Here’s a podcast interview I did for a new article in the Christian Research Journal. My approach is to offer a definition of doubt according to which doubt is the experience of finding plausible what we take to be a potentially defeating claim. I offer a few ways to evaluate our doubts and suggest that investigating our doubts, when done properly, will lead us to truth and knowledge and a greater faith. In this sense, doubt should be seen as valuable.

The article is in the latest issue (39, Vol. 04) of the Journal. I would highly recommend that you consider subscribing to the journal. The content is terrific. It strikes the right balance between being accessible and yet challenging. For more information see here.

Here’s the question: Is Christianity possibly false?

My answer: Well yes, of course it’s possibly false.

What? How could I have given my life for something that I think is possibly false? Doesn’t admitting to this swing the door wide for doubting one’s faith? Isn’t this just philosophers stirring the paint– needlessly making trouble for those that already have a solid faith?

All really good questions!

In teaching Christian apologetics, this issue typically comes up. The question is what sort of status does the claim ‘Christianity is true’ enjoy? Students, in my context, are always a bit taken aback by saying that Christianity is possibly false.

Now before you make a call to my institution and insist that they relieve me of my employment, what you need to realize is that the only reason this sounds provocative is that the terms are not well defined. In my experience, once we clarify the terms, then my students (and you too) will say “of course, Christianity is possibly false in that sense.”

Okay, so what does it mean for a claim to be possibly false? Let’s first say what it does not mean. It does NOT mean that Christianity is actually false. And it does NOT mean that Christianity is probably false. It doesn’t even mean that we are 50/50 on whether it is false. All ‘being possible’ means, for our purposes, is that something is conceivable. A claim is possible insofar as one can imagine it or conceive of its being the case. It could be the craziest thing in the world that no sane person believes and yet it is still possible in this sense. So to ask whether something is possible is just to ask whether one can conceive (i.e., coherently hold in one’s mind and imagination) of the claim.

So what things are possible? It is going to be a range of claims far and wide. It’s possible that, by the time I retire, I’m a billionaire. In fact, it is possible that, by tomorrow, I’m a billionaire. This is incredibly unlikely, especially given my line of work, but it is clearly conceivable. I could befriend a billionaire benefactor who writes me into the will later today and moments later tragically dies. There you go, I’m a billionaire. Or I could stumble on inventing something that gets manufactured for every human on the planet. Or there could be a diamond mine under my house. Again, I’d be crazy to plan on or even hope for any of these things. However, they are conceivable, and thus they are possible.

Philosophers typically annoy people when we talk about possible thought experiments. We like to talk about how it is entirely possible that last night while you were sleeping you were captured by a mad scientist who removed your brain from your body, placed it into a vat of life sustaining chemicals and with electrodes is stimulating your brain to have the everyday sorts of experiences you are having right now. So, in this case, all of your experiences, from what you see, hear, taste, feel, etc., are not caused by the objects you take them to be caused by but are manufactured Matrix-like experience. Is this possible? Of course it is! Does any (sane) philosopher think that it is actually the case? There are none that I know.

We could keep going here but I hope you get the idea. So long as something is imaginable, so long as something is conceivable, then it is possible.

You might be wondering at this point what’s not possible, since it seems like the range of possible is fairly substantive? A claim is not possibly true when it is logically incoherent. It is not possible that one will find a married bachelor. A married bachelor is a logically incoherent notion. One could not possibly imagine or conceive of such a thing. One can imagine a bachelor getting married but the very moment he marries, he ceases to be a bachelor. It is not possible that God causally determined a human to act freely. God can (and does) causally determine a person to perform an action. However, by the definition of ‘causal determination,’ the action is not free. It would be incoherent to claim otherwise. 2+3 necessarily equals 5. To think otherwise is literally impossible. Or, more accurately, one should say that it is logically impossible. Given the concept of ‘2-ness’ and ‘3-ness’ and ‘addition,’ it follows that 2+3=5 and you couldn’t imagine otherwise in a logically coherent way.

Can you imagine a square circle? That is, can you imagine a circle that has the properties of a square? Try as you might, you can’t do it. Imagine a circle. And then take that image and start to put some 90 degree angles on it and then… but wait, whatever is now before your mind is no longer a circle. It’s likely just turned into a square.

