God's Not Dead: Evidence for God in an Age of Uncertainty (23 page)

It is extraordinary that the Bible has survived all the attempts to discredit it. The Bible has been banned, burned, and belittled, and yet has outlasted all its detractors. Skeptics often challenge such evidence by saying that many individuals and societies
have embraced the Bible without seeing positive results. A common example is Christian communities throughout history that have embraced racism and shown little concern for the poor and needy. This critique is certainly fair. However, it ignores the fact that Jesus Himself predicted that many who profess to follow Him would not faithfully obey His teachings. Just believing in the Bible or even just reading it does not transform lives. People must place their complete faith in Jesus’ promise of forgiveness for their sins and in the power of the
Holy Spirit
to transform them from the inside. Then the Holy Spirit brings divine revelation causing the Scripture to reshape readers’ hearts and minds. Reading the Bible without the Holy Spirit is much like watching a TV without a cable connection.

R
ELEVANT

The Bible gives timeless insight into the nature of God and humanity. Its commandments are still the best guide for human behavior. Skeptics have dismissed the laws as simple common sense, but history has shown our tendency toward evil and the need to restrain it.

The last
R
could just as easily stand for
real
. It’s like looking in the mirror. It shows you exactly what you look like. The Bible has shown the real picture of humanity throughout history, good and bad. The most faithful of God’s people who sinned have had their stories told just as they happened. No whitewashing of the ugly parts or retelling them to cover up the blemishes. The Bible tells the story of real people and real life. It’s important to know that the various authors of Scripture wrote in the literary styles of their day and addressed the specific concerns of their audiences. God divinely guided this process to ensure that they wrote
what He intended for their particular setting. But He also guided the authors to ensure their words connected to the larger story, which was intended for all people in all generations.

The different books of the Bible translate God’s truth into a vast array of cultural contexts and situations: ancient Eastern nomadic (Exodus), Western cosmopolitan (Romans), Greek (Corinthians), faith-dominant (1 and 2 Samuel), faith-hostile (Esther), postmodern (Ecclesiastes), artistic (Psalms), and so on. Therefore, Christians from virtually any cultural context and perspective can deeply identify with multiple books of the Bible. Those books can jump-start understandings of the other books. As a particular notable example, modern Westerners often find the genealogies of Genesis completely irrelevant. They typically wonder why God would have even desired to include them. They connect much more strongly with the logical flow of Romans. In contrast, missionaries who translate the Bible into tribal languages often discover that the native readers do not find the stories credible until the genealogies are translated. Unlike most Westerners, tribal cultures often look to the past, so genealogies prove credibility.

S
UMMARY

During this project, I had the chance to sit down with one of the preeminent Bible scholars of our day, Dr. Dan Wallace, a professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. Dr. Wallace also leads the Center for the Study of New
Testament
Manuscripts
. He has debated Bart Ehrman three times and is as engaging as he is intelligent.

In my time with him I came away with three distinct
principles. First, the Bible is true in what it
tells
. When the Bible tells us about a person or place, it can be taken as true. Second, the Bible is true in what it
teaches
. The teachings of the Bible have changed the course of history for the good, and its principles remain the guiding lights for humanity in every way and in every culture. Third, the Bible is true in what it
touches
. Though it is not a science book, it doesn’t contradict what we know to be true from a scientific standpoint. Even the first chapters of Genesis, though hotly debated in many circles, do not contradict what science has verified about the physical world. Though very narrow interpretations by both skeptics and believers alike can leave some with a sense of irreconcilable differences, there are clear answers to the objective mind.

All people are created in the image of God, and we are all affected by the fallen nature of creation. Therefore, the truth of the Bible speaks directly to the core issues of everyone’s life. Christians from any background will experience a life of much greater abundance if they simply follow the core principles behind the teaching of Scripture. In fact, experience and several academic studies have shown that Christians who follow Scripture have greater health and other life benefits.
²⁰

All of the facts that have been mentioned here point definitively to the truth that the Bible is a divinely inspired work that serves as a trustworthy witness to the existence of God.

9
THE GRACE EFFECT

From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

—J
OHN
1:16–17
NIV

I have such a fantastic life that I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for it. . . . But I don’t have anyone to express my gratitude to. This is a void deep inside me, a void of wanting someone to thank, and I don’t see any plausible way of filling it.

—B
ART
E
HRMAN
,
G
OD
’
S
P
ROBLEM
¹

LIFE WAS CHEAP. THAT’S THE BEST WAY TO DESCRIBE THE world of two thousand years ago. It was not becoming less evil but becoming insidiously and callously more indifferent to human life. Children were sacrificed in pagan rituals, women had little more value than livestock, and slavery bound at least one-quarter of Rome’s population. The world was covered in thick darkness in a spiritual sense.

Four successive empires had taken their turns dominating the human race:
Babylon
, Persia,
Greece
, and
Rome
. All four boasted emperors who acted as gods, brutally conquered all opposition, and used the full force of their strength to keep the world under their thumb. The might of their empire had no equals and few challengers—until they were conquered by the next empire.

Several years ago actor Russell Crowe starred in the movie
Gladiator
, set in the days of the Roman Coliseum, where contestants, mostly slaves and criminals, fought to the death. The blatant disregard for human life was on full display as the crowd’s cheers or jeers determined life or death for the loser.

