An alternative take on the existence of the Christian God

I find myself with an odd fascination for the various arguments that occur between Christians and atheists around the existence of God.  This is partly because I think the arguments might be more constructive if both sides were a little more determined to discover where their differences lie.  But also because the nature of the debate doesn’t seem ever to address something I find perhaps more important and compelling than any of these arguments. 

I’ve been in two minds whether to commit this to writing but I’ve come to the conclusion it has real relevance, for a particular reason I’ll address at the end.

This argument is a little involved but it starts at a simple place.  Let’s assume we have two choices:

-              The Christian God exists and therefore the Bible is true.

-              The Christian God does not exist and the atheist position therefore has merit.

In theory there is a third position, which is the Christian God does not exist, but other gods do, and therefore the atheists are wrong.  But I’m personally uninterested in the distinction between this and the atheist position.  It also doesn’t matter, as we will see later.

So starting with these choices, the first choice involves accepting more than just the existing of God, and Jesus being the incarnation of the living God.  It also importantly involves accepting the existence of an enemy, because the Bible says so. 

Now we are told some things about this enemy.  Ezekiel 28 tells us “You were in Eden, the garden of God…”  “You were an anointed guardian cherub.  I placed you, you were on the holy mountain of God, in the midst of the stones of fire you walked.  You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till unrighteousness was found in you”.  “Your heart was proud because of your beauty, you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendour”.  Isaiah 14 similarly says “you said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven, above the stars of God, I will set my throne on high, I will sit on the mount of assembly…I will make myself like the Most High”. 

The picture is pretty clear.  Now, this enemy – who we typically refer to as Satan – was cast down and undertakes war against God.  The Bible also tells us that.  So let’s now conduct a thought experiment.  If you were Satan, and wanted to thwart the plans of God, what would you do? 

My answer would be as follows:

-              I would subvert God’s natural order

-              I would subvert His truth and attempt to get people to believe lies that lead to their destruction

-              I would seek to get them to worship me, or failing that, anyone or anything other than God.

Let’s look at each of these in turn.

Subversion of God’s natural order

There are three key institutions in the natural order of God’s design, that we see in how Israel was established in the Old Testament.  Abraham Kuyper has addressed this extensively, and convincingly.  These three institutions are:

-              The Family.

-              Government.

-              The Church.

These three institutions are intended to operate independently but to inter-relate.  The government is responsible for protection and adjudicating disputes.  The church is responsible for a variety of functions relating to divine practice and pastoring.  The family is responsible for pretty much everything else. 

The balance of these responsibilities is important, especially in terms of one not encroaching on the other.  Clearly in history we have seen instances of the church dominating government, or government dictating what the church can do.  But if I was Satan I would seek to do the following:

-              I would infiltrate the government and encroach into the church and responsibilities traditionally taken by the family.

-              I would infiltrate the church and weaken the teachings, while at the same time leading the pastoral staff into temptation, reducing the credibility of the church.

-              I would seek to destroy the family unit.

On the last point, I would do at least the following:

-              Attack the institution of marriage in any way possible.

-              Seek to drive wedges between children and their parents.

-              Encourage ease of divorce.

-              Encourage the financial benefit of parents remaining separated.

Along with many other things.  The point is to incentivise the destruction of the family unit, the encroachment of government and the moral weakness of the church.

Subversion of God’s truth

I would seek to push agendas that push strongly some alternatives to God’s truth.  This includes but is not limited to:

-              Atheism and alternative religions that diminish, relegate or remove Jesus as the way, the truth and the life. 

-              Attack the veracity of scripture using “more reliable” thinking, such as science, even if this involves misrepresentation.

-              To encourage lines of thinking that involve people taking control over their own lives and believing that submission is “wrong”.

-              To encourage destructive pleasures of the flesh and to attack anyone that suggests this is a problem.

-              To facilitate the death of innocents.  Because Biblically we know God hates this.

 Alternative Worship

There are many movements that involve coercion towards the ultimate worship of Satan or Lucifer.  This is a matter of fact, whether or not you believe a God or Satan actually exists.  It should be interesting to everyone that Satanism requires renunciation of only one person – Jesus.  No key individual from any other religion.  Which is kind of odd if there’s no truth to the existence of God the divinity of Jesus.  But I digress…

Failing direct worship, the distractions and destruction achieved by the other measures above would be a second line of defence against people from worshipping God. 

The Atheist Position

Now, if the atheist position is true, then we should see a very different position.  There would be no enemy.  There is simply nature, randomness, evolution, and our world.  Morality comes from humans just realising morality works. 

Now we could descend into a debate around whether it would make more sense for slavery and coercion to be more commonplace in this environment.  I find this argument, often put forward by Christians, to be less than compelling.  If evolution really is the explanation, then it is rational to assume that humans are able to learn that peace and altruism do tend to work better at a societal level than war and destruction. 

But I do think we can argue the following.  If it is a natural consequence of the evolution of thought that we migrate towards liberalism – by which we mean accommodating differences between individuals – what we should not see is highly partisan attacks on the family unit and the Christian faith.  The atheist movement should simply accept that the Christians are their crazy brothers and move on.  Those that disagree with the family unit as being the right way should leave those that choose that route as deluded but accept they aren’t harming anyone and move on.  It simply makes no sense that the result of the liberal movement would result in partisan attacks, when it’s entire basis is accommodation.  Especially when those accommodations become supported legally by the state.

What do we see in practice?

So the question I am posing is that, if we have two different schools of thought, and we can realise some ideas about what they should imply, which looks most likely to be true based on what we actually see in society?

Looking at the first case, where I assume there is an enemy – do you think we see evidence of those forms of attack occurring?  We could do exhaustive analysis of this but hopefully it is self-evident that every single one of those measures is actually occurring and getting worse. 

Conversely, do we see any evidence under the atheist position of normal accommodation through liberal behaviour.  In fact we don’t – what we see is a highly aggressive attempt not only to argue for the atheist position but to discredit the Christian position.  A good example recently is the outlawing of silent prayer outside abortion clinics in the UK.  Is this rational from a liberal perspective?  Or is something else going on? 

Now, to be clear, I am not attacking liberalism.  What I am saying is that the consequences of liberalism are not what we actually see in practice, badged as liberalism.  They are something quite different.  Many traditional liberals have worked this out.  What we are seeing is often ascribed to the left wing, but truthfully we have seen behaviour like this on the right wing too. 

I am not writing this with a view to “proving” the existence of God to those that don’t believe in this form.  I don’t think that will actually work, for reasons I will address in a different paper.  The reason I chose to write this is to illustrate, for those that already believe, the importance of understanding the existence of an enemy as a demonstration of the veracity of your faith.  As importantly, it is critical to appreciate that the enemy isn’t some theoretical idea that occurs several times in the Bible.  Rather there is clear evidence of a systematic strategy for attacking and undermining your faith, and you need to be prepared for this. 

Finally, you may find this idea useful in defending your own faith.  Personally, if I ever get the chance it will be interesting to see an atheist attempt to explain the systematic attack on the family unit.  It is hard to argue it is not happening.  I do not think that atheism per se is an indicator of the existence of an enemy, but the aggression with which they attack faith is. 

But in truth, I have left out the ugliest parts of the enemy’s strategy.  That does not mean they aren’t there.  Appreciating clearly the truth in Ephesians 6 that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood” is not merely a theoretical “out there” idea but a very real daily reality.  The point of this paper is to show you that there is an overt, co-ordinated strategy against you and your faith and the worst thing you can do is pretend it does not exist.