Religion vs Humanity
Written by Chuck Missler
Religion is often blamed for the
miseries of the world. An "Imagine No Religion" billboard has just gone up in
St. Louis, and most people get the point even if they disagree with it. If it
were not for religion, after all, there would have been no Spanish Inquisition,
no Taliban, no World Trade Center bombing, no human sacrifices to various and
sundry gods. Religious wars would be conspicuously absent from world history and
nobody would follow cult leaders in sipping down toxic Kool-Aid. Richard
Dawkins' book The God Delusion spends the first page of the Preface going
through the evils that have been done in the name of religion.
Yet, while
atheists love to blame zealous believers for the world’s sufferings, they have
missed the true problem. Yes, much earthly evil has been done in the name of one
deity or another, but religion isn’t the real problem. The real problem is ….
human nature.
Religion is a convenient scapegoat for the atheist, who wants to justify himself
in a world of believers. The atheist has a serious problem in blaming the evils
of the world on religion, though. For every complaint against religious people,
there are plenty of complaints to be made against the faithless.
Have people been slaughtered in the name of religion? Certainly. Yet, the
Crusades are a drop in the bucket compared to the massive death toll caused by
atheistic regimes. The leaders of the French Revolution shoved God out of their
social justice crusade, and the result was a blood bath. Stalin is responsible
for the deaths of at least 20 million of his own people, and Mao Zedong's death
toll runs upwards of 40-70 million. From Pol Pot in Cambodia to the Kims in
North Korea, governments freed of "religion" – those utopias of atheistic
communism - have murdered millions upon millions of people. People of various
religions continue to fight all around the world, but, anti-God governments
streamline human death. Any time people get starry-eyed about imagining "no
religion too" they need a little history lesson.
The problem isn’t religion or even lack thereof. The problem is humanity. Human
beings have this propensity for violence and greed, for self aggrandizement and
selfish laziness. We struggle – and sometimes succeed - to overcome these
things, but they are there inside us. As Paul writes in Romans 7:21-24:
"I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I
delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my
members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to
the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall
deliver me from the body of this death?"
We all have that destructive sin nature inside us by birth. It’s there, and we
spend our lives fighting it. If we were naturally good, it would be easy to be
good and kind, generous and patient. If we were naturally good, it would be a
heavy effort to be rotten. But, we find that we are just the opposite, always
struggling to do what is right and constantly falling into that corruption that
most people want so desperately to avoid.
Even the atheist wants to avoid the corruption, as far as his own conscience
dictates. Atheists have consciences too, after all. Paul writes:
"For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things
contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:
Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also
bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one
another;" (Rom 2:14-15).
Atheists and humanists are quite capable of morality and moral decision making.
Yet, in rejecting the True God, atheists and humanists make themselves their own
gods, and because they have no greater yardstick to measure by, it often happens
that they reject one evil only to turn around and embrace something far worse.
The poor in France had good reason for anger against the spoiled aristocracy and
opulent church in the late 18th century. But, having only man’s reasoning to
depend on, and hearts full of vengeance, thousands of innocent people were
murdered. The atheist has nobody but himself and the local legal system to help
him do the good he wants to do, and that can lead easily into gross error.
Humankind has excellent thinking ability, but we can easily use that brainpower
to justify doing the evil we want to do rather than the good we should.
Yet, the atheist is not too far off when he looks at the religions of the world
and feels massively unimpressed. Religion is not the salvation of the world.
Religion can be useful in that it provides a framework in which to live, and
gives people rules of right and wrong outside themselves. Yet, religion itself
cannot change the human heart or free humans of their natural destructive
tendencies. In fact, some religious sects actually promote violence and
destruction.
Paul didn’t find the answer to his dilemma in
religion. He found the answer in
the person of Jesus Christ. He found his answer in the Spirit of God, working in
human lives to cleanse and free and make new. And the Spirit of God is real, and
He is powerful, and He continues to change millions of lives today. If more
atheists were truly aware of the reality of God's Spirit to heal and to
transform, Richard Dawkins would sell fewer books.
"This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the
flesh. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering,
gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.
And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and
lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit" (Gal
5:16,22-25).
Life on this planet is hard, and Jesus never promised us anything different. He
said we would have many troubles in this world, but he also said he had overcome
the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. If we are filled with the Spirit,
walking hand-in-hand with our King and Savior, His light is going to shine out
of us to the lost and the dying. And if, in the midst of our own struggles and
suffering, the reality of Christ is alive and well in us, anybody who is
watching will see the difference between the truth and the false religions that
have caused so much grief through the years. If people can see Christ in us,
they won't want to imagine a world without him.
"For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our
hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of
Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency
of the power may be of God, and not of us. We are troubled on every side, yet
not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not
forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; Always bearing about in the body the
dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in
our body" (2 Cor. 4:6-10).