One debate that I rarely shy away from is the debate over the veracity of faith. Partly it's because I believe it is the most important debate which it is possible to have. I believe it has massive consequences for the individual and the community, and I believe each one of us is charged with the responsibility to come to a conclusion on that matter and live our lives accordingly. On the other hand, it's also because I am so overwhelmingly convinced that I struggle not to get a bit irritated by the flippancy with which people dismiss it.
One comment I often hear goes something like: when the dust settles on all our philosophical musings, there is actually no evidence for the existence of God or the veracity of the Christian faith. That bothers me. Because it is a patently false statement.
Atheist friends, you are free to disbelieve the evidence or to reach different conclusions on the evidence (though I think it unwise to do so). What you cannot with intellectual integrity say is 'there is no evidence'. There is. And as a former prosecutor I have seen people convicted on less.
Many have written compellingly on the topic - for reference see for a start the works of Oxford Don John Lennox, US Journalist Lee Strobel (an easier, though as a result slightly shallower read), the life of world record-holding lawyer Lionel Luckhoo, Tim Keller's 'The Reason for God' or the gloriously engaging CS Lewis. Interestingly, a number of those authors were atheists who 'accidentally' converted after attempting to rationalise the evidence for God. As CS Lewis said of his own journey: "a young Atheist cannot guard his faith too carefully. Dangers lie in wait for him on every side".
I thought I'd add a further voice, in the hope that it persuades someone somewhere that there is a rational, intelligible basis for Christian faith. You may not be convinced by Christianity, but it is pure fallacy to go that step further and say that there is no basis on which any reasonable person could be.
In this brief note I can't consider all of the numerous evidential stones on which the case could be built. But, as a courtroom lawyer, the evidence that interests me most is that of witnesses.
As I write, it is Sunday and over 1 billion people worldwide are at church (I, for my sins, am in bed tapping on an iPad... read into that what you will!). In history many millions more are recorded. Many of these people testify to genuinely life changing experiences of direct interaction with a force or being they call God. Stories of healed bodies, defeated addictions, renewed minds, softened hearts, repaired marriages, inspired visions, guided steps and comforted souls. That is evidence. One could attempt to discredit each and every one of these pieces of evidence as placebo, coincidence, hallucination or just plain lies. Yet would it not be unwise to do so without first examining at least some of them?
What of the credibility of these witnesses? Well, many each year are killed for refusing to denounce what they have found to be true. I accept people will die for an idea that is false, or at least unworthy, if they are convinced enough - modern day terrorism teaches as much. But Christian martyrs aren't terrorists. They don't seek out death, and don't seek out the destruction of others. Rather, when persecution seeks them out, they accept it, refusing to concede that Jesus is the hope of the world. That kind of devotion to a story makes a story worth examining.
Fine, you say. All that proves is that some people die for what they believe. If they believe a lie, then they are to be pitied and not praised. After all, they believe what they believe because of what was written generations ago. (I would deny that this is the only reason for their faith, citing the examples of direct experience of a God as listed above. But for the sake of argument, I continue.)
We then need to consider the motives, the credibility and reliability of the original sources. The disciples. The men who wrote down the stories we read today. Histories. Those histories tell stories of miracles, of resurrection from the dead, and of a man in Palestine who claimed to be God, predicted his death and resurrection, and then came good on his prediction. They tell stories of a man, who whilst making these lofty claims about himself, spent his time serving the lowest in society, healing the broken, accepting the rejected and loving the hated. Someone a few weeks ago tried to pin me down to saying that the bible isn't evidence of its own truth. I'm afraid I had to disagree. In the gospels, you have four eyewitness testimonies passed down through the ages of what did and did not happen. You may attempt to discredit them by allegations of collusion or dishonesty. You may dispute their authorship and challenge their authenticity. Much has been written on those subjects. In my view they withstand scrutiny. We can debate that, and the evidence may not convince you, but that does not stop it being evidence.
