Everyone You Know Is a Believer – The Gospel Coalition

Of course, you know I could never share your faith. So wrote a friend of mine in a letter. She felt it was constitutionally impossible for her to believe. Many of my friends feel the same; perhaps yours are similar. They think theyre not people of faith and that Christians are.

Its a way of thinking thats as popular as it is preposterous. But really, it is wildly preposterous. Because Im a believer and Im a skepticit just depends what things Im being asked to believe (or doubt). At the same time my friend is a believer (about certain things), and shes a skeptic (about others). We are all living by faithall of us, all the timeso its really important to examine such beliefs.

Sometimes I classify our faith positions in terms of day-to-day beliefs and deepest beliefs. Day-to-day beliefs are ones we exercise all the time. Theyre our moral assumptions about what makes the world go round, what makes people tick, what makes society work. We rarely examine these beliefs and we almost never seek to prove or justify them; they are simply the air we breathe.

Im a believer and Im a skepticit just depends what things Im being asked to believe (or doubt).

These beliefs include things like people have intrinsic value, a society should be judged by the way it treats its weakest members, might does not make right, everyone should be free to make their own decisions in the world, the arc of history is long but it bends toward justice, and so on.

What youll notice about these day-to-day beliefs is how commonly theyre held. I believe them, my friends believe them, it seems as if most people in the modern world believe them. So really, were incredibly united by faith, wouldnt you say? Except that we havent discussed our deepest beliefsour metaphysical and religious views about the fundamental nature of reality. At that level a great chasm opens up.

For atheist Richard Dawkins, the universe appears at bottom [to contain] no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. For Moses, on the other hand, underneath are the everlasting arms (Deut. 33:27). So take your pickunderneath there are uncaring, brute forces or an eternal God with outstretched arms of love. Which is it? The clash of beliefs at the deepest level seems irreconcilable.

Given this immense difference, its completely understandable why my friend would consider herself incapable of my kind of faith. The gulf between blind, pitiless indifference and the everlasting arms of love appears unbridgeable. But maybe we need to reframe things. Instead of focusing on the chasm between those two deepest beliefs, why dont we focus on a different disparity? Because the really unbridgeable chasm is the one that exists within our atheist friends. Consider the following clashes:

My friends believe the second half of all these statements, passionately. As do I. And these dearest intuitions shape us at every levelindeed we stake our lives on such beliefs (as unprovable as they are). We are all persons of faith. But the real inconsistency to point out is not the inconsistency between the atheists deepest beliefs and the Christians. The starkest contradiction is among the atheists own beliefsthe gulf between their dearest intuitions and their deepest beliefs.

In my book The Air We Breathe, I take seven of our dearest intuitions and show how theyve become commonplace:

The Air We Breathe explores each of these values in the context of the Christian story, taking the reader from Genesis to George Floyd. We begin in the Old Testament, continue in the New, then chart the early churchs growth, then medieval Christendom, the scientific evolution, the abolition of the slave trade, and on through World War II and the civil rights movement into the present day.

The starkest contradiction is among the atheists own beliefsthe gulf between their dearest intuitions and their deepest beliefs.

At each juncture we see that the dearest intuitions we hold are not at all obvious, natural, or universal. These values are largely unknown to pre- and non-Christian cultures. Each of these beliefs has come specifically through the Jesus revolution (a.k.a. Christianity) and they make little sense apart from it.

When were tempted to focus on the clash between believers and unbelievers, we should think again. Everyone is a believer. And there can be surprising agreement on the dearest beliefs we holdsuch unprovable values have, through the Christian revolution, become the air we breathe. But we need to go further. As we press into those heartfelt beliefs, we see the most urgent clash to resolve is really the one that exists within the non-Christian. The beliefs our friends cherish (even while claiming to be unbelievers) are unfounded apart from Jesus Christ. He alone is a solid foundation. All other ground is sinking sand.

This article is adapted from Glen Scriveners The Air We Breathe (The Good Book Company, 2022) and was published in partnership with The Good Book Company.

See the original post here:

Everyone You Know Is a Believer - The Gospel Coalition