Chapter 65

Among the many difficulties that unbelievers and skeptics have about Christianity is the fact that (seemingly) childish imagery is used to describe spiritual facts. Without realizing that the application of rules governing decipherable literature must apply here, he may unknowingly blunder into thinking that imagery contributes nothing to the explanation of what is truly inexplicable. A skeptic is easily disgruntled and even disgusted when religious people speak of heaven in the sky, hell underground, devils with horns, golden streets, and a royal throne where the Son of God sits just to the right of His father. To some extent, this imagery seems like foolishness to the untrained man; but anyone who stops right there and quits is only playing with Christianity and allowing a child’s version of our religion to keep him from adult knowledge.

Because the impatient skeptic naturally approaches any talk of Christianity with the decision in advance that he intends to refute whatever we say, he sets his own pseudo-intellectual trap. He will seldom adequately fulfill the conditions of rules that govern valid reasoning and think that his dry and tedious analysis of our imagery protects him from having to decide if the claims of Christianity are either true or false. He thinks he can dismiss it all and mock everything we believe as some sort of measly figurative synthesis of imagination. But make no mistake, God is not mocked.

The modern skeptic is quick to dismiss the creation account in Genesis as mythology, yet seeks to supplant it with a form of Neo-Darwinist, self-existent, self-creative “Mother-Nature” whose ultimate purposes revolve around random mutation and natural selection being the driving forces of the development of higher, complex life (more on this later). The point he misses here is that evolution is itself, by definition, a creation myth. To illustrate with a simple analogy: We don’t need religion to tell us that there are flaws in a complicated narrative about how pool balls on a table moving around in obedience to the laws of motion, gravity, and friction can also explain where the pool table came from in the first place or who is using the pool stick to put the balls in motion. Mere common sense accompanied with valid reasoning will tell you that you cannot use descriptive rules of observable nature to explain the origin of the entire natural world itself, regardless of how intricate or complicated the theories or arguments may be. Whatever its value may be as an argument, it may be stated at once that this view of a “mother-nature” is quite wrong about facts.

That being said, it should at once seem obvious that a certain degree of mental and literary imagery (including metaphors) are perfectly valid things humans have to use at their disposal to explain that which is beyond our conceptions. For, even the skeptic who wants to believe in a non-Christian, indistinct “spiritual force” has not yet noticed that the use of the word “force” has itself opened the door to all sorts of images about winds, electrical forces, and so on. Anytime we humans try to form some kind of conception of that which is real, we will attach some form of imagery by default, which is just our nature. No matter how hard you try to avoid this, here it is: God is unavoidable. God requires you to make a choice. You are either with Him or against Him, and no middle ground is allowed.