By Clash Daily Guest Contributor: Albin Sadar
A version of this article appeared previously at TheBlaze.com and is reprinted with the author’s permission.
Many Christian apologists past and present, including notables such as Francis Schaeffer and Chuck Colson, have pondered a powerful question and, at the same time, presented a challenge to people who believe that the God of the Bible is real: “How then should we live?”
In other words, if you believe there is a God who loves us and has revealed His truth in the Bible, how should you conduct your life to reflect that truth and that love?
All across the world there are religions and belief systems that compete with the God of the Bible, and people who follow the regimens and rituals those belief systems prescribe in order to be in right standing with whatever god they serve. Many might argue the reason there is so much conflict and war is due to fighting over who is right about God’s existence.
Unite Behind the Atheists?
So, what if everyone everywhere decided to be like the atheists among us? What if we all decided to drop our belief in a Higher Power and just agree that God has been, and always will be, a fantasy? Then, the attitude that “my God is greater than your god” would just not mean anything anymore. There simply would be no gods to compare and over which to fight.
Would this finally bring peace? Would there finally be universal agreement that we could now all just “live and let live”? You go your way and I go mine? There would be no persecution for faith since there would no longer be any faith.
But faith in what or who? Ourselves? That’s it. There is no one out there in The Great Beyond. It’s just us, folks.
Each person would then decide within themselves what is right and wrong. Or, more accurately, what suits them best, because there is no ultimate judge of what is right or wrong, only what “feels good.” The 1960s mantra, “If it feels good, do it” would be revitalized and used globally.
And what feels good or right would include the act of ending it all by suicide, since, hey, what’s the point of living? For example, if someone else’s truth means that they spend their days tormenting you, then it would be time to say adios to everything and everyone (sans the “Dios” part).
In my book, Obvious, I tell the story of Connie, who I met in a play-writing class when I first moved to New York. Connie was an avowed atheist. I was curious about her certainty that there was no God, and she explained to me that she came to that conclusion after examining “scientifically based” proof. She had put this so-called God to the test.
God, Nature, or Nothing
One day as a deeply depressed teen, she had cried out in sincere prayer, “God, if You exist, show me that You are real!” She wanted her pain to go away with the “touch” of the loving God she had heard about, but in Whom she had never believed.
Within seconds of that prayer, a little bunny came hopping out from among the hedges and across the backyard. Connie couldn’t believe what she was seeing! She started to smile and warm up inside.
At that point in her story, Connie looked at me and said, “That’s when I knew for certain that there was no God. Only nature.”
I was astounded. “Connie,” I asked, “who do you think sent the bunny?”
But Connie was adamant. Nature was, in fact, God.
Many others today believe that, as well. Climate change advocates will testify that nature is ultimately the end-all and be-all of everything, which is sad. When I was growing up, we called “climate change” by other names: Winter, spring, summer, and fall.
But even nature would have to go by the wayside as “god” if we want to get rid of all the conflict between us. There would no longer be “Nature and Nature’s God” as our Declaration of Independence states. There would just be the nature of man, which one (nonexistent) God described this way: “The heart [i.e., the basic nature of a human being] is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)
We would all go along on the path of life doing whatever our hearts desired — and if the wheels came off along our journey (or we rammed into someone else with control issues) all hell (if that exists) would break loose. None of us would be long for this world or the next (if, again, that even exists).
Who’s “Non-God” Would We Follow?
One of the really big and obvious problems, however, would be this: Whose “Non-God” would we follow?
Seventeenth-century philosopher Blaise Pascal said that inside every human heart is a “God-shaped vacuum.” But why? Why do we all yearn to follow someone bigger than ourselves? Does our inner spirit know and attest to something of which we are not fully aware? Could that even be possible in a no-god world?
Eventually, because of this “vacuum,” we would all end up choosing one version of one non-god or another. For some, like Connie, it would be the non-god of nature, for others, the non-god of the Bible or the Koran or people like the Buddha or Confucius (or what National Lampoon magazine once called the “Cosmic Muffin”).
But eventually, whether we chose or not, the non-god would be chosen for us by the elites. Look no further than the strongest examples, North Korea and China. Those places, preeminent among many others, follow the non-god of the All-Powerful State.
We saw another example of this just this past weekend in America, when the Biden administration proclaimed the third annual Transgender Day of Visibility on Easter Sunday. The non-god of the State declared that to be more sacred than the resurrected God of the Bible.
A Big Decision to Make
So, who will win the day: the Real God of Love or the Non-God of the Godless? That remains for each of us to decide. But, isn’t it possible that following the (non-existent) God of the Bible is better than following no god at all?
A first-century fisherman named Peter believed that a man named Jesus filled that vacuum. He asked an important question that each of us ultimately has to consider. When Jesus declared Himself to be God in the flesh, sent into the world to reveal Himself as humanity’s one and only Savior, the New Testament tells us many people stopped following Him. But when Jesus looked at Peter and asked him point-blank, “Will you also leave me?” Peter said simply: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6)
In the Old Testament, a prophet named Joshua made a similar God decision. He wrote, “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” Joshua knew the one true loving God because he had seen Him at work through miracles and answered prayers in his own life. Just like Peter.
What now?
Which of the non-gods on our list of choices is the most likely to be real and to fulfill the vacuum deep inside us?
Many of us choose the One who not only sent the bunny, but who sent the Savior.
Albin Sadar is the author of Obvious: Seeing the Evil That’s in Plain Sight and Doing Something About It as well as the children’s book collection Hamster Holmes: Box of Mysteries.