So when we ask whether it is conceivable that Christianity is false, the answer seems to be clearly yes. In fact, this appears to be precisely what the Apostle Paul does in 1 Corinthians 15:16-19. He says:

For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.

Paul seems to be raising the mere possibility that the resurrection is false and concluding that if this were to be the case, then we, who have given our lives to its truth, are pitiable fools. Paul is not saying it is a likelihood that the resurrection did not occur. He’s not saying it is 50/50. And he’s not somehow doubting the truth of the resurrection claims since he’s just got done laying out a case for its truth grounded in eyewitness testimony. But he is admitting its conceivability—it’s possibility.

Should this cause us to doubt? The mere possibility should not cause us to doubt unless you are in the business of doubting all logical possibilities, including claims related to the Matrix, mad scientists and a plenitude of other conspiracy claims.

It is of course striking that Paul says here that Christianity wholly turns on whether Jesus rose from the dead. He predicates the Christian gospel on the truth of a historical event. This might make us feel a bit uneasy. However, I think the case for this historical event is incredible. I think it is so incredible that I have given my life to its truth and to the defense of Christianity. If Christianity wasn’t possibly false, then there would be no point to defending the truth. No one defends the truth of 2+3=5. No one gathers evidence to show that bachelors are unmarried. We just explain these things to our kids and eventually they “see” or grasp these truths. However, when it comes to an event like the resurrection evidence matters (again, this is presumably why Paul lays out a case for the resurrection in the first part of 1 Cor. 15).

So I am never merely trying to stir the paint or mess with someone’s faith when I bring this up. The attitude that I hope it motivates, however, is an attitude of intellectual humility. Realizing that one could be wrong about something helps one to take care in how one thinks about one’s Christian faith. This, in turn, should motivate us to be like Paul and defend the Gospel with good evidence.

I just returned from a conference for writers. This was my first foray into this world and community. To be honest, it didn’t change my life. There were a few sessions that were diamonds but there was a lot of rough I had to wade through. I’ve had a few conferences where I left changed. Most of the conferences that I go to are not of this sort. But are conferences worth it? Yes, they are but it is all about expectations.

Here’s my experience. I’m a philosopher and regularly attend and make presentations at academic philosophy conferences (yes, these do exist and there’s lots of them). I often speak at Apologetics conferences. I’ve even gotten to be the lead organizer for our annual Stand Firm conference for the last few years.

Here are some thoughts about reasonable expectations at conferences…

1. Conferences are often not well oiled machines. There is literally nothing (really, I’m serious, nothing) in my training that qualifies me to be an organizer of a moderately sized conference. I don’t know how to get the word out. I don’t know how much everything costs or what’s worth spending money on. I know what I like in a conference but I have no reasonable expectation that this would be good for general consumption. This seems to be all too common (by the way, it turns out that writers are no better than academics in putting on a conference). We value certain areas of expertise and we think “hey, we should put on a conference.” Do we know the first thing about putting on conferences? No, not really.

2. People don’t typically learn a whole lot at conferences. Let’s be honest, there’s not much new under the sun and, if you are already a practitioner in a specific area, then it’s unlikely that your world gets turned upside down. I think you can reasonably expect to sharpen some skills and pick up a few knowledge nuggets. However, 95-99% of what gets presented in these sorts of conferences is someone else’s work. Some of the biggest names in Christian Apologetics are folks who are not doing original work. I’m a novice in the world of writing but even I recognized ideas that were unoriginal to the speaker. All in all , there’s nothing wrong with this. In apologetics, we desperately need this sort of dissemination and often these are able to present the ideas with a new and fresh angle. But, let’s face it, you can almost always find a few dozen different presentations of the same material on youtube from the comfort of your own home.

So my advice: Don’t go to conferences expecting great organization and don’t go expecting to come away an expert. So why should folks go to conferences?

3. It’s really all about community. The reality is that conferences provide opportunities to connect in ways and with people that are very unlikely to happen otherwise. You can often get an audience with a major figure in the field that may result in a signed book and an individualized answered question or it may turn into an ongoing relationship. Both of which often make conference attendance completely worth the price of admission. There are also many minor figures in the field at conferences. These individuals are typically much more accessible and you really can establish a relationship. They are often open to getting lunch or would be willing to have an ongoing dialogue long after the conference is over. A handful of these minor figures will become major figures in the field and it’s great when you already have connection. Finally, you are certain to meet a few folks who are peers. These are conference goers who have similar interests. Great friendships are likely to emerge precisely here.