It was into this world that Jesus was born. The most unlikely Savior anyone could have imagined. A small child against the Roman Empire? Not very good odds. In a culture where only the strong survived, Christ would call His followers to “love their enemies” and “turn the other cheek.” The statement of Jesus, “for God so loved the world” was also new to the pagan mind.
²
It was a revolutionary idea that God loved and cared for His creation, as opposed to the mythological gods of the Greeks and Romans who watched from their mountaintop.

Because of the compelling nature of its truth and message, Christianity prevailed against this powerful juggernaut of the Roman State, not by military force from without but by changing hearts and minds from within. Historian Will Durant, who wrote a classic series of works on world history, spoke of the triumph of the cross over the Roman Empire:

There is no greater drama in human record than the sight of a few Christians, scorned or oppressed by a succession of
emperors, bearing all trials with a fiery tenacity, multiplying quietly, building order while their enemies generated chaos, fighting the sword with the word, brutality with hope, and at last defeating the strongest state that history has ever known. Caesar and Christ had met in the arena, and Christ had won.
³

Contrary to the fictitious work of Dan Brown in
The Da Vinci Code
, Christianity didn’t gain its influence because the emperor Constantine accepted it; it was accepted because of the power of its message and the compelling lives of believers in the three hundred years before Constantine. In fact, within the first thirty years after Christ’s resurrection, the world would be turned upside down by this committed group of His faithful followers. As Michael Green wrote,

Three crucial decades in world history. That is all it took. In the years between AD 33 and 64 a new movement was born. In those thirty years it got sufficient growth and credibility to become the largest religion the world has ever seen and to change the lives of hundreds of millions of people. It has spread into every corner of the globe and has more than two billion putative adherents.
⁴

God’s plan to overthrow such might and force was not sending a human army, but sending a child, born without privilege, the son of a carpenter: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. . . . From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing
after another. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:14, 16–17
NIV
).

The effect of this grace on the world has been colossal to say the least. Taking that grace away would be like removing the water from the human body and expecting it to survive. “Prior to the coming of Christ, human life on this planet was exceedingly cheap. Life was expendable prior to Christianity’s influence. Even today, in parts of the world where the gospel of Christ or Christianity has not penetrated, life is exceedingly cheap.”
⁵
That’s why grace is often referred to as amazing. It doesn’t just mean we are forgiven by God for our wrongdoing, but we are empowered to overcome the human tendency to be evil. Not only to commit evil acts but also to create evil cultures and structures to institutionalize and legitimize the evil people do.

G
RACE AND
R
ELIGION
A
RE
T
WO
D
IFFERENT
T
HINGS

Skeptics are quick to confuse grace with religion and then rattle off every evil done by a religious group or religious person to prove their point. It is the classic case of broad-brushing practically 90 percent of the world’s population (less than 10 percent are atheists/agnostics) based on the actions of relatively few people.

No one was better at confusing grace and religion than Christopher Hitchens, one of the most vocal atheists of our generation. In his book
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
, he painted a distorted picture of religion that is both scary and grossly unfair. To take all the worst parts of anything deemed religious and patch it together as reality is the tactic of
a dirty politician, not someone attempting a serious historical commentary.

Educated at Oxford, Hitchens had a grasp of literature and a breadth of experience as a journalist that made him a formidable debating opponent to any would-be challenger from the Christian camp. Hitchens carried himself with the swagger of a boxing champion, toying with his opponents until he decided to dispose of them with a flurry of rhetoric and ridicule, aimed at his favorite target: the evils of religion. He went as far as calling Mother Teresa a fraud.
⁶
Hitchens’s undefeated streak came to a screeching halt when he met William Lane Craig at
Biola University
in 2009. Craig may be the most formidable Christian apologist of our day. Craig opened his remarks by challenging Hitchens to a debate on philosophical grounds and not a debate about religion. “Mr. Hitchens obviously doesn’t respect religion, maybe he’ll respect philosophy,” he challenged.
⁷
He proceeded to give the evidence for God from a philosophical and scientific point of view. Hitchens’s railings against religion as his primary case against the existence of God were merely beating the air. Atheist magazines admitted, “Craig spanked Hitchens like a foolish child.”
⁸

Probably recognizing that he should not stray far from his antireligious theme, Hitchens found someone who was ready and willing to take him up on his challenge that religion had done more harm for the world than good. That challenger was Larry Taunton, director of the Fixed Point Foundation in Birmingham, Alabama. Taunton, a quintessential southern gentleman with an accent and an unassuming demeanor, could have led Hitchens to underestimate him as a debater. Instead, Hitchens met a formidable argument from Taunton on the evidence for the existence
of God he calls the
Grace Effect
. Taunton’s thesis is that the world has been dramatically impacted for good because of the influence of God’s grace.

Taking seriously John Lennon’s challenge to “Imagine” looks at not only the positive impact of the grace
of God
on society but also how life would be if these positive influences were removed. In the book
The Grace Effect
, Taunton explained it this way:

It is, rather, my purpose to make a case for society’s need of Christianity’s gentling, inspiring, and culturally transforming power. I hope that through the narrative of our experience, readers will be given a glimpse into a world without faith in Jesus Christ and, as a consequence, have greater appreciation for what Christianity has given, is giving, and may give us still if we will mine the vast richness of it.
⁹

Taunton tells the amazing story of Sasha, a young girl whom he and his family adopted from Ukraine. The grim condition of the godless society she was born into provides the contrast of what culture looks like when there are no signs of that grace. The oppression is palpable. On the other hand, grace can be palpable too.