The Agnostic Pharisee

MARTIN CAREY

When I was seven years old, I saw a Harry Anderson painting of Jesus standing over a large city, holding out His hands. It was entitled, “Christ Of the City.” He looked so real that I wondered if His hands were actually touching the sky scrapers. Did He ever stand like that over Tacoma Park where we lived? Maybe if I searched the sky carefully, I could see Him.

“Mom,” I asked one day, “why can’t we see Jesus? I mean, why doesn’t He just show Himself to us?” She set down her book and smiled. “You will someday, dear. If we’re faithful, we’ll see Him when He comes back.”

Apparently other people got to see Jesus—people like the ones in all those bedtime stories—just not me. He promised to be with us, but I couldn’t find Him anywhere. But then, my dad told us that people imagine things, and maybe Jesus was imaginary. That idea was troubling, and a seed of doubt was planted.

This is the story of an agnostic, one who has doubted God nearly all his life. Since this is my story, I’d love to write a heroic tale of how, by heroic searching, I became wise enough to know God. That wouldn’t be honest. This is actually the story of how my groping after knowledge was rudely arrested, and I was made to see.

 

Huxley’s agnosticism

What is an agnostic? Here is a useful definition from the Oxford Dictionaries:

Agnostic: A person who believes that nothing is known, or can be known, of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God.¹

There are different kinds of agnostics. The agnostic atheist does not believe in any gods, but does not claim certainty about them. The agnostic theist does believe in a god, but is not confident in his knowledge of that god. There are also apathetic agnostics who don’t believe anyone can have knowledge about gods, since these questions are of academic interest only.² They would rather not be bothered by thinking about God.

The modern agnostic movement began with Thomas Henry Huxley, 1825-1895. Huxley was a mostly self-educated biologist with a passion for knowledge. His debating skills and scientific knowledge placed him among Britain’s greatest minds. He befriended Charles Darwin and so vigorously defended the theory of evolution, they called him “Darwin’s bulldog.” Huxley coined the term “agnostic,” wanting to contrast the scientific mind from the Gnostics of the early Christian era.³ Huxley had no use for anything mystical or supernatural, explaining his agnostic worldview:

“In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: in matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic faith.”⁴

Reason and evidence, without “any other consideration,” defined Huxley’s skepticism. Christians had failed to demonstrate their claims about an unseen God with evidence or moral living, he believed, so their religion was a fraud. Huxley’s term, agnostic, became popular, much to his satisfaction. In fact, since he introduced the term, there have been many famous agnostics: Susan Anthony, Arthur Conan Doyle, W.E.B. DuBois, and recently, theologian Bart Ehrmann, astronomer Carl Sagan, and Bill Nye the Science Guy. Skepticism is fashionable, and altogether, about one in five Americans is either agnostic, atheist, or without any claim to faith.⁵

There is, however, another kind of agnostic besides the “Huxleyan” secularist: a religious kind. Religious agnostics have significant doubts about God’s existence or goodness while keeping a religious identity.⁶ They gather around educational centers and are common in Adventism. I know, because I was one of them.

My religious doubts began in a conflicted family. From earliest memories, my parents took opposite sides on many issues, especially religion. Mom was a loyal Seventh-day Adventist, while Dad questioned his faith. His father was a dogmatic, abusive Adventist pastor, so my dad decided early on that he would find his truth from books, not his father’s church. As an adult he read philosopher Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, and his disbelief solidified. Dad was a voracious reader who loved sharing knowledge, teaching my two sisters and me to distinguish between facts and foolishness.

When we took Sabbath afternoon trips to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC, I would stare at the great dinosaur skeletons and dream of life in prehistoric times. There in the Smithsonian I learned the secular worldview: life is a brutal struggle, and death always gets the last word. They didn’t teach us that viewpoint in Sabbath School, however, where Ellen White’s authority ruled. In my young mind a life and death battle also raged between competing authorities: secular science and Mrs. White. Out of that internal struggle, truth would have to survive.

My mom loved Jesus, loved church, and was devoted to the Adventist message as taught by the prophet Ellen White. Convinced that Adventism had lost its way, in 1961 she joined the maverick evangelist Robert Brinsmead’s new Awakening movement. She was determined for us all to get ready for the judgment. At our house, tensions mounted as two prophetic visionaries fought for our allegiance: Ellen White and Ayn Rand. A division formed in my mind—a desire for God, and a deep suspicion that religion was fantasy.

