Blinded by the light

Unbelievers often complain about a lack of evidence. But the quality or quantity of evidence is not the real issue.

Evidence is a necessary condition of a well-founded faith, but it’s not a sufficient condition.

Faith apart from evidence is blind, but evidence apart from faith is blinding.

For example, there’s a militant atheist out there whose motto is: “If Jesus returns, kill him again.”

No amount of evidence can overcome that pathological hatred, because the impediment to faith is not the absence of evidence, but the object of evidence.

If the evidence we have is evidence of an unwelcome truth, then the state of the evidence, however probative or apodictic, will not render an unwelcome truth any more appealing.

Indeed, the unbeliever will resent the evidence of an unwelcome truth. He would rather live in denial. The more evidence you throw his way, the more resentful he becomes.

There are unbelievers who major in moral objections to the Christian faith. They have their litany of complaints against the morality of Scripture.

They make a big deal about this to make themselves feel justified or even virtuous in their infidelity.

But assuming that we take their protestations seriously, then no amount of evidence, however compelling, for the existence of the Biblical God, would ever be sufficient to reconcile them to the Biblical God.

In their loathing of all things divine, there is no bridge which they have left untorched. They whine about hell, but they’d rather be miserable than pious.

They have convinced themselves, or so they say, that the God of Scripture is a hateful God. So even if they believed in him, they would despise him. If they had a private audience with Jesus, they’d kill him again.

If you live in the Sunbelt, it doesn’t take long for you to learn that cockroaches are largely nocturnal critters. They prefer to move in the dark.

Sinners are a lot like cockroaches. They dislike an abundance of light. Not so much because they’re afraid to see, but because they’re afraid to be seen.

Too much evidence is like too much light. You don’t like what you see, especially when it exposes your own position. It’s hard to hide in the light.

As the Apostle John put it long ago: “This is the judgment—that light has entered the world and men have preferred darkness to light because their deeds were evil. Everybody who does wrong hates the light and keeps away from it, for fear his deeds may be exposed” (Jn 3:19-20).