Dear seclaris humanis atheisis:
Ok, so then what is your “idea” of Whom or what God is and how did you come to that conclusion? You haven’t rejected God, but you call God a “hypothetical being?” You said you were a secular humanist and that you didn’t believe in God or that you even needed to. This is very confusing. Even though God created this earth, He knows about every person, everything, and even every sparrow that falls from the sky. Where is your real argument? What lies at the depth of your antagonism with the idea of God or the idea of God being creator?
I would like to pose something to you. So, you say you have not rejected God. Ok. But you say you have a problem believing in the “Christian” God. Now, I feel some of the reasons why you do not believe in the Christian God are from your presuppositions. This is because your presuppositions will not allow you to examine without bias the evidence that is presented to you for God’s existence. Your presupposition is that there is no Christian God; therefore, no matter what I might present to you to show His existence, you must interpret it in a manner consistent with your presupposition: namely, that there is no “Christian” God. If I were to have a video tape of God coming down from heaven, you’d say it was a special effect. If I had a thousand eye-witnesses saying they saw Him, you’d say it was mass-hysteria. If I had Old Testament prophecies fulfilled in the New Testament, you’d say they were forged, dated incorrectly, or not real prophecies.
So, I cannot prove anything to you since your presupposition won’t allow it. They are limited. Your presupposition cannot allow you to rightly determine God’s existence from evidence — providing that there were factual proofs of His existence. Don’t you see? If I DID have incontrovertible proof, your presupposition would force you to interpret the facts consistently with your presupposition and you would not be able to see the proof. If you truly would like to seek the answer, what kind of evidence would you accept that would prove the Christian God’s existence? I must see what your presuppositions are and work either with them or against them. What are your thoughts?
So, your answer is that Christianity is a myth. Yet, you still approach me with your presuppositions. I asked you to provide me with “the kind of evidence” you would accept. You’ve only provided me with your presupposition of “myth.”
I will pray that God reveals to me the answers you need…answers that I will not have to manufacture…but will be the evidence you need.
The first step on your quest is unconditional surrender to the absolute authority of Holy Scripture; the Bible is your only hope. It is your only hope for eternity. It is also the only hope for your scientific and philosophic endeavor in this life. God has revealed Himself through nature and history. The world’s wisdom has been made foolishness with God. It is God’s plan that is being realized in and through what man does as well as in and through man’s environment. Whatsoever comes to pass comes to pass in accordance with the one all comprehensive plan or counsel of God. All the facts that confront you as you look about yourself and as you look within yourself are therefore revelational of God. The human mind as knowing no less than the trees that are known is revelational of God. For what happens according to the plan of God happens in accordance with the nature of God’s being. Nothing could exist, either as directly made by God or as made by man, the creature of God. The subject of knowledge and the object of knowledge alike are revelational of God. The apostle Paul says in the first chapter of Romans that all men know God. They cannot help but know God. Therefore they cannot help but know that they themselves are creatures of God. Human self-consciousness involves God-consciousness. Human self-consciousness would be self-consciousness in a vacuum unless it implied consciousness of God. You have the sense of deity ineradicably impressed upon you.
Therefore your freedom is the freedom of God’s creature. It is freedom to do that which is in accord with or to do that which is against the revealed will of God, but in either case that which is in accord with the plan of God. I want to place a special emphasis upon the fact that even the evil that man does by virtue of his sinful will is still in accord with the plan of God and as such is revelatory of God. Man, not God, is the responsible author of sin. But man could not sin if his sinning were not, in spite of himself, revelatory of God. Man does not sin in a vacuum. He could not sin in a vacuum. The possibility of sin presupposes the all-comprehensive plan of God. God reveals his holiness in his wrath upon the sinner. God is angry with the wicked every day. “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold down truth in unrighteousness” (Rom 1:18). Paul tells us that the sinner’s conscience excuses or accuses him according as he obeys or disobeys the revealed will of God (Rom 2:14-15). Man’s self-consciousness is moral self-consciousness. And as self-consciousness in general involves consciousness of God, so man’s moral self-consciousness involves consciousness of covenant relationship to God. To know himself at all man must know himself to be a covenant being. He knows he is either keeping or breaking the covenant.
You cannot look in any direction without seeing the face and the claims of God. You walk under the brilliant spotlight of the revelational claims of God. It is the basic revelational character of all created being that constitutes the foundation of truth for man. Man is inherently enveloped in and by truth. But truth is not an abstraction. Truth is truth about God and the universe. Thus man is naturally confronted by truth. When he speaks untruth he speaks that which he knows to be untruth. When philosophers think out systems of philosophy that are not based upon the Creator-creature distinction they know, in the depth of their hearts, that they are doing this in order to suppress the truth about themselves. Knowing God to be their Creator they do not glorify him as such. From the beginning of history, even before the entrance of sin, supernatural thought-communication on the part of God to man was added to God’s revelation to man in his own constitution and in the universe about him. There are two forms of revelation, revelation in the facts of the created universe whether within or about man and revelation by way of God’s directly speaking to man, are mutually involved in one another. Just as two rafters of a house need to support one another, so these two forms of revelation need to support one another. I don’t know how, but what you have experienced in your past up to now has determined that the God of the Bible must be limited in order to make room for the freedom of man. The attitude toward the revelation of God is determined by the assumption of human freedom as a measure of independence from God. Therefore, there is no real ground for saying that the revelation of God is really ultimately the revelation of God, the self-contained and self-sufficient God of which the Bible speaks. You cannot successfully seek for truth if first you have cut yourself off from truth. It is like today…a very sunny day, and while standing in the light of the sun, you take your eyes out, and then doubt whether the sun exists.
God will provide the shock and awe, and I really don’t think you’re going to appreciate that too much when the time comes. You already have been given overwhelming truth. You have to want to be healed….
I didn’t say God couldn’t shake you to your core….I’m saying you probably won’t like it when it occurs. Not probably…but most likely you will not like it when it occurs. God will shake things up in your life – or leave you to your own devices. Which one He decides upon, I just don’t know. I will help the human race by proclaiming the freeing Gospel of Jesus Christ. I want to ask you, what part of your “Christian” upbringing did you in?
Hey, you know there is no proof, nor convincing, except that “Someone” rocks your world in a manner that will shake you all up inside. The statement you made is very plain about water boiling but to you, regarding faith, grace & works, you have nothing to do with it nor do you truly understand it from a Christian’s spiritual viewpoint. I say this because you do not believe or profess to be a Christian. If you can, pray and ask God to speak to you about what I’ve shared, and then give me your thoughts.
Jesus Christ came into this world to open the eyes of the blind, quench the thirst of the weary wanderer, and give the bread of Life to those who seek to be filled. Jesus Christ can fulfill every need you have, and heal every hurt you’ve acquired over the years. Acknowledge your sinfulness, turn away from it, and place your trust in God through Jesus Christ — He will give you true enlightenment.
May God bless you with Himself!
+Gary
In The Hands of the Refiner 