When my parents separated, Mom took us three children to live in rural Arkansas where we absorbed the Adventist worldview. We spent our days without television, exploring field and forest, growing natural foods, and reading books, especially Ellen White. When I discovered astronomy, all those vast distances and long ages didn’t fit into our small, young universe. Church folk explained faith and science contradictions by telling us that scientists were either deceived or dishonest. Therefore, I could believe science or the Bible, but not both. This dichotomy presented a dilemma: the Bible says the heavens declare His glory, but if we studied the heavens, would we be deceived? In spite of this confusion, I wanted to explore the universe, not hide from it.

My dad did not live with us, and our cultural isolation allowed my doubts about God to go dormant, for awhile. However, my mother’s isolation experiment didn’t work. She remarried, this time to an angry, unstable man, and we moved constantly. We couldn’t escape the popular media, public school, neighbor kids, kooky religious people, and our own natural urges. At age 13, my rebellion needed more structure than Mom could give, so she sent me to live with my Adventist aunt and uncle on the island of Guam. This move was a turn for the best, and under their care and discipline, this uncouth rebel was mostly civilized.

 

The theology of doubt

Seeds of doubt were also planted and watered by our religious ideas. We were very devout Adventists, but for us, God couldn’t quite rule his own universe. The central doctrines of Adventism reduced God in important ways.

The Great Controversy: White’s book The Great Controversy taught us that God’s original purposes had failed, and now he was playing defense to Satan’s maneuvers. In the deep past Jesus’ divinity was uncertain, so when God exalted Jesus over Lucifer, the highest created being, Lucifer rebelled and claimed that God and his law were unjust. Now under suspicion, God was forced to let Lucifer run amok in the universe, tempting other worlds to distrust God. Jesus then took a sinful nature and came to earth to keep the law and to vindicate God’s character. With sinful propensities, however, Jesus could have failed in his mission, thus becoming infinitely evil.⁷

The Godhead’s weakened sovereignty enlarged Satan’s power. While Jesus was prone to failure, Satan took on god-like powers, accusing God of injustice and freely wreaking havoc on God’s universe. We didn’t believe history was commanded by God. Instead, it was shaped by a “controversy” between two nearly equal beings, Christ and Satan. Because earth was the center of this battle, human lives were being sacrificed to prove to the universe how bad Satan really is.

God loved us, but we feared Satan’s power because of the terrible things he could do to us. We had all heard scary Satan stories. Since God refused to control Satan or evil people, we had trouble believing his promise to work all things, including bad things, for our good (Rom. 8:28). Great Controversy’s god was a weak politician who feared losing popularity, making big promises that reasonable persons should doubt. Therefore, we put our hopes in belonging to the remnant church, in building strong minds and bodies, and in keeping Sabbath. Our futures always hung in the balance, because after all, in war there are casualties.

The Sabbath Test: The fourth commandment tested our loyalty to God and separated us from the sinful world. Yet, with multiple versions of the rules, who really kept the Sabbath? Could we cook food, wash dishes, or talk business on the Sabbath? Mrs. White said we couldn’t, yet most Adventists we knew, did. What about kids riding bikes or getting rowdy? It was easier to do what we wanted, and then rationalize. Whenever we adjusted the rules, nervous jokes covered our guilt and doubts.

Ellen White, the Last Word: She was our gatekeeper of reality. Any important life question was subjected to her writings with her thousands of commands to induce a continual sense of inadequacy. If she was history’s final prophet, disobeying her words had terminal consequences. No one told us that Jesus was the final prophet (Heb. 1:1-3), or that only He possessed the authoritative last word (Jn. 12:47-50). Later I learned she was often wrong in her predictions and borrowed heavily from other writers. Nonetheless, they said her errors couldn’t disqualify her as “the pen of inspiration.” If the inspired Mrs. White had faults, they reasoned, so did the inspired Bible. Never doubt her, she warned, for we would doubt the Bible and leave the faith altogether.⁸ For me, that warning became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Sanctuary Doctrine: The investigative judgment (IJ) is the essential doctrine justifying Adventism’s existence. Yet, among most members, it is least understood. We heard gentler versions of this frightening doctrine, raising ever more questions.

The sanctuary doctrine taught us that all our sins were recorded in heavenly books, waiting for the investigative judgment. When we asked for God to forgive us, instead of our sins being “remembered no more” (Jer. 31:34), they were transferred to the heavenly sanctuary.⁹ Our sins could still be used against us, so we had no real assurance of salvation.¹⁰ With only provisional forgiveness, we were always on probation like naughty foster children who could be rejected and sent back.

