Someone recently asked what I consider to be the greatest challenge to the Christian religion. As someone who has been thinking about Christian theology, philosophy, and apologetics (with some vigor) for over 20 years now and I can honestly say that my perspective on this question has changed over time. Once upon a time I felt a certain dread, a kind of intellectual angst, as I wrestled with the big questions of God’s existence and the various truth claims of the biblical record. It seemed to me, in my younger years, that to be a Christian apologist was to be a kind of David against a Goliath. In particular, I felt that atheism was the main giant we had to worry about.
As I have said, my perspective has changed. I no longer see secularism as a giant threat looming over the Christian religion. What once seemed to me a Goliath now strikes me as more akin to a wannabe schoolyard bully who doesn’t realize he’s picking on someone four times his own size. Atheism, far from being an intellectual powerhouse that offers a real threat to Christianity, is actually among the most foolhardy and bankrupt philosophies that man has ever put forth. Oh there are some brilliant people out there who call themselves atheists, but their intelligence is in spite of their atheism, rather than a credit to it.
Atheists like to mock Christians for believing in a “magical sky daddy” while having the nerve to put forth the biggest “abra cadabra” in the history of ideas, claiming that all things began without a cause and for no reason at all. They are essentially claiming that the rabbit pulled itself out of the hat and the hat made itself. Almost any other competing religion or philosophy has more ground to stand on than secularists do, for they literally cut off their own legs and then claim to be king of the hill. Don’t hesitate to roll stumpy off the mountain, he’s not dangerous.
The numerous versions of cosmological, teleological, ontological, and moral arguments, not to mention the incredible evidence in support of the historical reliability of the Bible, establishing people, places, and events, etc., etc., are more than sufficient to demonstrate that God exists and Christianity is true beyond a reasonable doubt. When it comes to reasoned argumentation and evidence Christianity has it in droves. This present post is not being written to expound upon any of these lines of evidence (though I am quite willing to do so and have done so in other places). I only say all of the above in order to say something else: the most pressing objection to Christianity is not an intellectual one.
Classical rhetoric recognizes three modes of persuasion; logos (reason), pathos (emotion), and ethos (character). Anyone willing (or able) to operate purely on logos will become a Christian. However, as we all know, none of us run purely on the fuel of reason. We are moved far more often, and to a far greater degree than we would like to admit, by our emotions and we are swayed by powerful personalities.
No one who rejects Christianity does so because there is insufficient reason or evidence in its favor. People either reject Christianity due to their ignorance of that needful information or because they have a volitional or emotional objection. These kinds of objections can vary from things like “I don’t want Christianity to be true because then I would have to change my sexual behavior” to “I can’t believe in Christianity because someone connected with Christianity hurt me very deeply.” Or, again, “If God exists and is loving then why did my wife have to suffer and die from cancer?”
To those who belong in the camp of rejecting Christianity for volitional reasons (simply not believing because it would be inconvenient) I would simply say they should consider practicing the virtue of honesty, particularly with themselves. Living with a kind of intentional cognitive dissonance, living as though something isn’t true even though you know it really is, is not brave, it’s immaturity and cowardice. Those who are rejecting Christianity for volitional reasons are probably under the delusion that they are pursuing happiness. Such people believe that yielding to Christ would be like admitting defeat and entering into a P.O.W. camp where fun and pleasure are no more. Ironically, what they would actually find out is that to repent and follow Jesus would actually be to take the first real bounding leap towards happiness they’ve ever taken.
To those who have been deeply hurt by someone who claimed to represent Jesus or those who are suffering due to loss of a loved one or some debilitating sickness, I would gladly offer far more compassion. The truth of the matter is that existential suffering is the greatest challenge to the claims of Christianity. This is not because Christians have no intellectual explanation as to why there is suffering in this life, we do, but because suffering will entertain no argument at all.
Suffering cares nothing for logic and evidence.
The person who rejects God because of pain does so apart from reason and is insensible to its effects. They don’t care what the syllogism demonstrates nor where the evidence leads, they know only that they hurt and do not feel the love of the God whom we are telling them is love itself.
