As promised, I am back with my series evaluating arguments for God's existence. Last time, we looked at challenges related to "physical" evidence. For the most part, they are often questionable or incomplete. Both skeptics and believers alike don't fully consider what they are communicating. Logic is ignored, bias becomes irrelevant and philosophical arguments are missed. Let's face it - the reality is none of us are perfect in our natural thinking. It takes formal training and time to understand these things!
I also offered a humorous look at Tim Tebow's winning streak as an example of evidence for God. I had to get it out of my system while it was relevant! But for this post, I want to get more serious about the issue before I move onto philosophical proofs. Why? I was not fully honest before. I babbled for 4 pages and was afraid of my post being too long. I resorted to humor to keep attention and interest. But the truth is, there does remain an honest example of concrete evidence for God's existence. It is often so overlooked, it baffled me to discover it years ago. Can you think of what that example is? Having recently celebrated the birth of Christ, I can. It is heavily on my mind.
It is the one event in Christianity more important than Jesus' birth.
It is the Resurrection of Jesus!
Think about it - if it can be proven that a human being died and later came back to life - breathing, speaking and interacting with people - this violates what we otherwise know to be true about the physical body. That means some form of supernatural force must have been at work!
You see, there is more to the issue of physical evidence than what we know, how we know it or how much it's been thought out. Another criteria for physical evidence exists - whether or not it is accepted to begin with! This is where I was headed with my Tebow example. Skeptics often feel their scientific evidences are ignored, and they are. We need to evaluate them closer and understand them. Science and intelligence are not the enemy! But skeptics also ignore evidence that points to the Resurrection as a historical event. It violates laws of physics and the natural world (what we know to be true from experience). Why should we believe it happened?
There are many reasons skeptics reject the resurrection, most having to do with awful literature from when Bible criticism was hip and cool. Many of these arguments are addressed by Mike Licona in Resurrection of Jesus, and JPH in Defending the Ressurection. But aside from some of these silly ideas (such as "the disciples were hallucinating"), is there anything else we can discern that keeps skeptics unconvinced? Is it just their stubbornness?
I am inclined to think not. Rather, I think they are not given convincing reasons to believe. As Christians, we tend to preach taking things on "faith" (a wrong kind of "faith", mind you) so frequently, our belief appears hollow. We are only certain of God's existence from personal experience and that remains sufficient. We fail to consider the Resurrection, or our belief, any other way. Just like the skeptic, we ignore that there could be more dimension to our belief
Why do we do this? Is there something wrong with looking at Christianity from other perspectives? When skeptics reject belief in the resurrection, should we abandon it and just push our "faith"? The answer on both accounts is an emphatic NO. We should be convinced the resurrection actually happened. Paul claimed the resurrection of Jesus was the gospel (1 Cor. 15:1-4). It was evidenced by all the disciples (1 Cor. 15:5), over 500 believers (1 Cor. 15:6), James (Jesus' brother) (1 Cor. 15:7) and eventually Paul himself (1 Cor. 15:8).
This is a bold claim: 500 is a large number when cities like Jerusalem
were known to have populations of no more than 30,000-50,000. This was
also a close-knit society that silences rumors with no basis in popular opinion (like Wikipedia). Skeptics may reject the Bible's account of history (for reasons that would take many posts to discuss), but the Bible gives us plenty of practical reason to trust it.
We should also be concerned with why skeptics reject the Resurrection. The message they receive from us as Christians has a stronger effect on their belief than any scholar they may read later. Their personal experiences with Christians influence their impression. Shouldn't we then communicate confidence and boldness - especially regarding this most important of events? Nothing is more important than the Resurrection. Paul says without it, our faith is useless (1 Cor. 15:14), we are liars (1 Cor. 15:15), still in sin (1 Cor. 15:17). Dead believers are lost (1 Cor. 15:18) and we, Christ's body, are to be pitied (1 Cor. 15:19).
In short, without the Resurrection being grounded in historical reality, Christianity is founded on a theoretical event. Skeptics know this. Our belief becomes useful only for pop psychology and personal moral guidance. God becomes powerless over death and the natural world. Miracles become myths and Jesus becomes part of our imagination. Our Lord is reduced to little more than a great human being (as all religions claim). His message brings hope, but his victory is minimized and all of mankind loses out.
Without assurance of it's historical basis, the Resurrection becomes some kind of "spiritual event", instead of a reality that transforms our very existence and personhood. Our "faith" becomes irrelevant, and with it our "personal testimony". If we are to change the world with the news of Christ, shouldn't we begin to challenge that perception? Otherwise, how much power can Christ have in our world? How much can he work in someone's life who isn't convinced of his most powerful accomplishment?
I have obviously only touched the surface of the evidence
for believing in Jesus' resurrection. I mostly appealed to the Bible -
other sources are beyond the scope of my blogging. But hopefully you see
it is a valid place to start. If someone denies the Bible's accounts as
valid, the burden is theirs to prove why. Even a cursory glance at the
composition of and manuscript evidence for the Bible provides difficult
challenges to anyone who would just ignore it's witness to history.
In the end, we must reclaim Jesus' resurrection - not just as the central event of our faith, but as a real and historical event that changed the world forever. Skeptics have always been around - even prominent Romans doubted Jesus' resurrection. But eventually, most people became convinced. Why? Because witness to the event was too powerful to be denied! We have much more than "faith" to go on!
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