Why I Left Atheism (Part 7)

By John Clayton

I had a lot to overcome. I could not talk without swearing. You could not go to the preacher's house and say pass the @$#%& potatoes. I had to learn a new way of talking, a new way of living, a new set of values, and a new morality, because I had lived in opposition to God. I asked God's help in these things and I found I was able to overcome things I had never been able to overcome before. I have a whole new set of problems--a whole new set of things that I have to work on--but the problems I have today are nothing like the problems I had in the past. If anyone had told me twenty years ago* that I would be openly using my limited abilities to publicly convict disbelievers of God's reality, I would have thought they were insane. Nonetheless, God has blessed my feeble efforts in spectacular ways--totally beyond anything I could have ever done.

I want to close this lesson by asking you a very simple question--a question that you need to answer for yourself and that each person needs to answer I suppose nearly every day. Are you an atheist (not perhaps as man would define it, but as God defines it)? Are you an atheist? Oh, I realize you may not be the kind of atheist that I was. Perhaps you are not immoral or hurting people or dishonest or doing the kinds of things that I did. I am thankful that you are not, but do you realize the way Jesus views an atheist? Matthew 12:30 says, "He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad." What is He saying? He is saying that you are either for God or you are against God. You are either an atheist or a Christian; you cannot be both. I can understand how a man can be an atheist. I have been an atheist a good part of my life. As an atheist, I believed (and still believe) that my life was consistent, reasonable, and defendable. (That is, from the perspective of an atheist; compare Paul’s statement in Acts 26:9--Bob)

For a few years now, I have been trying to live what I understand to be the Christian way of life. Once again, I believe my life is consistent, reasonable, and defendable with what I believe, but I will never understand (and if you understand, I wish you would explain it to me) how a man or a woman or a boy or a girl can say, "Yes, I believe in God. Yes, I understand that the Bible is God's Word," and then not do everything and anything within their power to make sure their lives conform to what that God teaches. That is not consistent, not reasonable, and not defendable, yet I am sure there are many people who know that their life is not consistent with God's way of living. Jesus said, "He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad." Are you for Christ? Are you working for Christ? Is your life radiating the kind of living that Jesus taught? Are you really a Christian or are you an atheist? There is no middle ground. It is my hope that by revealing to you the kind of person I have been and the mistakes I have made, you have realized that God is the only way. It is my prayer that you have realized that there is nothing that can be a part of your life that God cannot help you overcome and that you also realize that there is no better time than right now to begin the Christian way of living. Will you not give yourself to God and live Christ's Way? &

*The editor first heard this presentation on audiotape back in 1975. Thus, the “twenty years ago” is now “fifty-seven years ago.”

Railing at Glory

By Dale Smelser

Events declare how philosophically and spiritually shallow are the principal influences in our culture. The following events are transient and the details will be forgotten and seem passé before long. But the state they reveal will likely get worse until conditions are so distressing reform will be an appealing necessity.

Tim Tebow is a mere football player. But he has a strong conviction about God and is unashamed to declare that. Without all the details, one characteristic will suffice. He credits Christ for his ability and successes. He can be seen on the sidelines on one knee, head bowed, giving thanks. This has driven our cultural mavens into madness, in deranged frenzied antagonism and mockery. Foul mouthed and all but publicly fornicating players receive plaudits, but a person full of good works which bless suffering children as well as others, in monetary and personal ways, is in his faith an absolute thorn in sides of our influential secularists.

And so to their rescue comes Saturday Night Live. A skit is presented where a “whatever” Jesus visits Tebow and the locker room of the Denver Broncos with irreverent banter delighting the “sophisticated” audience. Revelatory enough, but something more significant was to come. Bill O’Reilly, who touts his Catholicism, and criticizes those he calls “secular humanists,” showed the skit on his news commentary show. Following the skit, there he sat with a benign avuncular smile, and chortled, “I hope God has a sense of humor.” Thus a professed believer’s principal response to the profane distortion is amusement. That takes us to new depths of peril.

Now a sense of humor is a wonderful thing, and without it life might miss some of it color. And man who is made in the image of God has one, so I take it God does. There are a few things in his word that evoke humor. But principally His Word is a declaration of what he has done, that we might know who he is, and thus his significance to our existence, destiny, and hope, which leads to our serving him with reverence and awe (Heb. 12:28).

A culture may have it skills, learning, and diversions, but if it lacks something that is greater and more than its transitory self, how futile. If it lacks a knowledge of an existent profoundly greater actuality, how trivial and vain. If there is nothing so high and ennobling that it is due our absolute reverence, life is lacking, especially in purpose. To contemplate and revere things high and noble, greater than the individual, and greater even than the whole collection of mankind, is to be ennobled oneself. To look up to One who is Holy, Holy, Holy, who was, is, and is to come, is to give a sense and purpose to life nothing else can. That is a quality of thoughtful and serious people. Thus our initial observation. How philosophically empty and spiritually shallow is a culture that has nothing so transcendent as to be above parody or burlesque, and that includes O’Reilly’s vacuous amusement. Is humor our greatest quality and virtue?

The scriptures speak of people who are “daring, self-willed, (who) tremble not to rail at glories” (ASV footnote, II Pet. 2:10). Given that is an evaluation of the One who shall eventually judge us all and in whose hands we now dwell, can we appropriately laugh off such things in our empty helpless shallowness? (Northwest Church of Christ, Germantown, MD) &

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

By Bob Myhan

The human body was created by God to be a temporary vessel for the soul/spirit of man. It is perfectly designed by God to interface with physical reality.

The hearing ear and the seeing eye, The LORD has made them both. (Prov. 20:12)

Donald Hunt, commenting on the above, observed,

“God has made our equipment for seeing and hearing, and when one studies the intricacies of these valuable parts of our bodies, who else but God could make them? The theory of evolution is so inadequate to account for the origin of such sensitive, such intricate, such functional, parts of the human body. This is applicable not only to the eyes and ears but to all the body.” (Pondering the Proverbs, page 260)

R. G.  Lee said,

“The most wonderful camera in all the world is the human eye. The most perfect telephone is the human ear. The most perfect violin is the human larynx. The most perfect telegraph system is the human nerves. The most wonderful chemical laboratories is the intestinal tract. The most wonderful thatch is the human hair. The most perfect filter is the human lung. The most perfect screen is the human eyelid. The most perfect pump is the human heart.” (As quoted in Pondering the Proverbs, pages 260-61)

It is no wonder that King David praised God for the design of the human body.

I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well. (Ps. 139:14)

The apostle to the Gentiles used the human body as a figure for the local congregation working together.

If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I am not of the body," is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I am not of the body," is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling? (1 Cor. 12:15-17)

Every member of the body has a proper function. This is just as true of the spiritual body of Christ as it is of the physical body of humans. &