October 2022
The Fool Says
The Old Testament mentions Atheism twice. Psalm 10:14, “In the pride of his countenance the wicked does not seek Him; all his thoughts are, ‘There is no God.’” Psalm 14:1, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds, and there is none that does good,” and that’s it. The Old Testament doesn’t talk about Atheism because it was rare.
To be sure, there were plenty of false gods around during the entire Old Testament period, and we hear talk of them in the time of Jesus, and it was always a problem. But they did have gods, and many people worshipped the Triune God. A Theist is a person who believes in One God. A Polytheist believes in multiple gods. An Agnostic is a person who doesn’t claim to know.
An Atheist doesn’t believe in the existence of God, and for most of human history Atheism has been extremely rare. Theologically, God has put the knowledge of things like right and wrong, heaven and hell, and The Divine into the heart of every person. We are naturally religious beings. Logically, to think all this got here by means other than being created – that’s crazy!
How else could all this have happened? What, there was an explosion, and when the dust settled… So, the Christians invented Modern Science and Inductive Reasoning to go along with Deductive Reasoning, and that has been a good thing. Modern Science has been a good thing for the West, and the rest benefit from it as well. But Science has been sort of hijacked as of late.
There were stirrings of Atheism in the West before Charles Darwin, but what came to be known as the Theory of Evolution opened the flood gates. For the first time, you could explain the existence of all this without invoking God. It’s not a very good explanation, and Evolution is really bad science. The Big Bang Theory show is funny, but the Scientific Theory is laughable.
The problem of human suffering is old. In his suffering, we find Job and his friends pondering his suffering and offering various reasons for Job’s plight. When God finally speaks, he reminds Job to stay in his lane; that he is a man and God is God. Did you notice that when the Psalms talk about the Atheist, they use words like “corrupt, arrogant,” and “they don’t do good deeds.”
To call God “Father” is to use a figure of speech – the Bible uses them constantly – known as an “Anthropomorphism,” to give a human characteristic to God, who is God. It’s helpful to think of God as a loving Father, but if He’s loving, then why does He allow suffering? Rejecting God the Father because of suffering caused on one another by and to sinful man does not make sense.
For a child to be experiencing suffering and blame it on his father is not unusual – it happens all the time. Would that suffering child then conclude that because the father doesn’t prevent any suffering – therefore that father does not exist? But that seems to be a very common reasoning – it isn’t really reasonable – to turn Christians into Atheists, and then he has them.
The word “fool” in the Bible has nothing to do with intelligence, and everything to do with spiritual depravity. The “wise” believe, and the “fool” doesn’t. It’s about believing in the Triune God as revealed in Jesus and going to heaven. It’s not a small thing and Satan is working hard, and he works hard on the Christians, and he seems to be having a lot more success than he used to.
Steve Jobs was raised Lutheran in Wisconsin, and he talked about how one day he took a LIFE magazine to Sunday School. There was a photo of starving children on the cover. Jobs asked his Sunday School Teacher how a good God could allow that kind of suffering, and then, he says, he never went back. Steve Jobs ended up a Buddhist, and how’s that working out for eternity?
Modern man – like Steve Jobs – have made a lot of advances since the beginning of the Christians Modern Scientific Movement. Using the brains God gave us and the fruits of His Creation, we His Highest Creation, have done remarkable things! But maybe we get – like my mother used to say – too big for our britches. Stay in your lane, be still, and know that God is God.
And we are not.
In Christian Service,
Pastor Anderson