So go to conferences. But go with a mild expectation to learn a few things and a great expectation to connect with interesting people (oh and give your conference organizers a break if not everything goes perfectly well!).

Is it really okay to question God?

Many well-meaning Christian philosophers have pushed students to question their faith too hard without ever teaching students how to question well. This can result in the student walking away from his or her faith in confusion. I want us to ask the deep and difficult questions but I am definitely not here aiming at confusion. Rather I’m aiming at genuinely knowing God more fully through pursuing him intellectually.

Let’s look at 3 examples that illustrate how to appropriately pursue God with intellectual curiosity.

Childlike Faith

Let’s talk about children and childlike faith as, I think, children are a great example for us. It is important to note that the call to childlike faith is not to a call to childish faith. In fact, the writer of Hebrews challenges us to leave the childish thinking about God, the milk, and dine in maturity on solids (Heb. 6:1-2). But there is a quality of being childlike that Jesus pointed us to on more than one occasion in the gospels (e.g., Matt. 18:2). It seems to me that children have an almost undying trust and faith in the adults in their lives.

Now it’s true that children are very trusting but they are also VERY curious and many children beautifully strike the balance between trusting and being curious. They ask questions, questions and more questions. One of my children is especially given to curiosity. She asks questions about EVERYTHING! I sometimes have to cut her off, giving her the “okay sweetie, last question” because if I don’t I won’t make it to work on time. However, in all of these questions, I have never once felt that she didn’t trust me. In fact, she was coming to me with questions precisely because she trusts me and loves me. When children ask questions, their attitude is rarely skeptical or cynical (that comes in the teen years, or so I hear). Generally speaking, they are not trying to usurp or unseat the authority of the father or mother. They are just simply and intensely curious. My daughter may ask me how does a car make us go so fast because they are filled with wonder and awe at moving down the highway. Notice she didn’t even hesitate to get in the car with me and is not any way cynical about it. She is simply voicing a puzzle to someone who is to her an authority, an authority whom she loves.

Lovers

Another example is of those who are newly and wildly in love. It is possible for these lovers to gaze into each other’s eyes and simply study each other. In a fresh new love we want to know everything there is to know about our significant other. We want to know how she thinks and are intrigued by (what may seem to us outsiders to be) minor details of response. This is not because we don’t trust our new love. In fact, we probably trust him or her to a fault but have an insatiable curiosity. Those in love in such a manner would never be satisfied with say “she says it, I believe it, that settles it” but, out of a deep loving curiosity, we want to know why she says it.

Allow me a final illustration that I and many students have found useful. I routinely fly on airplanes and many of you reading this do too. We literally entrust our lives, indeed, place our faith in these airplanes quite regularly. However, I know very little about flight. Somehow a craft composed primarily of steel weighing in at around 1 million pounds can lift off the ground and ascend to 30,000 feet in the sky and get us to our destination. If we let this sink in, it is wondrously amazing. It is very natural for us to have a question (or thirty) out of curiosity for how this is even possible.

Questioning at 30,000 feet

But notice we can have these questions but we still make our flight to Chicago or LA. That is, we can maintain our questions and most likely have many of them go unanswered regarding how a million pounds of mostly steel can soar through the air 6 miles up, and all the while continue to trust the airplane. In fact, we can even have a friendly conversation about aeronautics while in the air if we had the good fortune to sit next someone who knows about these things. I may not understand a lick of it but we could finish our conversation and go on our merry way once the plane touches down. Notice we need not be skeptical and doubters to be curious about an object of wonder. We can question something in genuine curiosity while still placing my faith in the very object of my curiosity.

When it comes to God, the call here is to pursue him with curiosity simply as a matter of our love and devotion to him. We can maintain our faith in God while asking deep and difficult questions about our faith, where the questioning comes from a deep and abiding love for God and desire to know God more deeply.

Walking Away

But don’t we still risk folks walking away from the faith? Of course we do! There’s always this risk in making one’s faith their own. You could always try sheltering, brain washing and even threatening people to stay faithful. But besides the blatant moral problems with this approach, this risk, it seems to me, does not go away in the slightest and in fact is perhaps greater.

Christian Apologists, you should be aware of Mark Lanier.

