The Reason for God by Timothy Keller explains how believing in God and the claims of Scripture make logical sense. Engage in the debate surrounding your faith and worldview with confidence and sound arguments.
Skeptics question every element of the faith with an air of absolute certainty, but believers have thousands of years of sacred history, Scripture, the witness of the Spirit, and a mountain of physical evidence to support Christianity.
Often Christians feel backed into a corner by the arguments surrounding every aspect of our faith. With science and reasoning, the world attempts to dismantle or dismiss the foundations of the church. The voices of skeptics echo our own doubts, but there are unshakeable truths on which we have built our confidence.
Countless authors, scientists, philosophers, and political leaders promote views of the world that appeal to their self-centeredness, but Christians know that everything exists for a far greater purpose than any one individual. We can refute the claims of violence and deception when the world speaks of the cross and the resurrection. We can point to love, sacrifice, and justice when they balk at the claims of the gospel and sin. We can share our faith with others with confidence because God did not leave us without evidence.
In this summary, you will learn:
- the gaps in scientific reasoning and human logic about matters of faith;
- the evidence to support intelligent design, the cross, and the resurrection; and
- how to engage skeptics with compassion and intelligence.
Skeptics struggle with the divisiveness of religious truth and the pervasiveness of suffering, but Christianity offers grace and hope to all believers.
For Christians, just like any other religion, certain beliefs make it impossible to compromise for the sake of temporal peace. Some governments have attempted to outlaw religion. Communist China and the Soviet Union heavily restricted religion and forbade certain sacred practices in order to curb religious expression and promote unity to the secular state. In these two political entities, as in other instances of religious persecution or oppression, the result was growth, especially within the Christian church.
Other societies seek to undercut religion by sowing doubt and distrust through education and misinformation. Some critics of religion perpetuate the myth that all major religions are so closely aligned in the belief that they are either all right or all wrong. They attack religion for its cultural and historical elements and divisive intolerance of other religions.
Some cultures seek to shove a person’s religious beliefs into the private corners of their lives. Scientists and philosophers go so far as to say belief and matters of faith have no place in public discourse or humanitarian work.
Religion is more than a belief in God or some sort of divine presence. Faith shapes our perspective and morality. Christianity is the highest standard of spiritual truth, but our belief in exclusive truth does not justify unnecessary incivility, discord, or prejudice. The Bible often speaks about the fair – even generous – way we should treat people outside of the faith. The Christian church must embrace these truths and acknowledge the good and the bad of our history.
Some critics of Christianity struggle with the existence of evil, believing God can be neither all-loving nor all-powerful in the face of suffering. The existence of evil does not disprove the existence of a loving, powerful God. This fallacy exists because we cannot find a human explanation for evil. The shared sense of morality we have as human beings also speaks to the existence of a higher morality.
Christianity does not promise an end to suffering in this life, but it does give hope and comfort. Jesus’ suffering on the cross depicts the worst kind of physical, emotional, and spiritual suffering a person can endure. His suffering produced the greatest good for all humanity and showed the loving, sacrificial heart of the Father.
The world’s suffering weighed heavily on the body of Jesus as He died on the cross. Through His suffering, we receive redemption and the promise of the resurrection. While God’s ways are not clear to us as human beings, we know that, as Christians, any suffering we experience in this life is limited. God not only redeems suffering but also restores us.
Love requires a mutual exchange of freedoms between partners for the sake of intimacy and trust, and the relationship between God and humanity is no different.
Many people see Christianity as an affront to individualism and interpret the standards for righteous living as excessive limitations to personal freedom.
Skeptics who argue that Christianity’s claim to truth and righteousness is a power-play are mistaken. They fail to recognize that the argument undermines every truth claim, including their own. Everyone makes a claim about truth – whether in Christian theology or with post-modern theories and deconstruction.
As the modern world learns to celebrate diversity and inclusivity, they view the church with disdain for any form of exclusivity. The Christian church exists because of belief in certain theological truths, and people who cannot affirm those beliefs experience some exclusion from the Christian community. Christians are not unique in this respect, and exclusion occurs in any group formed around specific beliefs and views.
Christianity, unlike many other major world religions, adapted and expanded into every civilization around the world through existing cultures. Secular society, by contrast, threatens and destroys the traditional beliefs of most cultures by rejecting anything supernatural. Christianity is not equivalent to Western religion or culture. Our faith is adaptive to culture within the safety of sound theology.
Modern people view freedom as a self-determining morality unhindered by external forces such as tradition or culture. This definition of freedom is too small because it does not account for something as simple as self-discipline, by which we limit our freedom to achieve a purpose. Human beings have natural restrictions, and as we grow, experiment, and learn, we discover new limitations.
Love itself creates a unique balance of freedom and limitations. For the love of another person or people, we exchange our independence and freedom for community and intimacy. Real love involves mutual limitations on both parties to create intimacy and trust. Certainly, love comes with loss, but not many of us would sacrifice those we love for more freedom.
Critics of biblical principles for living righteously miss a critical component of a disciplined Christian life. God’s love is the same contradiction as love between humans but on a greater scale. We sacrifice freedom and identity to live in Christ, but God also made great sacrifices for the love of people. Even so, in Christ we are free indeed.
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