The great English playwright William Shakespeare expressed his inner Richard Dawkins, born almost 400 years later, when he wrote these almost immortal words coming from the mouth of murderous King MacBeth:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.
If there is no God, he is absolutely right! When atheist/materialists talk about good and evil, better or worse, pain and suffering as “bad” things, they are ripping off the Judeo-Christian worldview. Or when they talk about human dignity or rights, they are committing rank theft. You can’t get any of those things if all we are is lucky dirt. Destroy the foundation that gave us these things, the Jewish and Christian religion, and you destroy their rationale and the cultural capital that sustains them. In due course if a people see the universe as nothing but “pitiless indifference,” as everything “signifying nothing,” then don’t be surprised when all you have left is a world ruled like The Lord of the Flies.
The irony of such assertions is that absolutely nobody believes them or lives by them. Nobody. Which in turn leads to the question: What worldview, which philosophy or religion, best explains the things all people see, experience, and believe in, like design, purpose, evil, good, hope, love, meaning, pleasure, yearning for justice, or the big bogey man, death? Why does everyone fear death if death isn’t . . . . wrong? If death is so “natural,” which the atheist/materialist must assert, then why is it so darn scary? Even those who commit suicide don’t want to die; they just want to escape McBeth’s hell on earth of “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Which brings me to one of the most powerful tools in the arsenal of the defenders of the Christian faith: Explanatory Power. If you haven’t come across this phrase, the concept is deceptively simply. Human beings are always looking for reasons for why things are the way they are. Children are perfect evidence for this. As they are just becoming aware of this strange thing we call existence they are constantly asking why? It’s been a while since my kiddos were that young, but I well remember the question why coming from them with machine gun like rapidity. Why this, daddy, why that mommy, why, why, why? If that doesn’t tell you something about human nature, and the nature of reality, nothing does.
We ask why because there are answers. The question then becomes, which answers best explain reality as we find it? Nothing comes close to the explanatory power of Christianity. I quote the very great C.S. Lewis on the cover of my book, who as usual gets to the beating heart of the issue:
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.
If you want to build an enduring faith in yourself, and your children or grandchildren if you have them, then explore how everything in life makes sense through the great clarifying lens of God reconciling the world to himself through the Lord Jesus Christ!
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