence for God. We will look at a great many of them. In the meantime, we should not allow atheists to argue that only the Christian has the burden of proof for his position. If they are truly neutral, they should be able to present reasons to ignore the surface evidence of all human history (not just present an alternate explanation!) to justify at least their neutrality; if they actively disbelieve, they’re in the situation as we are. If we are to be honest, we all have to justify why we believe what we do. No one gets a free ride.

Is The Gap Theory Biblical?

Chris What is your stand on The “Gap Theory” of Genesis 1? Does it really matter? Does this “theory” explain the war in heaven with Lucifer as some suggest? – Michael L.

This is a fantastic question, and one that I appreciate on a personal level because several years ago I seriously entertained the possibility. For those who aren’t familiar with the theory, the argument is that there is a gap in time between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. It was popular with such well respected expositors as J. Vernon McGee. Supposedly, the millions—even billions—of years that scientist say the earth and universe has been around can be put between those two verses.

The chief evidence for the theory is Isa. 45:18, which says God “did not create [the earth] to be empty.” The word for “empty” here is tohu, which is the same word used in Gen. 1:2, “the earth was formless (tohu) and void.” Advocates say that if the earth was not created tohu, but by Gen. 1:2 it had become tohu, then something must have happened to the original creation in Gen. 1:1. This is further backed by the fact that the verb “was” in “and the earth was formless and void” in Gen. 1:2 can be translated “had become,” which means Gen. 1:2 could actually be rendered “and the earth had become formless and void.”

On the surface, this appears to be very compelling. However, the use of tohu in Isa. 45:18 isn’t as strong evidence as it first appears. The important part of the verse says, “he did not create it to be empty, but formed it to be inhabited.” In Hebrew poetry, which this passage is an example of, two clauses set side by side are used to enhance meaning. Thus, when Isaiah says God did not create the world tohu, it means that God did not create it to be tohu as the next clause demonstrates. Instead, it was created to be inhabited. It was created for us (as evidenced by the fact that the context is the final salvation of Israel).

This brings us to the second part of your question, which is whether or not it explains the war in heaven. Again, many advocates of the Gap Theory argue that there was originally a pre-Adamic race ruled by Lucifer. Lucifer, however, caused a war in heaven at which time he was cast to earth. As punishment, God destroyed his kingdom, enshrouding it in darkness for hundreds of millions of years. Thus, the creation story of Gen. 1 is actually a story of recreation, not of the original creation. It is also why the first words God speaks are “Let there be light.”

Beyond the fact that there is little biblical evidence for this position (the Bible does talk about a war in heaven and Satan being cast out, but it does not connect it with the early earth or a pre-Adamic race; in fact, a pre-Adamic race is nowhere mentioned in Scripture), Isa. 45:18, the very verse appealed to support the Gap Theory, actually works against it. If God did not create the world to be empty but instead created it to be inhabited by humanity, then it makes no sense to say that it was created for Lucifer and his kingdom.

A final point has to do with general motivation for advocating a gap theory. Historically, no one ever found such a gap between the two verses until science came up with millions of years that supposedly needed to be explained. Whether or not science is right, the point is that we shouldn’t look for ways in Scripture to explain it away. Biblical passages must be taken in their own contexts. One of the surest ways to come up with a bad reading of a passage is to be looking for a meaning in it. As well intentioned as gap proponents are, I’m afraid they’ve done just that. Their good intentions have turned out to be the very thing that has caused their mistake.