Last year, in front of students at a secular college in California, I spoke about the existence of God. I used the typical cosmological, teleological, moral arguments, avoiding any dogmatism but trying, simply, to show why logic and reason favored God’s existing.
Then, switching tracks, I said: “You know, when I was about the age of most of you, and not believing in God, when something convicted me every now and then, that maybe God did exist, I always pushed the notion out of my mind. Why? Because something told me that if, indeed, God did exist, then—considering how I was living—I was in deep trouble.”
The mood shifted instantly. Dozens of consciences, in sync, started grinding against themselves. It was almost as if the temperature in the room rose from the friction behind all these suddenly uncomfortable faces.
Their reaction reminded me of a quote from Thomas Nagel in his book The Last Word: “I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”
Why not? Probably for the same reason that those students and Clifford 1.0 didn’t; because God automatically comes with moral implications. If God exists, there’s a transcendent moral power whom you will probably have to answer to, a frightening prospect for those who, even without a conscious knowledge of God’s law, nevertheless sense that they’re not living right. As Paul wrote about such people: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse” (Rom. 1:20).
Now, here’s my point. As a believer, I struggle with the gap between what I am and what I know I should be. My moral conscience, much more sensitized to right and wrong, can still bother me. And, more important, my initial reaction is to want to flee God (I’m way past denying His existence). In other words, the same thing in principle happens to me now that happened to me decades ago, which was the same thing that happened to those students—and that was guilt.
But there’s a crucial difference. Now, instead of fleeing from God or denying His existence, I have the cross. I no longer have to hide, as did Adam and Eve, “among the trees of the garden” (Gen. 3:8). Instead, I can take refuge in the righteousness of Christ offered to me by faith “apart from the works of the law” (Rom. 3:28). When I sometimes feel, as Paul did, that I am the “worst” of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15), my only hope is to claim the promise that “therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:1, 2).
No condemnation? Is that because I’m innocent, pure, and holy, and that I keep the law so well that I no longer fall under its condemnation? (Yeah, right.) No, it’s because I am covered by the righteousness of Jesus, the only righteousness good enough to take away my guilt so that I no longer want to hide in shame for all that I should be but am not.
Each of us, believer or atheist, is guilty as sin. We know it too; we know a guilty conscience when it simmers inside us. For the believer in Jesus, however, that guilt should drive us to Him, to the foot of the cross, where we can fall before our crucified God and claim His grace as our only hope. Otherwise, what? We have to hide from God because—having already known His goodness—it’s too late to make ourselves feel better by trying to deny His existence.
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Clifford Goldstein is editor of the Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guide. This article was published August 11, 2011.
