I wrote recently about a documentary of Korn guitarist Brian Welch’s conversion to Christianity. He had a serious issue with drug addiction, even after his conversion, and some people are accusing him of replacing his addiction to drugs with an addiction to religion. Here is part of his response to these critics he recorded in a Youtube video:
“There’s a supernatural way that you can feel that euphoria and that high and that pleasure, and that comes from the Spirit,” Welch continued. “There’s a scripture in the Bible that says, ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived the wonderful things that God has prepared for us,’ or prepared for humans.
“Now, people would say, ‘Why do you believe the Bible? Why do you believe that? Why would you believe some words by men two thousand, three thousand, four thousand years ago?’ It’s because of the next verse, and the next verse says, ‘But God has revealed it and unveiled it to us by his spirit.’”
Those are very good questions that any honest person should ask. Welch gets the answer exactly right, and any good Calvinist, like me, would completely agree. The only reason people believe on and trust in the Lord Jesus is because God has revealed it to them, and enabled them to believe it. He turns the heart of stone to flesh, brings the dead sinful heart to spiritual life. But that’s not all that could, and should be said.
Throughout Scripture God calls people not to believe just because he says so, but because he has provided reasons to believe, to trust that he is real and what he says is true. The examples are legion. Read it, and you’ll see what I mean. A better answer to the critics’ questions is that we can believe the Bible, words written by men thousands of years ago, because their are very good reasons to believe it! It’s actually ridiculous how many good reasons their are.
The problem, however, seems to be that people still don’t believe in spite of all the good reasons. Many think, if the evidence is so great why doesn’t everyone believe? That’s a strange combination of a really good, and a really stupid question. It’s good because it’s natural to think the obvious should be so obvious that everybody accepts it. If everybody doesn’t, then maybe the evidence is not so great after all. People who think this usually have no idea what the evidence is.
This brings us to the stupid part, although I only use that word to be provocative. The reason people don’t believe isn’t evidence, but sin. How we define sin, though, makes all the difference. Sin isn’t primarily moral failure, doing wrong, but rebellion against our Creator. All the pain, suffering, and misery in the world is a result of that rebellion, and rebels will refuse to believe no matter how much evidence we throw at them. That’s what makes the question stupid: of course they won’t believe! They hate God. That’s what rebels do, they rebel!
As you read through Scripture you’ll see this played out over and over again. No matter how much God makes his reality and divine power obvious, people still reject it. If I were to delineate the examples, it would be a very long list. That’s why when people say that if God would just give them some proof they couldn’t deny, they would still deny it. That’s why in this sense, Welch was spot on. Only those who have been given eyes to see, will be able to see. And that’s also why Christians need evidence to bolster their own faith, because they’ve been given eyes to see, and by golly there is just so much to see!
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