Mark is an “Attorney, Author, Teacher, Pastor and Expert Story Teller.” We are so excited to host him at the Stand Firm Apologetics conference (4/15-16 at Southwestern Seminary in Fort worth, Texas) where he will be giving a plenary talk. Let me tell you just a bit about him.

As an attorney, Mark and his team have won a variety of landmark cases with verdicts or settlements netting hundreds of millions of dollars for their clients, with a recent verdict against a large Pharmaceutical company amounting to 9 billion dollars! So he’s sort of successful.

Despite this “worldly” success (whatever that amounts to), Mark is a vocal Christian and makes his mark (sorry!) in the local church and academics, as well as a speaker and writer.

One thing worth mentioning that makes a weekend trip to Houston worth it for me, is that Mark built a 5th century Byzantine chapel and theological library in his front yard. You mean you don’t have a 5th century Byzantine chapel in your front yard?! The Lanier Theological Library has over 70,000 volumes and, among other things, houses one the best CS Lewis collections in the US.

Mark also teaches a very popular Sunday School class (700+) at his church and has a love of and expertise in Biblical languages.

He fits our Stand Firm conference given that he is the author of Christianity on Trial.  This is a nicely done and provocative book, framed, as the title suggests, as Christianity’s trial. It begins with an opening statement, there is the defense, and finalizes with closing statement. The following is a presentation (at the Lanier Library, by the way) of the major contours of his project.

I’m always excited to see someone who is an expert in a particular field and bringing those particular talents to bear on issues of faith. Just think of the contributions of guys like Lee Strobel (journalist) and Jim Wallace (Cold Case detective) and many more still. They oftentimes get an audience philosophers will never get.

Check out Mark Lanier and tell me what you think:

…but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence. (1 Peter 3:15)

1 Peter 3:15 is often the “go to” passage for many apologetics textbooks and presentations but, unfortunately, the context of the passage is rarely highlighted. If we fail to consider the context, we risk missing what Peter is saying. The overall context of the passage is that Peter is describing how to do relationships Christianly. He begins chapter 3 talking directly to husbands and wives and then more broadly to how we are to relate to others. And then he says:

To sum up, all of you be harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kindhearted, and humble in spirit; not returning evil for evil or insult for insult, but giving a blessing instead (1 Peter 3:8-9)

As we see in this passage, it is thoroughly Christian to work for harmony and peace. However, the reality is that it is not always going to work. Sometimes folks will persecute us precisely for doing good and for being Christians. When this sort of suffering occurs, Peter tells us that we should not fear the intimidation and should not be troubled (v. 14). Instead, and here it comes, with Christ as Lord in our hearts, we are to be ready to make an intellectual defense (an apologia) of the hope, namely, the gospel, that is within us (v. 15).

So the context of this passage is that Peter is detailing how Christians should relate to others and live in the world. The interesting thing is that he links having Christ sanctified in our hearts with being ready to make a defense.

There are many things we see in this passage. I will mention four observations.

First observation The term Peter uses here, from which we get the name Apologetics, is apologia. This is a legal term that would bear at least a resemblance with what a contemporary lawyer does in a court room. The lawyer does not only respond to objections but will assert positive theses about his or her client and will defend these theses. In short, the lawyer provides reasons for thinking a certain thesis is true. Similarly, the disciple of Jesus Christ is called to be prepared to provide reasons for thinking that Christianity is true.

Second observation We should notice that Peter is not only addressing pastors and church leaders. He is characterizing Christians in general. He begins v. 8 with “all of you.” Being ready to defend is not optional. It is for every Christian everywhere, no matter one’s vocation. It is as relevant to the plumber as it is to the pastor.

Third observation Peter provides us with only one tone in which these sorts of conversation should take place. We should, when we have opportunity to provide someone the reasons for the hope within, do it with gentleness and respect. There will be times in which we can rhetorically win an argument but lose the battle of winning a soul. This seems to seriously miss the point, to say the least. When we genuinely respect someone as a person and a seeker and gently but firmly make a case for Christianity and gently but firmly point out problems with one’s view, then there will be a far greater impact.

Fourth Observation The thrust of the passage is to be prepared to do Apologetics as a result of our sanctified hearts. It is not here a command to go out and accost the nearest atheist. The call here is not so much to a ministry to others as much as an attitude of the heart and a condition of the mind, to be a certain kind of person first.

