Matters of Life and Death!

Recently I have had to consider the world from the atheist's point of view. This is because I have an atheist friend and we have discussed the world together. It has been an enlightening and challenging experience. I have realised that apologetics ont he christian faith is not so cut and dried as the famous christian apologists would have us believe. For every christian argument there are counter arguments such that it becomes a complex and not so cut and dried issue.

But I digress...

Viewing the world from the atheist's point of view I notice something very convenient - and it is not simply that God does not exist - but rather sin does not exist. Now the world is full of what are termed "practical atheists", those are people that believe that God exists but don't live that way. The key to the world view of these people is not that they believe God exists but don't live that way, what they don't believe is that Sin exists. That is the key to their behaviour.

Now, if the atheist's world view says that sin does not exist, if sin does not exist I can behave however I like without any consequence of any kind because there is nothing keeping me from a God who doesn't exist anyway. The Christian's world view must be that Sin does exist, and so there is something keeping me from a God who does in fact exist. That is the key to the epiphany. If we believe that God exists, then we must believe that sin exists, and if sin exists, then mankind is in dire straits.

I know that Christians are supposed to be involved in evangelism, that is something that scares me to the core. I do not want to go around confronting people with the truth and getting their backs up. That is not a "nice" thing to do. Now I understand that we're supposed to be polite, winsome, and not rude, but how can you tell someone they're under the judgment of God in a nice way. No matter how sweet you might be, it's going to be offensive.

Evangelism is scary and it is something that we fear. I think that those people that are examples to us still fear, but they have overcome that fear. When a fireman sees a helpless civilian caught in a blazing furnace he fears for his life probably less than we would do in his situation, but he still fears. In fact, if he doesn't then it will affect his performance as a fireman. The reason however that he fears less than us is that he's done it before and knows what he is capable of. The first time he went into a burning building he was terrified but maybe the comfort of a more experience fire fighter helped him through it. The way he overcame that fear was be confronting it and placing his desire to save the threatened person over the fear he experiences.

Now overcoming that fear is the key - it is when we see sin for what it really is - we realise how high the stakes are. It is literally, a matter of life and death. A Christian world view sees two kinds of people in the world, people that are saved and people that are not saved. When it comes to eternity that is the fundamental issue. That is what Jesus died for. Most of us do believe that, but to really believe that is hard because it means staking our lives on it. Staking our lives on something which cannot be proved through scientific or any other method. There are very few things in life for which it is necessary to apply that degree of risk to. What I mean is this, what other fact is so important that you are required to place your well being at risk in order to prove you believe it? When I say something and someone responds with "how much are you willing to bet that what you just said is not true?". My typical response is "no thanks". Why, because I don't see why I it is necessary for me to go to such lengths to prove something so arbitrary to be true. In this case it's not that I don't believe the statement I made to be true, I am just not willing to go to such great lengths to _prove_ the statement I made to be true. The notion of man's predicament without Jesus is similar.