#877 A Dispirited Christian

Dr. craig’s response

At one level, Jason, your question is easy to answer. “If God has no demonstrable effect on reality, why should I believe in him?” As I wrote to Justin a few weeks ago:

Well, the kalām cosmological argument, the Leibnizian cosmological argument, the argument from the applicability of mathematics to physical phenomena, the teleological argument from the fine-tuning of the universe, the moral argument, the ontological argument, the array of historical evidences in support of Jesus of Nazareth’s radical personal claims and resurrection from the dead. If these arguments and evidences are any good, then Christianity is not simply a socially or culturally constructed narrative. (QoW #871 “Handling Dumb Objections”)

But it’s evident that your question is not just about a dumb objection. It’s an anguished cry for help. The arguments I just listed show that God does, indeed, have a profound and far-reaching effect on reality. In fact, there wouldn’t even be any reality were it not for Him! But never mind. The point of your question is that God is not real to you.

But God needn’t be real to you in order for you to have good reasons, even compelling reasons, to believe in God. I fully appreciate that such a purely intellectual faith is apt to be arid and unfulfilling, but it is more rational than no faith at all. You need to remind yourself that the reasons for belief are not emotional but rational.

Your problem, then, Jason, is not philosophical, but pastoral. In that case I am neither well-quipped nor positioned to advise you as a total stranger. Still, I’ll try to share a couple of thoughts.

When you say, “I have never once in my life seen any evidence of supernatural involvement in anything,” are you talking about miracles? If that is the case, then I’m not sure that I have either! But why is that a concern? Miracles by their very nature are extremely rare, and we have no reason whatsoever to expect that we should see such supernatural interventions.

More troublesome is your claim that “I have never once seen any evidence of my prayers having any effect on anything” and that “I have nothing I can point to as an example of God doing anything in my life.” Really? Have you never had an answer to prayer? Have you never prayed for guidance in decision-making or for wisdom or for a loving attitude? What are you counting as evidence? If by evidence, you mean something that cannot be explained naturally (e.g., getting well as a result of medicine), then you are back to looking for miracles, which you have no right to expect. Answered prayer is not an apologetic argument (for such arguments see the above quotation), but part of a life of faith. Having good reasons to believe in God and Jesus, we trust God to order our lives as we submit to Him, regardless of whether we see naturally inexplicable signs of His working.

If you really mean that you see no effect of your prayers (even naturally explicable effects) and that God has done literally nothing in your life (no conversion experience, no conviction of sins, no increase in sanctification and conformity to Christ’s character as you walk with him), then, Jason, I fear that you are in real trouble. Since I don’t know you from Adam, how can I be sure that you are not a merely nominal Christian who has not experienced the regeneration of the Holy Spirit? Only you can answer that question. So you need to “Examine yourself, to see whether you are in the faith” (II Corinthians 13.5). 

I earnestly encourage you to engage in various spiritual practices that help you to discern God’s working in your life, such as meaningful corporate worship, community with other believers, serving others, daily Bible study and prayer, involvement in evangelism (nothing makes God more real than seeing Him use you to lead another person to Christ!). I want to emphasize again that such practices are not evidence for the existence of God, but part of the life of faith in God, for whose reality we have good independent evidence.