Why faith in God is the most decent and rational answer to an perverse and irrational world.
For a brief period a few years back, a Slovenian socialist intellectual by the name of Slavoj Žižek was popular on the Internet. I suspect what ended that popularity was a YouTube video he’d made expounding upon the ridiculousness of atheists. Žižek, world-class intellectual that he is, was too smart to believe in God. He’d even made a video proclaiming only atheists can be real Christians because, whatever, I’m not sitting through that.
But there was another he’d made that I can’t find anymore, in which he complained about the hostility atheists had towards believers. Žižek essentially said, if you do not believe, good for you, you’ve settled the most important existential question in your life. So why are you bothering others about it? Just don’t believe what you don’t believe and move on with your life! Why are you making a religion of your atheism and shoving it down other people's throats?
Žižek’s attitude of get-over-yourself bemusement would have infuriated the atheists I know. To them, Christians aren’t harmless people with harmless beliefs that are easily ignored. They must be confronted, harangued, and shamed at every opportunity.
Aside from the beauty and wonder of creation and what its Creator has done in my own life, the biggest proof of God I see is in His haters. If God is indeed nothing more than a mere concept, an imagined “sky daddy” that weak people cling to in a hostile and inexplicable universe, then what’s up with the hate? It’s like being angry with children for believing in Santa Claus. Why not let them enjoy their innocence?
Some atheists I know would feel it incumbent to ruin these children’s Christmases, because Science! and Reason! must be preached to all corners of the Earth. Or, rather, almost all corners. None of these mighty warriors for Science! and Reason! would dare confront a Muslim or a Jew for their beliefs. They only go against the people who have been told to love their enemies and to turn the other cheek. Their courage evaporates immediately before anyone they suspect will retaliate against an attacker.
Most are as George Orwell described in The Road to Wigan Pier, they don’t so much disbelieve in God as much as they just plain hate Him. I would add that they are jealous and resentful of those believers they suspect are happy in their faith. I know I used to be. My grumble was that God was there for certain people, not me. I didn’t hate Christians for their faith. I resented them because they were happy and well-adjusted and I wasn’t.
The most casual glance at what God’s detractors believe in is very telling. Human embryos in the womb are mere “clumps of cells” to be chopped up when they’re not being harvested for any human organs that have formed. A woman is more fully actualized in a “career” that involves working for people who are not her family, and not in birthing and raising children who will be a comfort to her in her old age. (Besides, she’s not really getting old. No one grows old in this culture. Old is a state of mind.) Homosexual males are born the way they are. That a devious and sexually deviant relative notices the lonely, dissatisfied child and grooms/molests him into a lifestyle focused around anal sex with other young men (and, soon enough, other lonely, dissatisfied boys) is just something that happens along the way.
I used to believe this hateful nonsense myself. I am especially horrified at the attitude I’d once had towards children, that they were an expensive nuisance to be avoided, not a part of one’s life to be cherished until the very end—certainly not the future of civilization which must be loved and nurtured that they may sustain that future.
The evil of this world is bottomless. Worse, like every other mere social animal out there, I wanted to be a part of it. I shudder to think of the monster I might have become had I enjoyed anything that this world defines as success. My Father literally stepped in and denied me the literal Hell that I would have called Heaven because every day is opposite day in this fallen world (cf. Romans Chapter 1). Good is evil and evil is good. Men can be women and women can be men. Et cetera.
Call me a racist and a Hitler-lover and –phobe or whatever you’ve got. I’d rather be a racist Hitler-loving hater of things evil than an apologist for child molesters and violence against people attacked for their race. (In Opposite Day World, attacking white people is not racist. People who are not white cannot, by the world’s definition, be racist. The children murdered at the Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, did nothing to deserve being run over, but the world’s True Believers will tell you with a straight face that the horror visited upon those children and their families is justified by centuries-old history and “systemic racism” or whatever.) I’ve opened myself up for the most vicious attacks in that last parenthetical, but I believe there are worse things than being a racist homophobic right-wing religious nut, namely, a coward. Much of what is going on isn’t because so many people believe obvious lies, but because people have been cowed into going along to get along.
Of course, most people are afraid because they don’t have God at their backs. They’ve thoroughly trained to regard Christians as weak and ineffectual when they’re not cruel “colonizers.” Besides, Science! So how does the Christian reply to all this?
The Christian replies with his life. He disdains the fashions and entertainments of this pathologically sick world, but quietly. You ask if I’ve seen the Latest Blockbuster Superhero Movie and I reflexively shrug and say I’m not into that stuff. Ask what I think about the Latest Media Outrage and I shrug and say I’ve got my own things to worry about. It’s important to know that the outrages in the media are designed to anger and eventually demoralize people with a firm moral center. Yes, be angry at the child-creepers exposing themselves to kindergarteners, but keep cool.
The thing that the children of this dying world hate the truly faithful to Christ for is their happiness, their serene self-control. That last part is something I have to work on, not just for my own sanity, but for those few out there who have questions in their mind that only Christ can answer. For those people will approach and ask why you’re not crying for the people in Ukraine or insisting people take the fifth booster shot or wearing a pin in solidarity with ______. Why are you not afraid of the latest pandemic? Why are you not angry?
I don’t consider myself a Calvinist but Scripture and lived experience has shown me that God does choose those He wants on His team. Sometimes He pulls an extreme Saul to Paul road-to-Damascus conversion to make His point but most of the time it’s small questions repeating themselves within an anxious soul. Noticing obvious things and speaking up about them has been a socially ostracizing offense for a while so when someone comes to you with those questions, remain calm, but be firm, fearless, and most of all, be cheerful. In an evil world that promotes fear and hatred, a cheerful disposition is the ultimate insult. Again, that you’re happy is what the people of the world will hate you most for. Once they find out you’re happy because you have a Father Who loves you, they will go out of their way to make you miserable, maybe even kill you.
Indulge the bastards. But most of all, indulge those fearful ones with the forbidden questions in their heads. If there’s a chance to save one more soul out of the billions suffering on this planet, we’ll take it. We’re cheerful because we’re certain of victory. We know we’re on the winning team of Life, not the globalist, media-controlled death cult. Let that cheer be the Light that draws others to Christ.
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