 

Despair and confusion

Growing up with a weak Jesus and a scary Satan, my eternal destiny was decided by a strong will. But I wasn’t strong, and like a spiritual parolee, I looked outside of Adventism for release and freedom. Release was coming alright—the kind that leads to despair.

At La Sierra University, I majored in behavioral science and religion to prepare me for a psychotherapy career. My La Sierra professors were likeable, and their love of good scholarship was contagious. I was especially drawn to Rick Rice’s “openness of God” theology with its radical free will. There is nothing to predetermine our choices for or against God: not our genetics or our histories, not Satan or God. We are so free, not even God knows our future choices.¹¹ It all seemed so just and logical. Traditional psychology, however, taught us the deterministic power of early influences and drives and denied our free will. I was especially struck by Freud’s withering assessment of belief in God. Said Freud,

A personal god was nothing more than an exalted father-figure: desire for such a deity sprang from infantile yearnings for a powerful, protective father, for justice and fairness and for life to go on forever.¹²

Faith in God as a childish wish for a cosmic father became a key piece in my thinking. Like many in the psychotherapy profession, I accepted Freud’s assertions about faith as authoritative without examining the assumptions behind them. After all, psychology supposedly replaced our need for religious superstition, so Freud’s father-projection theory seemed self-evident.

Meanwhile, during the late 1970s, the war over salvation theology raged between Bob Brinsmead and Desmond Ford on one side, and Adventist leadership on the other. My family had followed Brinsmead’s teaching since the early 60s, and his new Reformation emphasis on justification by faith alone was compelling. His widely read magazine Verdict strongly impacted the Adventist church and challenged the evangelical world. The Reformation gospel was both amazing and disturbing, and through the years of confusion I never forgot it. When Desmond Ford and Bob Brinsmead exposed the IJ as an unbiblical fraud in the late 70s, we rejoiced. Then in 1980, the Adventist hierarchy, by political intrigue and a blizzard of theological argument, expelled Desmond Ford from the ministry. That was the single event that most alienated me from Adventism and from all church.

Now I was ready to join my dad in reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Unlike church men and politicians, Rand’s brilliant heroes never compromise their rationality or integrity. Her villains are corrupt mediocrities who grasp by fraud what they cannot earn by merit. The heroes are industrious wealth producers who always trade with “equal value” and never “grant the unearned or undeserved, neither in matter nor in spirit.”¹³ When the producers are cornered they withdraw to their secret enclave and watch the world fall apart. In Ayn Rand’s ideal world, people always get what they deserve, for only parasites and looters expect what is unearned.¹⁴ Rand especially hated Christianity for teaching self-sacrifice and for rewarding the vices of stupidity and weakness.

Although Rand’s dogmatic atheism felt extreme and I still hoped for a god, her rationalism and individualism were my inspiration. A just god would surely govern according to Rand’s ideals. What I couldn’t see in her “virtue of selfishness” was that a life without mercy is a life of regret.

Politics became my religion, with self-reliance and nationalism as my creed. As commentator Dennis Prager said, I was now “drunk with freedom.” Obviously, among all my favorite psychologists, philosophers, and theologians, there were mighty contradictions. Even so, I crammed them all into my philosophical basket, a cornucopia of confusion. I was still culturally Adventist, but now I sported a bigger, prouder worldview.

 

The Badventist

Adventists who frequently break Adventist rules while keeping an Adventist identity are often known as “Badventists.” As a Badventist, my Adventist doctrines had new meanings. Rejecting Ellen White’s cosmic drama, I now imagined that the cosmic government existed to preserve my freedom. In fact, protecting my freedom was God’s primary occupation. My self-created god minded his own business and was irrelevant to human history. God’s providence in our lives was now just a warm, fuzzy feeling, but ineffectual. To be sure, I wanted a confidence-inspiring god, but no one seemed qualified for the job. Besides, any god strong enough to guarantee my future could restrict my freedom. My destiny was all up to me now; I just needed enough self-reliance.

 

The Sabbath question remained. What if Ellen White’s predictions of an oppressive Sunday Law came true? To suppress any nagging worries, I practiced a loyal but loose Sabbath observance. Around Loma Linda we understood that regardless of our convictions, Sabbath-keeping brought healthy benefits. We believed the Sabbath had healing powers, as long as we weren’t legalistic. Our Sabbaths might include shopping or going to restaurants after church, where I often saw other Adventists at nearby tables. We might raise our wine glasses and smile quietly across the room. We had our own “don’t ask, don’t tell” Sabbath policy.

