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Of Atheism and Fools, Part Four

10 Monday Apr 2017

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This is the conclusion of Nathaniel’s series on Practical Atheism from Psalm 14.  In case you missed them, here are Part One, Part Two, and Part Three. 

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“Christian Loses his Burden” Etching by William Strang found in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress

So can a christian even seek after God at all?  Are we pursuing the unattainable?  Well, yes and yes.  Part of seeking God is accepting what He says, even if it makes you feel bad about yourself.  Only when we admit the rottenness of our condition can we see our need for His salvation and begin to seek Him, to value what He values, and to hate what He hates.

A Call to Repentance

The late great DC Talk opened their hauntingly poignant song “What If I Stumble” on the double-platinum selling album Jesus Freak with this quote from the admittedly controversial Brennan Manning:

The single greatest cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, then walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyles. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.

It is worth pausing a moment to consider whether or not we live like those who believe.

Be careful with your cream pies.  We shouldn’t mock the philosophical atheist.  Of course, neither should we defend him.  Instead, we should beg him to join us in deep contrition and earnest repentance for our failure to acknowledge God in how we live our every moment.

We may be shocked by the revelation of the waywardness of our own hearts, but is God surprised by our frequent disregard of Him?  No, He’s used to it.

Before Paul used this Psalm in Romans 3 to illustrate mankind’s universal need for salvation in Christ, before David wrote Psalm 14, before the nation of Israel had driven their enemies out of the Promised Land, God told the Israelites through Moses that they were not being given the land because of their righteousness, but because of His covenant with their forefathers, and because of the exceeding wickedness of the natives of the land.  Check out Deuteronomy 9 for more details.  Here’s verse 6:

‘Know, then, it is not because of your righteousness that the LORD your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stubborn people.’

And while Moses communicated to the people all of God’s marvelous works, all of the promises of blessing, and all of the warnings of consequences should they become unfaithful to their covenant with God, the LORD tells Moses at the end of Deuteronomy that soon after he dies, they will forget their God.

He wasn’t surprised then.  He isn’t surprised now.  But He continues to graciously call us to repentance.

The Antidote to Practical Atheism:  Gospel-Grounded Godliness

As Christians, we are no more deserving of God’s grace than the oft-forgetful Israelites–or the most flagrant atheists around us.  At best, we are more aware of the depths of our own depravity and our desperate need for God in every moment of every day.  If we truly understand this, we will be ever more grateful for the means of salvation that He has provided through faith in Jesus Christ!

That salvation is really the key to all of this.  All I am suggesting is that we live our lives as Christians in the light of the same good news that brought us to God in the first place: that Jesus died for wretched sinners like me.

I am a wretched sinner, I have disregarded God—His will, His glory, and my need for Him—pursuing instead my own agenda.  I must repent of this disregard of God, this practical atheism.  I must trust in the Lord Jesus Christ: for forgiveness of my sins, and for direction and power to live my life according to His word and purpose.

And I must do this not only in the initial moment of my conversion, but in every moment thereafter, so that the Holy Spirit can make me more like Him until He takes me home to be with Him.

I can’t fix the philosophical atheists.  I can’t fix you.  But I can attend to me.  I am very cognizant of the tendencies in my own heart and life to both philosophical atheism and practical atheism.  I must repent.  I must continue to remind myself of the gospel of grace in Christ Jesus.  I must seek more and deeper awareness of the presence, work, and will of God in my life.

After condemning ungodliness, Jerry Bridges explains the goal of pursuing godliness in every aspect of our lives:

Our goal in the pursuit of godliness should be to grow more in our conscious awareness that every moment of our lives is lived in the presence of God; that we are responsible to Him and dependent on Him.  This goal would include a growing desire to please Him and glorify Him in the most ordinary activities of life.

And again:

Above all, pray that God will make you more conscious of the fact that you live every moment of every day under His all-seeing eye.  While you may not be mindful of Him, He is certainly aware of you and sees every deed you do, hears every word you say, and knows every thought you think (see Psalm 139:1-4).  Beyond that, He even searches out your motives.  Let us then seek to be as mindful of Him as He is of us.

May we be mindful of His presence, knowledge, power, wisdom, goodness, holiness, grace, truth, justice, mercy, faithfulness, and tender love for those who are His.  And may we repent when we lose sight of Him.

