Many Christian apologists past and present, including notables such as Francis Schaeffer and Chuck Colson, have pondered a very 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 that there is a God who loves us and has revealed His truth in the Bible, how then 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 follow prescribed regimens and rituals based on those belief systems. Many might argue that the reason there is so much conflict and wars of devastation is due to fighting over who is right about the existence of God.
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 we all just agreed that believing in 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 for comparison or over which to fight.
Would this finally bring peace? Would there finally be a universal acceptance and 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. Faith? 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.” As in the 1960s, “If it feels good, do it”—that would be revitalized and used as the global mantra.
And what feels good or right would also include the act of ending it all by suicide, since, hey, what’s the point? For example, if someone else’s reality or truth means that they spend their days tormenting you, then it would be time to say adios to everything and everyone (except without the “Dios” part).
When I first came to New York, I had a good friend named Connie who was an avowed atheist. I was curious about her certainty that there was no God, and she explained to me how she came to that conclusion after “scientifically based” proof. She had put this so-called God to the test.
One day when she was a teenager, her parents were having one of their typical knock-down, drag-out marital spats. She fell into her usual depression over this fight and walked out of the house onto the back porch. Connie looked out into the backyard and, with tears in her eyes, cried out in a sincere prayer, “God, if you exist, show me that you are real!” She wanted the pain to go away with the “touch” of the loving God she had heard about but in which she had never believed.
Well, within seconds of that prayer, a little bunny came hopping out from among the hedges and proceeded right across the back yard. 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 and said, “Connie, who do you think sent the bunny?” But Connie was adamant. Nature was, in fact, God.
And many today believe that as well. The climate change contingency will testify that nature is ultimately the end-all and be-all. Which is sad. When I was growing up, we called “climate change” by another name: winter, spring, summer, and fall.
But even nature would have to go by the wayside as “god.” There would no longer be “Nature and Nature’s God,” as stated in our Declaration of Independence. There would just be the nature of man, which one (non-existent) 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?” (See 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 even existed) would break loose. None of us would be long for this world—or the next (if, again, that even existed).
One of the really big and obvious problems, however, would be this: Whose “No God” would we follow?
Seventeenth-century philosopher Blaise Pascal said that inside every human heart is a “God-shaped vacuum.” But why? Why, deep inside every human being, is there a desire to follow something or someone… bigger? 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 no-god or the other. For some, like my friend Connie, it would be the no-god of nature; for others, it would be the no-god of the Bible or Koran or people like Buddha or Confucius, or what the National Lampoon magazine once called the “Cosmic Muffin.”
But eventually, whether we chose or not, the no-god would be chosen for us by those more powerful. Look no further than the strongest examples, North Korea and China. Those places, preeminent among many others, follow the no-god of the Almighty All-Powerful State.
Who will win the day—the Real God of Love or the No-God of the Godless? It remains for each of us to decide.
A fisherman named Peter back in the first century believed that a man named Jesus filled that vacuum. He asked the important question that each one 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 that many stopped following Him. But when Jesus looked at Peter and asked him point-blank, “Will you also leave me?” Peter, speaking for the disciples who remained at Jesus’ side, had the answer: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (See John, Chapter 6)
And way back yonder in the period covered by the Old Testament, a prophet named Joshua made his 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?
If there really is no God, which no-god is the one most likely to be real, to exist, and to fulfill the vacuum deep inside?
Many of us choose the One who not only sent the bunny but also sent the Savior.
A version of this article appeared previously at TheBlaze.com.
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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. Albin was formerly the producer of “The Eric Metaxas Show.”