My response to Ellen was now rebellious compliance. I still feared and hated her control. She provoked both loyalty and loathing, like the parent who treated you as special 70% of the time and threatened you the other 30%. So why obey her at all? I was hedging my bets, out of fear that some of her threats might be right. When I complied with Ellen’s warnings, it was not from conviction but from superstition.

Could a marginal Adventist claim to be one? Adventist churches usually accepted me and tolerated my doubts. After all, Adventists are a diverse group and individually believe many different things. As one pastor stated, we all ate at the Adventist doctrinal smorgasbord where we could choose what we wanted. If the Bible was flawed and open to different interpretations, then much of its theology was optional. Therefore, if “my truths” are only products of my wishes, they have no external reality. In fact, it was hard to take any of Adventism’s dogma seriously. Religion was a personal matter, I reasoned, so on Sabbath I might go church-hopping for the best speaker or just stay home. I concluded that staying Adventist merely meant staying connected to other Adventists through church, and being nice.

To add to my confusion, in the mid-1980s Bob Brinsmead, my favorite theologian and a family friend, loudly divorced himself from the Christian faith. Brinsmead’s Awakening had begun in the 1950s as the quintessential Adventist movement, building a large following. In 1987 he declared that “Christianity is the Antichrist” and offered a new Jesus, one that did not save, but who pointed us to a grand evolutionary destiny.¹⁵ He persuaded many of us to reject our “man-hating, world-denying” Christian beliefs and “join the human race.”

 

Darwin’s awards

Breaking free from the restrictive Adventist yoke was exhilarating. What forbidden pleasures had I been missing all those years? The usual Adventist sins seduced me: drinking, movies, vulgarity, casual relationships, and more. Bertrand Russell, the mathematician, philosopher, and atheist, wrote that “every prisoner has believed that outside his walls a free world existed,”¹⁶ and so did I. Ellen White’s words haunted me, but no church disciplined me. Since I decided right and wrong, what were the limits of freedom?

My mom worried and prayed for me, I knew, although she didn’t often condemn. I was grateful to her but also certain that she demonstrated the hard truth that religion was for the weak. She lived in a trailer park with few possessions, suffering from continual physical and mental health problems. She had survived several episodes of major depression and clung to her odd perceptions of the world. She loved reading her raggedy Bible and pinned her favorite texts to the walls. I needed her much more than I could admit, but her sad life embarrassed me and became my counter-example of right living. Having climbed the prison walls of her religion, I was determined to show I could live stronger and smarter.

The marriage and family therapy masters’ program at Loma Linda University was challenging, and when I wanted to quit, my dad stepped in with the help and encouragement I needed. Finishing the degree, I worked as a nonpublic school therapist in the San Bernardino ghetto. These were kids the public schools rejected, the “conduct disordered” and “emotionally disturbed,” who lived reckless lives and loved to defeat therapeutic interventions. Therapy in the best neighborhood requires a big-hearted realism that I lacked. Could anyone help these kids, or were we wasting tax-payer money? Perhaps Darwin was right; our destinies are controlled by random mutations and natural selection. Ghetto kids belonged to what Darwin called the “lower races,”¹⁷ deemed unfit to survive. But then, I had to ask myself, if I was so fit for the good life, why was I down in the ’hood struggling with them? I started indulging in cynicism about my job, about my profession, about life.

Fast motorcycles were my joy, and in 1987, I purchased a Honda Hurricane 1000. At high speeds I felt strong and free enough to cheat death. On the other hand, one hidden oil patch could change my fortunes in a blink. Riding that Hurricane, I thought of “The Darwin Awards”, a website with stories of how people, mostly young males, ended their lives in a spectacularly foolish way. They received the “award” because they supposedly improved the gene pool by removing themselves from it. I could imagine old Darwin looking on, chuckling through his beard, “Well, go ahead then, and try not to make too big a mess of yourself!” Reckless behavior had its rewards while I played Nature’s lottery, just like my ghetto kids.

 

Fundamental questions

One evening in 1989, my dad and I debated the existence of God. Dad’s arguments brought Thomas Huxley to life: religion is illogical and immoral, so show me from reason and evidence! I suddenly realized I didn’t have good arguments for God because I had stopped wanting to know about God. I wanted to defend the possibility of a god without facing the demands of a real one. God was an intellectual exercise, not the Supreme Being who would disrupt my comfortable universe. My atheist dad was right; the God of the Bible was not a trivial idea, but a dangerous one. His existence is too consequential to be toyed with, and my agnosticism was just a game. I realized that either God is good or He is a monster. Integrity allowed two choices: I would seek God and find Him, or reject Him altogether.

