"Raging Against Reality"

"Raging Against Reality"

    With the breath God provides, atheists and agnostics make their case against the Lord's reality and existence.

   "He given to all… breath" (Acts 17:25).

    It's always disturbing to hear unbelievers rage against reality.  However, they do so in full range of God's hearing and awareness.  He could still their voices if He chose to do so.  He does not, however, at least not yet.  Indeed, the Lord Jesus Christ even suggested that the purveyors of darkness play a role in serving God's purposes, albeit to their great detriment:

   "Woe unto the world because of offences!  For it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!" (Matthew 18:7).

   In a fallen creation, darkness serves as a backdrop to the light of God.  To those who will see, the Lord Jesus and His truth shine ever more brightly when His enemies seek to make a case against the Obvious.  The skeptics sound ridiculous, and while we seek to be respectful of others, it is hard to avoid acting dismissively of those who "live and move and have their being" in God, while denying the very spiritual and moral environment wherein they live (Acts 17:28).  "The heathen rage" declared the Psalmist (Psalm 2:1).  They rage not because of intellectual difficulties.  Mere thought and philosophy do not foster rage.  No, the rejecter of God and His truth rage because they do not want Him to exist.  The Lord is too involved and interferes too much in our existence for the atheist and agnostic.  The very anger they express against One in whom they do not believe actually suggests the fact of His existence.  Again, a mere concept of whether God exists or not does not lead to rage.  God Himself leads to such a response, or as one debater said of the late atheist Christopher Hitchens: "Chris does not believe in God.  And he hates Him with all his heart!"

   We cannot help but be disturbed when unbelievers rage against reality.  We need not despair, however, because they cannot utter a blasphemous syllable that God does not allow.  He fits the bluster into the fulfillment of His ultimate purposes, shining the light of His Truth ever more brightly in the night sky.  His reality resonates throughout the universe, happily to some, unhappily to others, but unavoidable to all.

"This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil."

(John 3:19)

Weekly Memory Verse

   Put them in fear, O LORD: that the nations may know themselves to be but men.

(Psalm 9:20)