AUGUST 6th
Belief in God
WHY do you as a young person believe in God? Probably it is because you have been taught to do so. By precept and example your parents and teachers have influenced you to believe in God.
A friend of yours who does not believe in God may challenge you to use your own judgment in the matter, suggesting that if you looked at the facts for yourself you would no longer hold to your faith. Should you accept this challenge? Of course you should. But first it might be well to look at your friend carefully. Possibly he too accepted his beliefs upon authority when he was a child. Possibly the two of you can agree to proceed at once to a courteous discussion of the matter on the merits of the question.
But is it worthwhile to reason with your friend? What. difference does it make whether a person believes in God or not? To answer this question we should know what is meant by belief in God. Does your friend object to any and every kind of belief in God? You will soon find that he does not. He does not object to belief in the gods of the fairy-tales. They are not meant to be taken seriously. They do neither good nor evil. Your friend, in fact, does not object. seriously to any god who is no more than the personification of human ideals. Your friend will not seriously object to any god who does not interfere with his movements.
But here is the trouble. The God you believe in leaves no human being to himself. He has created this world and has made man to glorify Him. Those who do not glorify Him will be punished by Him. Such a God is a “nuisance” to your friend. Now, it is not pleasant to introduce your God, if at the outset He acts as a “nuisance” in the presence of your friend. It puts you “in a tight spot.” You go home and spend a very uncomfortable night. (For Scripture references look up passages that deal with creation and providence.)
AUGUST 13th
God and the Bible
You meet your friend a second time. He again asks you for the source of your belief. You tell him it has come from the Bible. You show your friend that no philosopher and no scientist has of himself ever come to the conclusion that he ought to believe in such a God as the Bible presents.
On second thought your friend may admit that this is not very strange. Such a God as the Bible speaks of could be adequately known by revelation only. This would be true even if man were not a sinner. You give me a ride in an aeroplane. You are “flying blind.” I trust you absolutely. I have every reason to trust you. You have carried me safely in the past. Yet, for all that, I am really at your mercy. I simply live by the truth of your word. It is, after all, you, not I, who handle the plane. In this manner, or rather in a much more fundamental manner, we live by the truth of God's Word. If the God of the Bible exists, He and He only, in the last analysis, is at the controls of the universe. He alone knows what He plans to do with it. All that any human being can know about it is from God. A creature must think God's thoughts after Him.
So here we are at the end of your second meeting. God has now, perhaps, become more of a “nuisance” than ever to your friend. If he is to believe in God, he must believe in the Bible too. But here he catches you, it would seem, in a still tighter spot. You believe in God because you believe in the Bible, and you believe the Bible because it is the Word of God. That, your friend tells you, is reasoning in a circle. You spend a second uncomfortable night. (Can you find any passage in Scripture in which it does not take for granted its own authority?)
AUGUST 20th
God and Christ
YOU meet your friend for the third time. He charges you with reasoning in a circle. Not satisfied with that, he points out that the Bible is a message of grace. The Bible speaks of man as a sinner. That a sinner should believe in God can only be the result of grace. He therefore insists that what you hold as a gift of grace, or at best by a process of circular reasoning, can no longer be a matter of discussion with him. He insists that you are utterly unreasonable about it all.
What will you do about it? Will you draw back to lower ground? On the contrary you ought rather to go still further. You add that the grace by which you believe in God is given you through the finished work of Jesus Christ. This means that no one can come to a belief in God except through Christ. Jesus said: “No one cometh to the Father but by me.” We cannot first believe in God and afterwards believe in Christ; we believe in God in the same act of faith by which we believe in Christ, and we believe in Christ in the same act of faith by which we believe in God. Let us return to the illustration of the aeroplane. As you take me through the sky I insult you to the face. I try to cut holes in the canvas of the plane with my penknife; I try in every possible way to prevent you from reaching your destination. Will you take me with you after this? No more will God take a sinner with Him. Sinners, even when they receive much of God's “common grace” are “without God in the world.” It is only if your friend confesses his sin and accepts Christ as his personal Saviour that he can truly believe in God. You spend a sleepless but prayerful night.
(Romans, Chapter I, must not be interpreted so as to contradict what the Bible throughout teaches on man’s total depravity. See proof-texts for the doctrine of total depravity given with your Shorter Catechism.)
AUGUST 27th
Argument and Grace
As you meet your friend for the fourth time you at least know the truth about him even if he does not know the truth about himself. Your friend has the jaundice. He sees everything in a yellow light. He has a major internal disease and needs an operation. On the other hand, he thinks you have the jaundice. How then can you reason with him? The answer is, after all, very simple: you have the truth. It was by grace that you saw the light, but it is the light that now you see.
Argument with your friend would be hopeless except for one fact. That fact is that you are a representative of God and of Christ. Let me illustrate. It would be folly for a mere man to speak to a corpse. But Jesus spoke to the body of Lazarus and a dead man lived. So if we speak to men in Jesus' name we may confidently expect life to come to the dead.
If your friend is to believe in God he will have to have a new outlook on everything. He will need to undergo a revolution.
Thus the only way that you can reason together is for you to place yourself upon your friend's position for argument's sake, in order to see whether he can make sense of things. Suppose, you say to your friend, that you do without God, just how will you interpret life? You will then have to interpret life without God's help. But there is obviously so much beyond our reach as men, which may yet be related to that which is, as we think, within our reach, as really to bring the meaning of everything beyond our reach. Thus our efforts at rational living are all in vain; we are reduced to the level of animal life.
Suppose then, you continue, that you place yourself upon my position. Then we interpret everything in the light of our belief in God. This does not mean that we can now comprehend more than we formerly could, but it does mean that there is now a basis for our life. As a little boy who is with his father in the woods feels safe, so we are safe. Without our belief in God there is no meaning to anything; with God there is meaning to everything.
Thus what at first we received by the instruction of our parents, what we know we received by grace, now appears not only as a possible but as the only possible and reasonable interpretation of life: it is God or chaos. Thus you have witnessed to, that is, reasoned about, the truth; yet you rely in it all upon God's grace.
(God reasons with His people on the ground that they should live up to His grace given them [Isaiah 1]. God reasons with men in general, on the ground that they owe all they have to Him. God always reasons with men on the basis of what He has first given them. Try to find passages of Scripture that prove this contention.)