Nietzsche wrote a parable of a madman who ran into the marketplace shouting, “I seek God, I seek God!” But no one believed in God, and they laughed at him. The madman rants and raves, “We have killed him, you and I!” How could they commit such a monstrous crime against the universe? Who let them sponge away the horizon or cut loose the earth from its sun? Didn’t they know what God’s death really meant? Killing God is too great a crime for little men, so they must become gods to seem worthy of it.¹⁸ The atheist philosopher grasped the cost of God’s absence better than most religious people.

I hadn’t murdered God; I had merely trivialized Him to death. Disgusted, I walked into my bedroom, picked up my old Bible from the dresser, and walked outside. Opening the dusty book for random words of wisdom, I saw only a confusing jumble of words. “God,” I heard myself mumble, “I don’t know if you’re real. Please help me! Teach me about yourself.” That was all.

For some years I kept that book safely tucked away. I wanted to meet God in a place of my choosing, perhaps in the stars. The heavens were always my passion; even to this day I share with everyone who will come and look at them with me. While I was agnostic, however, the heavens remained vast, meaningless, and silent.

How does one seek God? I would try hopping around different churches, asking basic questions about faith and science, about trusting the Bible. They had to give me better answers than, “God did it,” or, “God said so.” Some Sunday school teachers thought I was derailing their discussions, while others tried to send me to the beginners’ class. But I didn’t want to sit with the beginners, and I started provoking arguments. After I told one pastor that I needed God to “make sense to me,” he mockingly quoted me in his sermon. I know, I had probably acted superior, and he retaliated. Fundamentalists annoyed me with their simplistic certainties, their aversion to real science books, and their redneck culture. I stereotyped them with the predatory televangelists whose staged miracles drew hordes of gullible followers. No, Christians had to prove themselves to me. I was proud of my skepticism, and it seemed my pursuit was going nowhere.

One afternoon in 1993 I got a call from the Highway Patrol, telling me that my mom had a serious car accident and was now in intensive care. I rushed over to the hospital and found her with broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a cracked pelvis. Her breathing was labored, and when I pressed her doctor for the prognosis, he was evasive. Feeling numb, I sat by her bed and fumbled in her Bible for a favorite text to help her forget the pain. She asked me to read from Lamentations 3:22-23:

But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

I wondered what the new mercy was that He supposedly gave her that fateful morning. “This could be the final curtain for her,” I said to myself, fighting tears. Life support machines beeped and hissed around us while Mom told me the accident was the other driver’s fault. I listened quietly, remembering terrifying moments as a child, riding in the back seat of her car. We had shared many brushes with death. Nevertheless, with her numerous weaknesses, she had always found a way, day after day, to care for her kids. What now? If her heart stopped and they took her away, what purpose was served? If God was indifferent or dead, she became dirt in a box and her suffering was pointless. Death is a terrible enemy, tearing apart what should stay together.¹⁹ Someone was sponging away the horizon, and it was wrong, whoever was responsible. We needed a higher set of laws, a place where all of us who are weak could find mercy.

Mom recovered from her injuries, and I quickly suppressed those hard questions about death. It was more comfortable to think of God in more therapeutic, self-affirming ways.

 

The outside of the cup

In 1996 I walked into a Sabbath School class filled with sophisticated, friendly professionals and led by a retired college professor. They were fun; they accepted me and questioned things like I did. Sabbath school could be useful, I told myself, with deep discussions, new friends, and attractive women. Maybe these smart people had better answers. I kept returning and became active in that church, editing the church newsletter, joining the church board, and playing special music. Being involved and friended, getting respect from church people—church life was good.

There was a young woman named Sharon who sat in our class and smiled at me. She was part of our social group, and over the months in her unpretentious way, she made it clear we could be friends. At first, I wasn’t attracted to Sharon, unable really to see her, but then my vision improved. Sharon was a Badventist like me, but with a wiser and gentler heart. One evening at dinner in 1998 I presented Sharon with my heart and a diamond ring, and we joined our lives that August. Some of our best moments happen when we discover how clueless we are.

Membership was sweet, but at the deep conviction level, I had never joined that church. Beneath the good works and calm exterior, a troubled soul stored a reserve of anger and bitterness. My authentic feelings came out in private conversations as sarcasm and meanness, but they were seldom public. Private thoughts can’t be sins, I thought, for no one was harmed, and aren’t we entitled to our feelings? I was good at making a show of honoring God while my heart was comfortably far away.

