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Psalm 14, 1
The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.”
They are corrupt, they have done abominable works,
there is none that doeth good.
If someone says they have no religion, it is not necessarily a stepping stone toward saying, “I have no God.” But it certainly puts God on the back burner.
And
then there is that middle ground between having no religion and
complete denial, the giant question mark called agnosticism which
neither affirms or denies God. Eugene
Brussell describes an agnostic this way, “One who doesn’t know whether
God exists, but is afraid to say so loudly in case God might hear him.”
A little boy had been taught that God had no place in his household. So
one day having heard his atheistic father recount once again that
everything in life was just mindless chance, the little boy looked up
and asked, “Does God know we don’t believe in him?”
Believers
do outnumber unbelievers; agnostics are still in the minority; and
those who say they have no religion are certainly not in the majority. But this sermon is not directed at statistics. It is directed toward those human beings who in the darkness of the darkest night have said, “There is no light. There is no God. And because I have said it, it is true.”
There is no loneliness worse than that which comes from believing, “I am nothing more than flesh and bone and blood and I renounce any affirmation that claims I have a soul.”
Indeed,
I remember the first time I spoke with a man who said that; and looking
into his eyes I saw no joy, no triumph, only resignation.
It is not that a denial of God destroys Him or that an acceptance of God replenishes Him. God is and always shall be, despite what we affirm or do not affirm. He is after all omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent and not subject to the whims of any man or woman.
So what is the advantage of believing in and worshiping and seeking a relationship with this Father God? It is the same as when we have a good relationship with our earthly fathers, or have a lack thereof. We humans were created for fellowship and we are diminished whenever we fail to establish such relationships.
I
know this; I am a far, far happier man than I would be if I did not
have a relationship with my heavenly Father. And I steadfastly believe
the same could be said for those nonbelievers, even though they
fervently disagree with me.
And
because the Devil is very busy fighting for as many souls as he can
get, I do try to fight him in word and deed in everyone of the days God
has given me. And
just in case you doubt the need to speak of our faith, and exhibit our
faith every chance we get, may I share with you the following…
Back in 1945, when the United Nations was just being organized, its leaders decided to omit any mention of God in their charter. The reason? To appease atheistic Communists. The atheists gained a giant foothold and they have not backed off.
Indeed, in Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, near the Russian-Iranian border, there actually is a University of Atheism. It offers a six-month course to further the spread of scientific-atheistic knowledge. And graduates are expected to continue “the struggle against religion.”
There is an aggressive mind set to atheism these days that no longer just tolerates believers. It believes that religion should be attacked, challenged and refuted at every opportunity. Many
atheists are no longer content just to speak against God, they are
organized to remove all reference to Him anywhere and anyway they can.
The following example is but one of many that I could spend the rest of the morning sharing.
Remember the prayer kindergarten kids once prayed in our public schools-
We thank you for the flowers so sweet;
We thank you for the food we eat;
We thank you for the birds that sing;
We thank you, God, for everything.
Well, now it hasn’t been prayed since 1963 and I doubt if will ever be prayed in a school again. They, the atheist, are very committed, and they continue to win, time and time again.
Not all atheists are aggressive. There are closet atheists just as there are closet Christians. However, there are enough who are articulate and denigrate God on a regular basis.
It wasn’t always like this…this new found pride in denying God. Indeed,
back in the early 1960’s, when the American Atheists Organization held
its first convention in Austin, Texas, only a dozen people attended—and
two of them ducked under the table when the press was admitted, and
stayed there until the reporters left.
By the 1975 annual convention, 960 registered and none of them hid. And
the convention’s “Atheist of the Year” award went to Lloyd Thoren of
Peterburg, Indiana, who operated a Dial-an-Atheist” service. Mrs. Madelyn Murray O’Hare, its organizer, said her organization at that time had a mailing list of 60,000.
And
then there is the University of North Carolina that broke a 130-year
old tradition on graduation day in 1972 by not handing out Bibles to
graduating seniors along with their diplomas. Bibles
had been handed out with the diplomas at Chapel Hill since 1842, but
that year the institution’s Trustees Executive Committee voted to
abolish the practice.
And again the unbelievers won.
You may have noticed I am calling attention to atheist victories years ago.
But
unless you have been hiding in a hole you know that atheists continue
to assault the fact that faith in God is part and parcel of how America
was founded.
Our
Founding Fathers unashamedly spoke of God in glowing terms and
incorporated that belief in the Almighty on coin and manuscript and
everywhere else it seemed appropriate. But as a nation today, we have gone to such extremes to appease this small minority that some things really don’t make sense.
It is illegal to read the Bible in the public schools of Illinois, but a law requires the state to provide a Bible for every convict! In other words, don’t worry, kids, if you can’t read the Bible in school, you’ll be able to when you get to prison!
A few pertinent questions:
What causes a person to turn away from God? Is it a fear of faith? Is it a demand to understand every fact, facet and thought of God? And if not able to understand, then declare a victory by saying, “I can’t prove God for myself therefore he doesn’t exist.”
Of the atheists I would ask: How got you to this point? Was it the loss of a loved one?
If the death of a loved one shouts there is not a loving God, what did the life of that loved one who did live shout?
How does that old cliché go? It is better to have loved and lost (however the loss took place) than never to have loved at all. If hate denies God’s goodness, what does love affirm?
If what you have lost has made you sad and bitter, what about what you had before the loss? Did that make you joyous and filled with thanksgiving?
I will never understand the mind of God or decisions He makes. Sometimes it’s a miracle. Sometimes it’s allowing an individual to make a mess of his or her life.
Or sometimes, a mess of a tragedy comes to call without being invited. But if I could understand God’s mind, then my mind would be equal to His and that would be like a little child trying to completely understand his earthly father.
I
like the observation Abraham Lincoln once made, “I can see how it might
be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist,
but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the heavens and say
there is no God."
Or put it this way… for every garden there is a gardener.
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OTHER BOOKS BY REV. WYRICK
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Poor Richard's Almanack for the 20th Century
Sixty Plus and Not Holding
Boundaries Unlimited
I Am
The ABC"s of Parenting and Grandparenting
Letters to America
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