This is not to say that apologetics has nothing to do with ministering to others. We are all called to make disciples (Matt. 28:19-20) and this will often involve making a defense of various aspects of the faith. But we often look at apologetics as primarily a ministry to atheists and unbelievers. We may sign up for a study in Christian apologetics to know what to say to our colleague who is vocally hostile to any religious faith or the family member that gives everyone a problem at holidays. This is undoubtedly part of the apologetic enterprise but it seems to skip to answering the questions of others before we have genuinely asked the questions for ourselves. If someone asked you to give an account for the hope that is in you, what would you say in defense of this position? I find that many people in the church have not thought through what reasons they do in fact have. I want to suggest that apologetics should begin with working out this account for ourselves first as the proper source for doing outreach to others.

Please save the date for our 2016 Stand Firm Conference! The dates are 4/15-16 (starts Friday evening to Saturday afternoon) and will be held at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth Texas. Registration will be opened in the coming weeks.

Keynote speaker: JP Moreland

Other speakers include Mark Lanier (also giving a plenary talk) Justin Bass, Corey Miller, Steve Lee, Paul Gould, Ross Inman, Keith Loftin, Mike Keas and Travis Dickinson.

We are so excited to have JP come to campus. He has played an important role in my life as well as the rest of the philosophy/apologetics faculty.

Here’s his bio:

J. P. Moreland is Distinguished Professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University in La Mirada, California where he has taught for 25 years.He has authored, edited, or contributed papers to ninety-five books, including Does God Exist? (Prometheus), Universals (McGill-Queen’s), Consciousness and the Existence of God (Routledge) and Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (Blackwell).He has also published over 85 articles in journals such as Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, American Philosophical Quarterly, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, MetaPhilosophy, Philosophia Christi, Religious Studies, and Faith and Philosophy.He has also published 120 articles in magazines and newspapers.

Here is his talk on “Loving God with all your mind”

When we come to matters of Christian faith, it is not uncommon for folks to have a doubt from time to time. The typical prescription for these doubts seems to be very similar to the prescription for the common cold. Wait it out, treat symptoms as best you can, and then hope it goes away sooner than later. This may “work” for some. However, some of us are not so constituted to ignore what is a tension in our beliefs and worldview. Also, I want to assert the perhaps more controversial thesis that dealing with doubts is an extremely valuable process.

Doubting, it seems to me, can be very valuable. It may not be an altogether enjoyable experience, but our doubts can be the very things that lead us to truth and knowledge about a variety of matters. Where it is problematic is when one has good reasons for believing something and yet doubts creep in that cause him to lack confidence or waver in what is an otherwise well-grounded belief. I will offer some strategies for dealing with this sort of situation.

Here’s a doubt:

I used to think that the stock market was a good place to invest money, but now I doubt that my money is safe.

Notice here the expressed doubt is pitted against the belief that the stock market is in good shape. This sort of doubt looks most naturally understood as expressing or at least being rooted in an alternate belief. It is the belief that the stock market is not a safe investment that is in tension with the earlier belief.

This is really important for dealing with doubts because beliefs are only worth maintaining if we have good reasons for those beliefs. That is, evidence and rational justification matter for belief in a way that they don’t for, say, feelings or emotions. If we find that a belief of ours is utterly without reasons or has outweighing reasons against it, then it seems impossible to maintain this belief. Additionally, beliefs can be “worked on” by examining our reasons for holding the beliefs. We can evaluate beliefs by searching out whether there are reasons for taking them as true. This strengthens our support for the good ones and helps us avoid false ones. So, and this is crucial, if a doubt is an alternate belief, then we can address the doubt by examining or exploring the doubt. More specifically, we ought to explore and examine our reasons we have for the doubt understood as an alternate belief. If it turns out that we have more reason to doubt the doubt than our original belief, then we have responsibly addressed this challenge and our faith is stronger for it.

I want to offer an example of exploring a doubt but, before I do so, there are two preliminary points that I think are very helpful for those that struggle with this sort of thing.