No church member ever calls himself a Pharisee, yet the harshest words from Jesus condemned the religious actors. They were condemned because, while they appeared good on the outside, they treasured evil on the inside. As John Piper said, the hypocrite is not just deceptive:

A hypocrite is a person for whom lying has gone down into the personality. Hypocrites don’t just tell lies, they are lies. . . . A hypocrite is a horrifying spectacle. Truth has become utterly alien, swept away by deep, deep devotion to self-protection, and self-preservation, and self-exaltation.²⁰

As a therapist, I believed that the good person is “authentic” because he thinks and acts according to his true feelings. Acting out my feelings in private was “just being real,” so I wasn’t a hypocrite. However, those real moments often got me into real trouble, hurting people I cared about, and revealing what Jesus said:

What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person (Mk. 7:20-22 ).

 

Coming into judgment

In July of 2006, the Adventist Sabbath School lessons featured the investigative judgment, Adventism’s defining doctrine. The debates were intense, but I didn’t have an informed opinion. Not wanting to look ignorant, I began studying. In the Adventist literature I found a confusing tangle of reinterpretations of this doctrine, while conservative Protestant scholars were clear: sins are instantly forgiven, not stored in heaven like criminal records. I doubted truth could be that simple; then I prayed for help. The next few weeks I became obsessed in knowing what is true, spending long hours digging deeper. The Scriptures finally became clear; the gospel proclaims the instant and final forgiveness of sins (Jer. 31:34; Rom. 8:1; Heb. 8:12). Anything less makes the gospel worthless and Jesus a liar.

 

When one asks the God of Jacob for help and really means it, he receives help, along with surprises for which he never bargained. I discovered Proclamation! magazine with many articles critical of Adventist doctrines. The first article I read was about death, and it claimed things no Adventist agnostic can believe. Believers have living spirits, it said, and when their bodies die, they go to be with Jesus (2 Cor. 5:8; Phil. 1:21-23).²¹ Two years before, my mom had passed into eternity, and I hoped that somehow I would see her again. So, instead of just being ashes in a purple velvet bag, my mom was—alive? My mind reeled. I wanted to believe that, but this sweet, warm comfort felt like heresy—or fantasy. Real faith still eluded me.

One late night I sat at my computer, reading an article on the doctrine of divine judgment. The article was tedious, until the author got my attention with a passage in John 5. Jesus was speaking to the Pharisees and claiming that, as God’s equal, He had authority to judge the world and give life to whomever He will. I had heard all this before, like one asleep. This time, however, verse 24 woke me up:

Truly, truly I say to you, he who hears my word and believes Him who sent me…

These were not vague words meant to manipulate our feelings; He meant what He said, and we could count on it. I had heard Jesus’ words all my life, but I still doubted, so what now? But then, I realized, I had never really heard Him before.

I was certain, in my therapist’s mind, that guilt and submission are words that healthy people avoid. On the other hand, if “healthy” meant excusing arrogant, hurtful intentions, health wasn’t worth having. The man making these claims in John 5 faced down the hypocrites by speaking the truth, and it got Him killed. His words could heal the broken, or slice like a sharp sword. I wanted to be like Him, to have His kind heart and His death-defying integrity. But who is able to hear Him? He had told the exasperated, agnostic Pilate, “Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate saw before him only a harmless Jewish fanatic, not a king. He asked, “What is truth?” (Jn. 18:37, 38).

After years of my playing the agnostic’s intellectual games, it was truth time. One thing was certain; doubting for me was as natural as breathing, and no evangelist’s gimmick could make me believe. If truly hearing His words required believing from the heart, I was a lost man. But I read on: “…Has eternal life.” This statement was maddeningly simple. “He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” There would be a final judgment, but those who believe Jesus will have already passed into life. If I could only believe His words, that life would somehow become real.

A final judgment against evil comes as bad news, for genuine forgiveness is never cheap or easy. I realized as I sat at my computer that I didn’t just feel guilty, I was objectively guilty. There was no denying the damage that I, an undeserving, unloving, duplicitous fraud, was responsible for causing. Just saying, “I’m sorry,” didn’t pay for any damages. Yet, He didn’t ask for payment but for repentance. The Judge could declare me righteous, now and forever, because He paid for my life with blood. So, if I believed, I could not be condemned in any future judgment, having already passed from death to life.

At that moment I had the sense that He was there in the room, personally making this offer to me. The pure grace of His words had now swept all my excuses off the table. I saw no vision, no occultic special effects, but I saw something real. For the first time, I could see the Crucified One through His words, speaking to me. That night, in His presence, I wondered at His pure majesty. I said quietly, “It’s over; I’m done fighting. Lord, I believe, please help my wretched unbelief!” That night in front of the computer monitor I passed from death to life.

