This past Sunday, I finished up a five-week series called Why Believe?, where I tried to answer some of the major objections people have to the Christian faith and the God of the Bible.  I have found the series to be very strengthening for my faith, yet at the same time incredibly challenging as I spent a great deal of time reading and listening seriously to the objections that people have.  The general attitude of many of the new atheist books has been summed up as “God isn’t real, and frankly, I don’t like him very much either,” and believers in God are generally characterized as unsophisticated, pre-scientific, arrogant people who enjoy having someone tell them what to do and have serious wish-fulfillment issues.  While I have heard many fair criticisms that should motivate believers towards repentance and discipleship to the true gospel of Jesus, I obviously disagree with their main conclusion and much of the route by which they get there.

I wanted to end my interaction with the objections to the faith today by dealing with a challenge that Christopher Hitchens, author of God is Not Great:  How Religion Poisons Everything, throws out in his book and in most talks I have seen him give.  His challenge is meant to communicate the fundamental unnecessariness of religion, and goes something like this:

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“Advance warning of Katrina’s path was wrested from mute Nature by meteorological calculations and satellite imagery. God told no one of His plans. Had the residents of New Orleans been content to rely on the beneficence of God, they wouldn’t have known that a killer hurricane was bearing down upon them until they felt the first gusts of wind on their faces. And yet, as will come as no surprise to you, a poll conducted by The Washington Post found that 80 percent of Katrina’s survivors claim that the event only strengthened their faith in God… Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God, while this same God drowned infants in their cribs.”

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As I prepare for the upcoming “Why Believe?” sermon series, one book I’ve been reading is UnChristian:  What a New Generation really thinks about Christianity…and why it matters by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons.  It is a book done with extensive research by the Barna Group, a Christian organization that does research on many different spiritual and moral issues in America.  The book begins with the provocative line “Christianity has an image problem” and goes on to discuss some of their findings regarding how people between the age of 18-29 view Christians, Christianity, and Jesus.  For an idea of some of their findings, take a look at the graph below, which answered the question: “Here are some words or phrases that people could use to describe a religious faith.  Please indicate if you think each of these phrases describes present-day Christianity.”  The bars represent the number of respondents who said that these words described present-day Christianity “a lot” or “some”:
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In This Corner:  King David, author of Psalm 14, written centuries before the birth of Christ, wrote these fighting words:  “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”  According to the King, rejecting the existence of God is the epitome of foolishness, because it means ultimately living with a false view of reality.

And In This Corner:  Sam Harris, author of Letter to a Christian Nation, which I have been reading this week.  If Harris were to write a Psalm 14 of his own, it would likely read “The fool says in his heart, “There is a God, and I know what He/She/It is like.”  According to Harris’ book, those who believe in God are blinded by their narrow view of the world, have missed the obvious signs that there is no God, and are ultimately living with a false (and dangerous) view of reality.
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As I sit here typing, I find myself listening closely for the mailman, because he should be delivering a just-released book that I have been eagerly awaiting since I first heard of it a few months ago.  The book is by a pastor who has shaped my preaching style more than anyone else and has deepened my understanding of how central the gospel of Jesus is to everything in the Bible and in life.  His name is Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, and the book is The Reason for God:  Belief in an Age of Skepticism.

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Why do you believe?  If you consider yourself a follower of Jesus, why are you following Him today?  What is it about Jesus, or what has happened in your life, that has brought you to this point?  And if you have had reasons to reject faith in Jesus because of difficult life experiences, intellectual doubts, or the hurts you’ve experienced at the hands of other believers, why have you pushed those reasons aside and continued to believe? 

Why don’t you believe?  If you do not consider yourself a follower of Jesus, why do you not believe?  What is it that holds you back from believing all that Jesus said about God and what it means to know Him?  What doubts do you have, what experiences have damaged your faith, or what else has led you to declare that you do not believe? 
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This week’s Time Magazine “cover girl” is Mother Teresa, the world-renowned Catholic missionary to the lepers and poor of Calcutta, India, who died in 1997.   In case you haven’t heard, there is a book coming out next Tuesday called Mother Teresa:  Come Be My Light, which includes letters that she sent to her confessors and spiritual directors over many years.  The shocking revelation is that she struggled in the midst of her heroic service to have faith in God.  Consider the following quotes:

 “I have no Faith — I dare not utter the words & thoughts that   crowd in my heart & make me suffer untold agony,”(undated)

“Such deep longing for God and … repulsed empty no faith no love no zeal. … Heaven means nothing pray for me please that I keep smiling at Him in spite of everything.” (1956)

“What do I labour for? If there be no God — there can be no soul — if there is no Soul then Jesus You also are not true.” (1959)

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“The single greatest cause of atheism in the world today is Christians, who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, and then walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle.  That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable” – Brennan Manning

I am sure there are plenty of people in this world who look to philosophical and theological arguments to account for their rejection of God, but I believe that the biggest cause for people giving up on God, Jesus, or the church can be summed up in one word:  hypocrisy (with unjust suffering a close second).  There is no greater opponent to God than hypocritical Christians, no bigger turn-off to the world than a church who claims to follow Jesus but shows no love for their neighbor. 

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