I digress, however, because we were discussing the witnesses themselves. I was once in a cathedral in Bruges. Statues surrounded the interior, showing men holding various items. On closer inspection it was the disciples, each of them holding the method by which he was executed. These men were murdered for refusing to recant their eyewitness testimony as to the living, breathing, eating, talking body of the risen Christ. Men may die for a lie they believe to be true, we have certainly established that. But would a man die for something he knew to be a lie? I may not have been an eyewitness to the resurrection, but I know human nature. When it comes to vats of oil, saws, swords and crosses, I'll say whatever you want me to say. Unless. Unless I have seen something so remarkable, and experienced something so deeply transformative, that the prospect of death pales into insignificance. The disciples refused, in the face of unspeakable torture, the threat of death, and then death itself, to say he didn't rise. That makes them extremely compelling witnesses.
The circumstantial evidence surrounding the birth of the church is also telling. In Paul's writings he referred to the witnesses to the resurrection, 'many of whom are still alive'. He wrote to people who could, if they wished, go and challenge these so called witnesses and see if it was true. When the church started preaching 'He's alive' it would have been terribly easy for the authorities to quash this sect by wheeling out the body - 'No he ain't'. But they didn't. They couldn't. There was no body. They could have paid off one of the hundreds who claimed to have seen Jesus alive, and got him to expose the whole scam. They didn't. They couldn't. Why? A lack of will? It would have more than suited both Caesar and the Synagogue Leaders to squash this unholy rabble. But they couldn't.
History records that the church didn't burst into the scenes because of new ideas and great philosophy. It wasn't an advertising campaign, money, or war. It was that they preached that a man who was dead was now alive. They preached it with power - not the charismatic power of an orator (Paul was known to send people to sleep when he preached) but with the power of God (Paul, after said sleeping listener fell to his serious injury or death, prayed for him and he was healed!) and people were convinced.
It is terribly tempting to try and win an argument by belittling your opponent, setting up a straw man of a position and blowing it down. But what I have set out above is testimony. Witnesses, living and dead, of a moving, breathing, active God. You can tell a witness he is lying, but you can't tell him he doesn't exist. Even I didn't try that one in court.
There is more to this fascinating topic. The more philosophical arguments to be made from the universal experience of moral consciousness (we all have a moral law which we all have broken and therefore we all experience guilt), the natural presumption of God (deities are found in every single culture, tending to suggest that we are wired to relate to the supernatural, and built to assume that God (or a god) is there), or the universal human craving for affection (which Christianity explains by reference to a broken relationship that we look everywhere to fulfil). But I won't rehearse it all here.
The point I am making, which I hope is clear by now, is that there is evidence. You can disagree with the conclusions drawn, or take an opposite view on its reliability and credibility, but what you cannot do, is say 'there is no evidence'. That would be an intellectually unjustifiable position.
I suspect that those who say 'there is no evidence' are the very people who are terrified of what they might find were they to accept for a moment that there might be evidence to look into.
But when you open yourself up to the evidence, and consider Jesus for yourself, chances are over time you will begin to actually get to know him. When you reach that point, arguments like those presented above seem oddly superfluous.
Why argue for the existence of someone you know and relate to every day?
Isn't it obvious?
Aside from a brief spell when I was living alone in New Zealand I have never felt the need to prove the existence of my wife (some Kiwis may have suspected she was an inflatable figment of my imagination, a proposition I was keen to disprove). I place my relationship with Jesus in the same category.
Happily, for those of us who take the time to consider whether a case could be made for faith in Jesus, we find that not only is it true, but it is good news. Very good news. Real relationship. Hope in all things, joy in the darkest of places, peace amidst life's storms, access to wise counsel and miraculous intervention, and the certain assurance that you are loved for eternity beyond anything you had thought possible.
Not only have I found it to be true. I'm extremely glad it is.
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