 

Living in splendor

Near the end of his life, Bertrand Russell reviewed his accomplishments and found only despair. In his Godless universe, he only saw a dark and narrow prison with no escape.

There is darkness without, and when I die, there will be darkness within. There is no splendor, no vastness anywhere; only triviality for a moment, and then nothing.²²

Studying science had that effect on me. Although I was gathering facts about astronomy and enjoying the skies with friends, the splendor and vastness of it all had been slowly fading. Without God, triviality and nothingness awaited me in the end. I was blind to the glory behind the splendors of the universe. Jesus said,

The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! (Mt. 6:22, 23).

Seeing with eyes of faith is seeing with the entire mind, heart, and spirit. Jesus did not command us to abandon our rationality or be absorbed into a mindless collective, as Ayn Rand supposed. Jesus taught rational principles: the laws of non-contradiction and cause and effect (Mt. 16:1-3), as well as of individual integrity and personal responsibility (Mt. 5 and 6). However, rational and responsible people can be blind to what is most valuable.²³ The religious leaders were blind to God’s glory because they loved human praise and power (Jn. 12:42, 43). Rand’s philosophy eliminates the factor that makes rational living beautiful: a gracious God who withheld nothing to give us everything. When God is our highest value, we love Him with both heart and mind, and our natural self-protection gives way to loving boldly.

With eyes to see, the heavens no longer feel cold, but ablaze with the glory of God. The universe reveals design and exquisite fine tuning that is evident,²⁴ not in the “gaps” of scientific knowledge, but in common knowledge that is available to anyone willing to see it (Rom. 1:18-20). Now, having passed from death to life, tensions between science and God’s word are invitations to study. I have to be content that Genesis is an accurate and sufficient account of creation, but it is not designed to satisfy scientific curiosity. There are many things about the universe we don’t understand, as any scientist will admit. So many articles on cosmology are filled with philosophical speculations, such as “multiverse” theory. I love to stare at galaxies and ponder their histories—every galaxy tells a story—but their mystery humbles me, as their Creator intended. The cosmos is a strange, dangerous, and utterly faithful place, just like its Creator.

You probably wonder whether I am an “old earth” or “young earth” creationist. I personally believe—but not as dogma—that the universe is very old, for both biblical and scientific reasons. Did God create starlight to give a deceptive appearance of ancient age? Did He create galaxies that only appear to have slowly torn each other apart? First, the universe’s appearance is a question of God’s integrity. The heavens declare His righteousness and faithfulness (Ps. 50:6; 71:19; 97:6), and the fixed order of laws and cycles in nature testify of His eternal faithfulness (Jer. 31:35-37). The speed of light and all the other physical constants demonstrate their Maker’s integrity. This God can be believed because He cannot deceive or fail, and His grand design ensures that our scientific studies of the heavens can yield trustworthy knowledge.²⁵ For those reasons, I accept the current astronomical measurements, including the red shifts of distant galaxies and the cosmic expansion rate, indicating great age. Henry Drummond said, “Nature is God’s writing, and can only tell the truth; God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.”²⁶

At the same time, I have brothers and sisters in Christ with young earth views, whose biblical scholarship and integrity I have learned to respect. We can debate whether God’s universe is 13.7 billion or 6000 years old, but our ignorance should make us all humble. Now we see through (telescope) mirrors dimly, but then we shall know fully.

Not a day goes by without some agnostic thought slithering in. By nature, I am an unbeliever. The clinical voice in my head with a beard and a stinky cigar says, “It is childish and primitive to ask God for help,” or, “If you were intelligent, you wouldn’t need those old myths.” Sigh. Yes, I am a needy, foolish child, so I run to God and His word. According to Freud, that desire for a fatherly God is founded in childhood fears and longings. The irony of Freud is that his own painful, dysfunctional life reveals how an atheistic worldview can be shaped by tortured longings. His seething hatred against the Judeo-Christian God grew out of his personal experiences, including his teenage attraction towards his young stepmother, resentments against his father, and the severe persecution of the Jewish minority in Europe.²⁷ Freud’s opinions are not science, even though he spoke with the authority of science to persuade millions. As Thomas Huxley would say, he pretended that his conclusions were certain without sufficient evidence.

Where will our deepest longings lead us? As John Calvin said, the human heart is a “perpetual forge of idols.”²⁸ Religions are filled with projections of human passions, fashioned into the gods that we want. Someone above us has to tell us the truth about ourselves.

