http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=11&article=906
A God Like That
If
a hundred atheists, agnostics, or unbelievers were asked why they do
not believe in God, they might give a hundred different reasons.
Certainly, no single reason has emerged as the quintessential answer for
unbelief. The problem of evil, pain, and suffering would rank at the
top of the list, as well as the claim that “religion” is unscientific.
There is, however, another primary reason that many people give for not
believing in the God of the Bible. They say that they would believe in a
god if he acted different than the one in the Bible, but they simply
“cannot” believe in a god that would act like the one discussed in the
“holy book.” An excellent example of this argument comes from an article
written by Ronald Defenbaugh. In it, he chronicled his life, pointing
out specific times when his unbelief was confirmed by a particular
action or idea taught by a “religious” individual or institution. In a
paragraph detailing his early years of raising a family, he stated:
One evening, a friend about the same age as us rode home with us from
one of our children’s sporting events. This was the first time I
realized I may have a real problem with believing. She was a good friend
of my spouse’s, a member of our Church and very religious. I don’t
remember how the subject came up but salvation was our subject of
conversation. She stated that even though my father had been an honest,
caring person who did nothing but good, he would not receive salvation.
He could only go to Heaven if he accepted Christ as his Savior. I
remember thinking that I wanted no part of a deity that sent my father
to Hell under those circumstances. Why would a baby, or my father, or
even me be sent to Hell just because we didn’t accept Christ as our
Savior? What about the Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists? Again, what
about me? This started me thinking that I probably was without belief.
Or at least I didn’t understand it. It didn’t fit my logic (2003).
While his reference to God sending a baby to hell is without any
biblical support, his understanding of the teaching of the concept that
the God of the Bible will send to hell all individuals who have reached
the age of accountability (the level of mental maturity at which a
person is capable of understanding the concept of his or her own sin)
and who have not accepted Jesus Christ, is absolutely accurate (John
8:24). Understanding this precept very clearly, he stated that he
“wanted no part of a deity” like that. It is almost as if he is implying
that if the God of the Bible were a little different, or if He better
“fit” Defenbaugh’s own ideas, then he might be willing to believe in
such a God.
Let’s analyze this position. Those who “cannot” believe in a God like
the one in the Bible, conveniently accept as true all the
characteristics of God that make Him look like a heartless tyrant. For
instance, they accept that the God of the Bible is a deity Who has
ordered executions of “immoral” nations that do not worship Him. They
also accept that the God of the Bible will confine certain individuals
to eternal destruction due to the “wrong” decisions of those
individuals. (The word
wrong is in quotation marks because the
actions the Bible labels as wrong and the actions accepted as wrong by
many unbelievers often are quite different.) After flipping through the
Bible and compiling a list of all the things that they think a true god
should
not do, they then declare that they cannot believe in a god that
would do such things.
In doing this, they neglect to accept the other characteristics of the
God of the Bible that would make acceptable His actions and decisions.
For instance, 1 John 3:20 states that God “knows everything.” There is
not an unbeliever alive who would claim to know everything. Could it be
that the things known by the God of the Bible, which are unknown to the
skeptic, might just be the very things that could sufficiently explain
God’s actions? Isaiah 55:8-9 states: “ ‘For My thoughts are not your
thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ says the Lord. ‘For as the heavens
are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My
thoughts than your thoughts.’ ” If the skeptic accepts from the Bible
the ideas about God with which he disagrees, is he not equally obligated
to accept the statements about God that explain the depth of God’s
character? If the thoughts of God and the ways of God are far above all
the ways of man, could it be that, in the great cosmic scheme of things,
an all-knowing God might have some plans of which the skeptic is not
fully informed?
To postulate a capricious God Who confines people to eternal
destruction simply because those people do not “dot a few i’s” or “cross
a few t’s” seems an easy straw man to destroy. Yet, when the “rest of
the story” is told, the picture becomes much clearer. The fuller
portrait of the God of the Bible is of a deity Who is all knowing (1
John 3:20) everlastingly righteous (Psalm 119:142), loving (John 3:16),
compassionate and merciful (James 5:11), anxious for all men to be saved
(2 Peter 3:9), and willing to give them numerous opportunities to do so
(Acts 17:26-27).
The later portion of Defenbaugh’s article reveals the true essence of
rejecting the God of the Bible. Defenbaugh commented that atheism “means
no belief—no belief at all, godly, ungodly or otherwise. No Satan,
Hell, Heaven, God, Jesus, Angel, Holy Ghost, no nothing. I am free of
all constraints. The only person I have to answer to is Man—each man.”
Once again, Defenbaugh hit the nail on the head when it came to his
concept of the God of the Bible. God demands certain things from His
human creation. But since Defenbaugh does not want to comply with those
things, he has chosen instead to disbelieve, so that he can be “free of
all constraints.” Yes, it truly is easy to answer “each man” since all
human opinion carries equal weight. But “God is not a man” (Numbers
23:19), and “the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness
of God is stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25). In reality, after the
Bible’s entire picture of God is allowed to shine through, in all its
glory, no other god could measure up to “a God like that.”
REFERENCES
Defenbaugh, Ronald (2003), “Why I Couldn’t Deconvert,” [On-line], URL: http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=263.