The first is that just because one has a doubt about some Christian tenet, this does not automatically defeat one’s belief in that tenet, so long as one has justification for believing the Christian tenet. It is perfectly rational to maintain one’s Christian belief (again, so long as one has justification for the belief) in the face of some challenge or objection, even when one can’t seem to answer the objection. The point is that the challenge does not win by default. Do we have a problem? Well, yes, in a sense we do but the appropriate response is not to just give up otherwise justified belief

A second preliminary point is that there is (virtually) nothing new under the sun when it comes to objections and challenges. I have sometimes found students struggling deeply with a challenge that has been so thoroughly addressed that most non-Christians don’t even think it is a good argument! Again, it is sometimes that the student was hoping the doubt would go away and simply hasn’t looked into it. There is, these days, a remarkable amount of apologetics resources on offer in various formats and media (yes, there’s even an apologetics iPhone app!). When I first started out, it helped me tremendously just to know there were others out there further along in their journey that had looked at the most pressing objections to Christianity and found Christianity intellectually sound. Find solace in the fact that you are not alone in this.

So if you find yourself in a place of doubting, my encouragement to you is to hang on. Don’t allow the doubt to cause you to unnecessarily waver (James 1:6) but also don’t simply ignore the doubt. The strategy that I would recommend is that you, in a way, explore and examine the doubt.

Let’s suppose for the sake of argument (and because I think it is absolutely the case) that I have good reasons for thinking that Christianity is true. This belief would be, for me, a rationally justified belief. Let’s also suppose that I come to have a doubt about this belief. Let’s say I am thinking about the fact that I grew up in a Christian home, and I start to think that I have embraced the tradition without sufficient critical attention. If I had grown up in a non-Christian home or in a different part of the world, then I likely wouldn’t be a Christian. So I begin to think that my Christian beliefs that I find so plausible are only so since they are familiar. Let’s suppose that this line of thinking raises some doubts for my Christian beliefs.

Remember, the doubts we are thinking about are alternate beliefs. So I should first figure out what the belief is that I am entertaining in this case. It looks like the alternate belief is something like the following:

We unfairly privilege beliefs we grow up with making them hopelessly suspect.

Since beliefs need to be justified, we need to ask what reasons there are for holding this belief. I would concede that we sometimes privilege views that are familiar to us. However, I see no reason to think that when we are aware of this tendency that we cannot see our way through these biases.

John Hick once raised an objection similar to this in defense of religious pluralism (the view that all or most religious traditions are describing the same reality). He pointed out that many of us believe according to the view we were raised with. He said:

“Someone born to Buddhist parents in Thailand is very likely to be a Buddhist, someone born to Muslim parents in Saudi Arabia to be a Muslim, someone born to Christian parents in Mexico to be a Christian, and so on.” (An Interpretation of Religion)

This, he thought, made these religious beliefs somehow dubious. Hick thought that his pluralism was the remedy for the problem. In response to Hick, Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga responded by saying:

“For suppose we concede that if I had been born in Madagascar rather than Michigan, my beliefs would have been quite different. … But of course the same goes for the pluralist. Pluralism isn’t and hasn’t been widely popular in the world at large; if the pluralist had been born in Madagascar, or medieval France, he probably wouldn’t have been a pluralist. Does it follow that he shouldn’t be a pluralist?” (“Pluralism: A Defense of Religious Exclusivism”)

The problem is that there seems to be no good reason for privileging a belief that is different from what we grew up with either. Beliefs have to stand on their own merit, and to judge the belief on the basis of the belief’s origin is to plainly commit what is known as the genetic fallacy. So I think this doubt lacks justification, and when it is explored, the problems it raises are resolved. My takeaway, however, is to carefully examine the beliefs that I have grown up with and only hold them if I have good reason.

There have been times in my life where I have struggled with doubts about Christianity. But as I have explored these doubts as honestly and unbiasedly as I know how, I have to say that the truth of Christianity has come out justified time and time again. Those feelings of doubt become fewer and farther between and likewise our confidence and resolve can greatly increase.

It is sometimes asserted that God, if he exists, is not obvious. Some will say that they would happily believe in God if (and really only if) God made himself directly evident to them. The bold thought seems to be that it should be no problem for God, being all powerful, to make himself known in a way that would make belief in him more compelling. These thoughts can be formalized into the so-called problem of divine hiddenness.

1. If God existed, then God would make his existence more obvious.
2. God is not obvious.
3. Thus, God does not exist.

In addressing this challenge, I think we should agree with the unbeliever that, at least in a certain respect, God could be more obvious in revealing himself. I’m not sure about you but God has never gotten my attention via a burning bush, as he did with Moses, and Jesus never blinded my eyes to make his point that he is who he claimed to be, as he did Saul of Tarsus. God clearly has the ability to rend such events actual in all of our lives and if he did, he would be more obvious. Most people in the history of the world have not had their lives interrupted with an extraordinary and manifest appearance of God and thus God is, in this sense, veiled.