These things you have done, and I have been silent; you thought that I was one like yourself (Ps. 50:21).

To show Himself truly divine, the real God must show that His heart is unlike our hearts, not grasping and corrupt. We find that quality uniquely in the person of Christ. He did not have our infantile passions, grabbing all the attention and goodies for Himself or forcing others to serve His desires. He didn’t come to be served, but to serve (Mt. 20:28). Instead of grasping at His equality with God, He humbled Himself as a servant and was obedient to the death (Phil. 2:5-11). No other faith has a God like that.

The real God is the one we naturally don’t want. I was running about, seeking God like a madman, and I could not find Him; He found me. Faith in God is not a product of working or wishing, but a daily gift of mercy to rudely disrupt our natures. The Lord Jesus is faithful, and once He claims us, He stays with us always. We no longer tremble at Satan running amok in the universe, or any other Godless fairy tale. Once we belong to Him we will never become a battle casualty, for His sheep hear His voice, He knows them, they follow Him, and He gives them eternal life. No one can pry them from His grip (Jn. 10:27-30). †

 

Endnotes

1. Agnostic: Oxford Dictionaries, http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/agnostic
2. “Agnosticism”, http://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_agnosticism.html
3. Encyclopedia Brittanica, Agnosticism: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/9356/agnosticism
4. Huxley, Thomas, quoted by John Holmes Agnew, Walter Hilliard Bidwell in The Eclectic Magazine: Foreign Literature, vol. 49; p. 112.
5. Hallowell, Billy, The Blaze, http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/10/09/pew-20-of-americans-are-now-atheist-agnostic-or-unaffiliated-with-a-religion/
6. Antony Flew, Religious Agnosticism, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/9356/agnosticism/38261/Antecedents-of-religious-agnosticism
7. Tinker, Colleen, “The Great Controversy: Living in a Worldview of Deception”, Proclamation!, April/May,June 2011.http://lifeassuranceministries.org/proclamation/2011/2/greatcontroversy.html
8. White, Ellen, Testimonies for the Church, vol. 4, http://www.gilead.net/egw/books/ testimonies/Testimonies_for_the_Church_Volume_Four/
9. White, Ellen, The Great Controversy, p. 421. http://m.egwwritings.org/publication.php?pubtype=Book&bookCode=GC&lang=en& pagenumber=421
10. White, Ellen, Op. Cit. pp. 421, 422.
11. Kaiser, Angelika, Adventism and Arminianism: Does Open Theism “Limit” God?http://www.memorymeaningfaith.org/blog/2010/10/open-theism-limit-god.html
12. Freud, Sigmund, Quoted in Atheist Empire, http://atheistempire.com/greatminds/quotes.php?1=10
13. Rand, Ayn, The Virtue of Selfishness, Signet Paperback Edition, p. 26.
14. Rand, Ayn, from journal entry, July, 1945: Journals of Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff, 1999.
15. Brinsmead, Robert D., Verdict, vol. 31, 1987, p. 5.
16. Russell, Bertrand, Russell: Autobiography, Routledge Classics, 2009, p. 373.
17. Darwin, Charles, Letter to Wm. Graham, July 3, 1881, Darwin Correspondence Project, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/entry-13230
18. Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Gay Science, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2010, p. 125.
19. Parnell, Jonathan, http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/die-well
20. Piper, John, Be the Opposite of a Hypocrite, July 3, 2014, quoted by Jonathan Parnell in Desiring God, http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/be-the-opposite-of-a-hypocrite
21. Streifling, Verle, “The Nature of Man and Death”, Proclamation!, May/June 2001, p. 10, http://lifeassuranceministries.org/Proclamation2001_MayJun.pdf
22. Russell, Bertrand, op. sit., p. 374.
23. Piper, John, “The Ethics of Ayn Rand: Appreciation and Critique,” Desiring God, 2007, http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-ethics-of-ayn-rand
24. Ross, Hugh, “Fine Tuning for Life in the Universe,” Reasons to Believe, Feb. 13, 2009, http://www.reasons.org/articles/fine-tuning-for-life-in-the-universe
25. Deem, Rich, Young Earth Light Travel Time Problem: New Solution? http://www.godandscience.org/youngearth/light_travel_time.html
26. Drummond, Henry, The Ascent of Man, New York: James Pott & Co. Publishers, 1894, p. 333, http://henrydrummond.wwwhubs.com/asctitle.htm
27. Nicholi, Armand, The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life, Free Press, 2003.
28. Calvin, John, Institutes, Bk 1, Ch. 11, 8. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes.pdf