The atheist who needed God

God has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no-one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. Ecclesiastes 3:11

A well-known atheist recently wrote: “I don’t believe in God, but I miss him”. Another sceptic said: “The trouble with being an unbeliever is that you have no-one to thank when you’re happy”. Yet another said how grateful he was for the Church of England; even though he didn’t believe a word of its teaching, he loved the beauty of its ritual, its music and its buildings.

Interesting! Let’s give due credit to these writers for their honesty.

Their words suggest that deep down within them there is a hankering after a reality that can’t be found in material things. It’s as if they’re saying, “All right, God doesn’t exist – but he ought to! I need this non-existent God”.

Ecclesiastes is one of the Bible’s strangest books. Its key word is meaningless: “Meaningless! Meaningless!… Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless” declares its second verse. And yes indeed, there’s no doubt that the basic mood is heavy and gloomy – not a lot of gospel here!

But I think it’s rather wonderful that such a book is found in the Bible, for isn’t this exactly how many people feel about life? Indeed, aren’t there times when we who are believers are tempted to feel this way? But scattered throughout Ecclesiastes there are also little glimmerings of light which suggest the much fuller truth we find in the Bible as a whole. Chapter 3 verse 11 is one, especially the claim that God “has set eternity in the human heart”.

Is that what those honest atheists were unknowingly bearing witness to?

It’s a tantalising statement if ever there was one! What does it mean?

If nothing else it recognises that we human beings alone have a sense of the passing of time: as we look at the world and at our lives we see a past, a present and (we hope) a future.

Many years ago I saw a cartoon in a paper. There were two hippopotamuses (oh, all right, hippopotami if you insist) standing nostril-deep in the river. One was saying to the other, “I keep thinking it’s Thursday”. The joke, of course, is that such a thing is utterly ludicrous: animals just don’t see the world the way we do. (Your cat may be pretty smart, but I bet he doesn’t keep a diary.)

No, we human beings are unique.

Not only do we have a sense of the passing of time, we also have a sense that there is something beyond time – that our brief earthly existence is not all there is. There is an unseen, unknown world beyond the reach of our five senses. You can call it by various names: “eternity”, the “spiritual world”, the “supernatural”. But whatever you call it, it points to the ultimate reality which I suspect those writers I quoted were feeling after. It points to God.

God is outside time. Or perhaps it would be better to say, he encompasses all time within himself because he has no beginning, no middle and no end. Not so much outside time as around time: which means that the day of your birth is still “present tense” to him. As is the day of your death…

The Bible says that we are like God. We read in Genesis 1:26 that in the act of creation God said “Let us make mankind in our own image, after our likeness…”

Again, whole books could be written (and have been!) about exactly what those words mean. But one aspect is that we are creatures designed for relationships.

God himself exists in relationship in his inmost being: he is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And the Genesis story makes clear that he created man and woman in order to be in relationship with him.

This can only mean that any man or woman who isn’t in a relationship with God is not truly alive: he or she is missing out on the very reason they were created. Our problem is described in the Bible as “sin”: we have become rebels, disobedient to the God who loves us and in whom alone we can find true meaning.

The good news, though, is that God doesn’t stop loving us. The even better news is that he has done everything that needs to be done in order to bring us back to himself. Possibly the most famous verse in the Bible sums it up like this: “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

Yes, humble faith in Jesus is enough to bring us back to the God who alone is eternal. No wonder the word “gospel” means “good news”.

Here’s a prayer that I think those atheists I started with could honestly pray. Just possibly it might also be right for you…

Oh God, in truth I’m not even sure you exist at all. But if you do, I simply pray now that you would make yourself known to me. Amen.

Sincerely and humbly meant, that is a prayer that God has pledged himself to respond to.

Oh God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you. Amen. (Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, 354-430)