Now this is a limited concession since I also think that there is a real and obvious sense in which God makes his existence abundantly clear to all people. In fact, on my view, God has created the world replete with revelation of himself that can, as Paul says, be “clearly seen” in creation. It seems to me that there are a wide variety of phenomena that cannot be explained well (if at all) without positing the existence of God, a God that’s at least consistent with the Bible. These phenomena include the existence of the universe itself (rather than there being nothing at all), the pervasive design and fine tuning of the universe, the objectivity of morality, consciousness (rocks are not conscious, why should grey matter be?), the richness and the radical authenticity of Scripture, to name just a few.

But the complaint seems to be that God, since he could do more (which I am conceding), he should do more (which I will be taking to task presently). In wrestling with this challenge, it is important to ask whether God is obligated to make himself more obvious than he has. The only way that this is a formal problem here is if God’s being able to make himself more obvious morally obligates him to do so. In other words, just because God could do more, why think that he should do more? This is something that proponents of this problem rarely argue for. We might wish or prefer that God would be more obvious but nothing interesting follows logically from unmet wishes or desires.

Do we have reason to think that God lacks this obligation? So long as one thinks that humans are imperfect, I see no reason to think that God is obligated to make himself more obvious than he has. I find that most people readily admit that they are imperfect and sometimes downright immoral in their actions or at least have been at one time or another in their life. This is a characterization that fits all too well my own life. Despite your and my best effort, we all fall short in a variety of ways. Sometimes this is unintentional but, at other times, we have freely planned out our moral infelicities in painstaking detail. We’ve turned away, we’ve rebelled and we do so all the time. I don’t have space here to fully develop this point but if this is our moral condition and God is a holy judge, then it seems to me that God has no obligation to make himself known at all, much less obvious in any kind of extraordinary way.

Furthermore, I think it is a mistake to believe that some display from God would really make all the difference in the world for most people. I once heard a prominent atheist say on national television that he wouldn’t believe in God even if God himself spoke to him. He would instead check himself into a mental hospital. What this atheist got right is that experiences can be very powerful but the utility of an experience largely has to do with how we interpret the experience. Without the proper lens of interpretation, miraculous events are only marginally helpful for bringing about the sort of response for which God seeks.

Let’s be honest, we all want some special effects to accompany our dealings with God. The problem is that these elements often distract us from seeing our sin and even distract us from seeing God himself. The nation of Israel had witnessed many supernatural events throughout its history. Many times the miraculous events did not bring about the sort of life change one would expect (see, for example, the generation of Israelites who were a part of the exodus from Egypt but in the end failed to trust God, in Numbers 13-14). Jesus also provided many miracles but was often selective as to when he would perform them. There were many contexts where these supernatural events were not going to produce the sort of faith and humbleness of heart that Jesus sought. People had a tendency to seek the miracles themselves as if they were some sort of parlor trick, rather seeing these as pointing to a further reality, the reality of our need for God.

God could, to be sure, cow all of us into frightful submission. If this is what God wanted, then I think it is safe to say an all-powerful being could bring this result about and we should shudder at the possibility. But God is good. He is not interested in your frightful submission. He’s also not interested in your devotion only for what you get out of it (parlor tricks, eternal paradise, or whatever else). God is interested in a humble heart that responds in worship to his greatness and goodness (see Mary’s Magnificat in Luke 1:46-55 for a good example of this). If God is after this specific heart response, then it may be that God’s degree of obviousness is perfectly calibrated with the accomplishment of this sort of response.

One last thing, God is also interested in using us, as his instruments, in bringing about this heart response in others. God could announce the gospel through other means but he chooses, according to his plans and purposes, to use us in missionary and evangelistic efforts across the world. This is our commission. As we are brought to a place of worshipful response, we are to share the good news of this abundant life with the world. Again, God could communicate the gospel in more plainly supernatural ways but there is something about using us that best fits God’s purpose.

This of course does not solve all issues in connection with God’s so-called hiddenness. We should continue to wrestle. The hope here is that this would provide some direction to help guide our thinking on this matter.