Dear Father!  How far short of Your glory I fall!  Please sober me under this Psalm that teaches that no one, especially not I, does good, or seeks You as You deserve. Please confront me with my sin, and help me to trust in You, in Your forgiveness of my sin, and in Your work to cleanse me from it.  Make me more like Jesus, in whose name I pray.  Amen

Of Atheism and Fools, Part Two

03 Monday Apr 2017

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In part one Nathaniel challenged us to see ourselves in the fool of Psalm 14 rather than merely pinning the title on the nearest atheist. 

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You can’t get out of this!

“But really!  This psalm can’t be about me!  I’m a Christian—I do believe in God!  I do seek after Him!  I do good things!”

I hear you, I hear you, and I am in no position to argue with you.  I get defensive when I read this Psalm too!  But as much as I wish it did, I don’t think the scriptures allow us to exempt ourselves from the condemnation of this passage.  Bear with me as I make the case that we all play the fool–not from my own opinion–but from the passage itself and the apostle Paul’s use of it in the epistle to the Romans.

The Internal Case

Psalm 14 is full of strong statements.  Not only is the charge laid out that the practical atheist is a fool, but along with that come moral judgments–and every one of these has a universal application.  Twice David says, “There is no one who does good,” and the second time, as if anticipating our objections, he continues emphatically, “not even one.”

Spurgeon explains:

But are there no special cases, are all men sinful? ‘Yes,’ says the Psalmist, in a manner not to be mistaken, ‘they are.’ He has put it positively, he repeats it negatively, ‘There is none that doeth good, no, not one.’ The Hebrew phrase is an utter denial concerning any mere man that he of himself doeth good. What can be more sweeping? This is the verdict of the all-seeing Jehovah, who cannot exaggerate or mistake. As if no hope of finding a solitary specimen of a good man among the unrenewed human family might be harboured for an instant. The Holy Spirit is not content with saying all and altogether, but adds the crushing threefold negative, ‘none, no, not one.’

And this judgment is not the opinion of David.  As we see in verse two, “The LORD [YHWH] has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men”–it is the result of an investigation conducted by Yahweh, God Himself!

“But what about the fact that the second half of the passage seems to be talking about the victims of the corrupt individuals called out in the first half?  Surely there is an ‘us versus them’ scenario in mind there!”

We certainly can’t avoid wrestling with the latter half of Psalm 14, especially the statement that the LORD is the refuge of the afflicted righteous in verses five and six.  How do we make sense of this?

In my efforts to exempt the “righteous” (and myself with them) from the sweeping condemnation in verse one,  I took a closer look at the investigation performed by God Himself in verses two and three.  Remembering that sometimes a biblical phrase is used that implies a certain group distinct from another group (e.g. “nations” in the scriptures always means Gentiles distinct from Jews), I thought to check in on the phrase “sons of men”. Could it be used to designate a certain subset of the human population, while excluding the rest of us who actually do seek after God?

It turns out the phrase “sons of men” is literally “sons of Adam” or “people/descendants of Adam.  Think about that for a minute…  It would be hard to come up with a more inclusive term for all of humanity.

No, you really can’t get out of this.

The External Case

If you are still inclined to exempt yourself from the condemnation of practical atheism in this psalm, consider the fact that there’s a remix: Psalm 53.  This Psalm is only slightly different from Psalm 14.  The Hebrew scribes were far too meticulous to have accidentally duplicated the psalm, so the only feasible explanation is that David rewrote the psalm with a few variations because it was such an important message as to deserve restatement.

And, as if that were not enough, the Apostle Paul makes the application abundantly clear in Romans chapter 3.  After spending the previous two chapters demonstrating that Gentles are guilty before God because they have violated the laws that He has written in their hearts, and Jews are guilty before God because they have violated the law of Moses, he uses Psalm 14 to tie these arguments together and prove that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”.  Take a look at Romans 3:9-12:

What then? Are we better than they? Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin;  as it is written, ‘There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God;  all have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one.’

So tell me, do you find yourself anywhere outside of the categories of Jew + Gentile?  Are you “better than they”?

No, you really can’t get out of this.

It would seem the fool’s hat fits all of us.  But since we’re all equal in this regard, does it really matter?  Just how big of a deal is this?  Check out Part Three for the answer.