How then do we offer an apologetic response to someone who is simply hurting? How do we answer their suffering? The only answer I see is to share their sorrow, to love them with our words and deeds, and to offer them hope. We must “weep with those who weep.” The Biblical book of Job presents us with one of the greatest examples of suffering in the written word. Job lost his wealth and property, he lost his children, and he lost his health to incredible physical suffering. Those who know the story know that Job’s friends brought him but poor comfort as they tried to analyze and reason through his suffering. In fact, the only thing Job’s friends did right was what they did first. They sat quietly for an entire week with Job and commiserated.
Now when Job's three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him, they came each from his own place, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They made an appointment together to come to show him sympathy and comfort him. And when they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him. And they raised their voices and wept, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads toward heaven. And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.
-Job 2:11-13
What those who suffer need is not an argument but a visible word of love. They need people to be there for them, to share in their sorrow, to offer hope. They don’t need “logos” from us, they need “pathos” and “ethos.” If we are honest, this is where the Christian church often fails. If I am honest, this is where I often fail personally as well.
One way I fail is in not being sensitive to the fact that the emotional objections to the Christian faith are probably among the most common reasons. This is not always easy to detect, however, because many people mask their emotional objections with intellectual objections. Most people know that emotions aren’t “reasons” to reject something and so they use logical arguments as a smoke screen. That this is true becomes obvious when a person offers an argument, you dismantle it completely, and they just move on to some other line. There becomes an obviousness to the fact that they are not going to believe no matter what you say, or how well you take down their every objection and answer their every question.
Now, again, many times this mask covers a matter of will (volition), but often it covers an awful lot of pain as well. If you can rightly diagnose this pain in someone then you can offer a different kind of medicine than pure reason. What people in pain need is a friendly presence and some hope. The best delivery of hope is not an argument, it’s a story.
I once sat in a crowd and listened to a man named Gary Habermas (who is himself a noted Christian apologist and expert on the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus) as he talked about losing his wife to cancer. He described the long and drawn out suffering he witnessed as his wife withered away before his eyes. The pain she felt was incredible and the pain he endured walking beside her towards death was excruciating. He told us that for a time, after his wife had passed, he walked away from his faith. He still knew all the same facts about the resurrection. All of the evidence still lined up the same way it always had, still pointed to the same conclusions, but it didn’t matter at that moment. What mattered was that he hurt and he didn’t understand why God allowed that to happen.
What led Dr. Habermas back to a sound faith in Christ was not any argument, it was a true story. It was a story of God becoming man and entering into the suffering of his people, living among them, taking on their sorrows, dying in their place, and conquering the grave. It was just the good news of Jesus. The gospel story didn’t exactly answer his questions about why he and his wife had to go through such suffering, but it told him something even more important. It told him that God cares about his suffering and that he was willing to suffer with us as one of us so that one day all human suffering would be no more.
I love a good argument and I think it is important to be able to answer people’s questions. Proud and antagonistic detractors of Christianity should be properly rebuked and humbled. We should reinforce our Christian brethren with confidence and make sure they know the monster has no teeth. We should have good answers because Christianity isn’t worth believing if it isn’t true. But having answers to hard questions isn’t the main thing, it’s a means to a more important end. As apologists we answer questions to dismantle the walls people build around themselves in an attempt to keep God at bay. Ultimately what people need is not just answers, they need the love of Jesus Christ. That love is relayed to them in no other way than by Christ’s people, the church, patiently loving those who are hurting and telling them some good news. Suffering is the hardest objection to answer because it requires loving our neighbor as our self, and that has always been incredibly difficult.
It's funny... I no longer consider the "problem of evil and suffering" to be such a problem. After understanding Paul's argument in Romans 9 so much better, I can see that the Divine often allows evil to happen, for the sake of the good:
https://thevitalvillain.substack.com/p/vv32-by-the-skin-of-your-teeth-closer
Enjoyed the write up. There seems to be a very strong corollary between one’s reason, will and emotions. When one is off the other two seem to suffer as well.
I do think modern Christianity fails rather spectacularly when it comes to leveraging philosophical texts. A reading of Plato alongside the NT can be both extremely enjoyable as well as helpful when considering the allegorical passages.
As an aside, it seems where philosophy disappears so too does culture. The dark ages (a misnomer) of Europe had little to no philosophy, and the secularism of Asia and the radicalism of the ME seems congruent with the lag and loss of philosophy.