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Last updated on
Oct. 5, 2004
Practical Atheism
Delivered September 19, 2004
by Pastor Werner De Jong
Text: Psalm 14
Main Idea: The basic problem of humanity is living as if God did not exist. Although all humans are guilty of this, God in his grace is willing to forgive and to restore. He is the refuge of all who acknowledge their weakness and trust in him.
Purpose: To challenge the listeners to examine their lives to see whether or not the existence of God makes a significant practical difference as to how they live. To encourage the listeners with the good news of God's grace, who is willing to restore and forgive people in spite of themselves.
Introduction: In our adult Sunday School class we are beginning to study different world religions. One of the things every religion has in common is an attempt to offer solutions to the problems of humanity. People of all religions are able to see the suffering of the world: poverty, hunger, disease, injustice, oppression, domestic violence and war. Sincere people of all faiths have always asked–what should be done about it? We all ask the same question, but very different answers are given. It all depends on what each religion sees as the root cause of humanity's problems. For example, in today's Sunday School class we began to study Hinduism. Hinduism teaches that the root cause of suffering is humanity's failure to realize that our individual identities are an illusion. Ultimately we are not individual beings, although on the surface it appears that way; rather, we are all one with the universe, we are extensions of Hinduism's idea of God, which is not a personal being but an impersonal force of existence. This impersonal force is ultimately the only thing that is real. When we delude ourselves and imagine that we are individuals, then we attach ourselves to our false identities, to our egos, which desire things for themselves. This false attachment to our illusory egos and their subsequent desires is the cause of humanity's problems. The solution is to be liberated from this delusion, and to realize that I am not an individual, but that I am an extension of the single impersonal force that is all that really is.
Today's text: The teaching of the Bible is far different than this. It teaches that there is a personal God who created everything, and who created humanity special, in God's image. It teaches that we are real people who have real identities. And it teaches that the cause of suffering in the world is sin, when as created individuals, and collectively, we choose to disobey the God who made us. Today's reading from Psalm 14 is very emphatic about this. It begins by offering its own unique definition of sin, or of the basic problem of humanity. Then it claims that every person stands guilty before God, and finally it closes by suggesting God's solution to the problem. So the Psalm invites us to examine some of life's biggest questions.
Practical Atheism: The first verse of Psalm 14 is one of the most memorable in the book of Psalms. It reads like this: "The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.'" According to the Psalm, this is the basic problem of humanity–to deny God. The Psalm goes on to say that when God is denied, life disintegrates and degenerates. For example, verse 4 talks about people consuming one another as casually as they consume bread. That is a terribly cold image of how callous and hardened the human heart can become when God is rejected. But it happens all the time. To point to a contemporary example, all we have to do is look at the terrible loss of life in the Beslan school hostage crisis in Russia, where hundred of people died, primarily schoolchildren.
Why do such things happen? Because the fool says in his heart, "There is no God." When the Creator of Life is denied, life loses its meaning and becomes devalued, and even human life becomes cheap. Now the key to understanding this Psalm is knowing what it means to deny God. Contrary to popular opinion, the Psalm is not speaking against atheism, at least not as we commonly understand it. When we speak of atheism today, we speak of the philosophical or intellectual denial of the existence of God. There are some people who deny God's existence, but this psalm is not addressing such atheists. It is unlikely that anyone in ancient Israel would have denied the existence of God. The issue rather is one that scholars call "practical atheism," that is, acting as if God did not exist. Psalm 14 is not concerned with whether or not people accept the existence of a Supreme Being, but with whether or not they acknowledge the reality of God by the way in which they live. When created people live as if they were not created beings, all manner of problems arise. When we choose to be a law unto ourselves, and when we don't want to have to submit to anyone else as our Lord, we end up ignoring God's design for life, and suffering follows.
A few years ago Waldemar Janzen was here teaching a seminar series on hospitality. He had a unique definition of sin which is relevant for this discussion. He said that sin is when we humans, who were created by God to live in this beautiful world, live not as if we were guests in God's creation, but owners of it. We ignore God, our Great Host, who offers us such warm hospitality in this world, and we live in God's world like a rude house guest who takes over the house and completely ignores the fact that the house has a host.
Living as if God did not exist is the major problem in our world. James Mays considers practical atheism to be even "more dangerous and insidious" than philosophical atheism, "because it is a reasoning that can be found, as Jesus insisted, in the hearts of the religious as well as the secular" (Psalms, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Preaching and Teaching, p. 82). Practical atheism was a widespread problem in the Psalmist's day, in Jesus' day, and continues to be so in our day. But the Psalm is clear that such practical atheists live foolishly. They are fools because they have made a mistake about reality. There is a Creator, he made us and he loves us, and he holds us accountable for how we live. This is the basic teaching which undergirds all Christian ethics.
All Are Corrupt: This teaching leaves us with a very challenging question: to what extent do we live as practical atheists? We certainly acknowledge God's existence, but to what extent does that confession influence the way in which we live? Do we consciously strive to please God? Is pleasing God the primary motivating force behind our actions? Do we fear God and act accordingly? Do we live as if we were accountable to our Creator? Do we seek God? Do we seek God's guidance and help in our every day affairs? Do we seek God's honour and glory as the ultimate aim of our lives? To the degree that we answer "no" to these questions, to that degree we are living as practical atheists, and declaring by our actions that God's existence means little or nothing for our everyday living.
Every one of us needs to beware of a tendency towards practical atheism. We may not like to think of ourselves in this light, as sinners who for all practical purposes place themselves above God. But if we continue to study our Psalm, we see that it continues with a stinging blow. For the psalmist announces that everyone without exception is guilty of playing the fool before God: "The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.' They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. All have turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one." Lest we think that this verse has nothing to do with us, for it was addressed to the ancient nation of Israel, remember that in the New Testament, in the book of Romans, the apostle Paul quotes this section of the Psalm word for word. He introduces his quote by saying, "We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are under sin" (Rom. 3:9b). Then he quotes Psalm 14, and concludes with these words, "There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:22a-23b).
As much as we don't like to think of ourselves as sinners, God tells us that we are. As the Psalm says, in vain God looks down from heaven to see if there are any who understand, any who truly seek him. And God's search is fruitless. This teaching reminds us of the story of Diogenes, who was a philosopher and citizen of ancient Athens. He used to walk through the city with a lantern in his hand in the middle of the day, to see if he could find even one good person. He searched every nook and cranny, he looked under every basket and porch, and he held his lantern up to the faces of the people he found and asked, "Are you an honest person?" But his search was fruitless. By his own standards, he could not find one good person. But of course it is God's standards that really matter. And the God who surveys the entire earth has said that no one is good. If we believe that God always tells the truth we need to redefine our definition of good, for most people tend to think of themselves as good people. And we often think of others as basically good people. But in God's eyes no one is good, for no one with perfect consistency does what is right and no one consistently seeks God and no one consistently puts God's interests above their own. Sometimes we may think that we're good, but then we need to ask ourselves some questions: Is it good to ignore one's Creator? Is it good ever to live as rude guests in God's world, ignoring the wishes of our gracious host? Is it good to disobey God even once? Is it good even occasionally to put our own interests above God, let alone repeatedly? Is it ever good, on any occasion, not to submit ourselves to our Creator? Is it good if we go through a day and scarcely give a thought to the one who sustains us? Is it good if we rarely engage in sustained prayer for others? We can fool ourselves into thinking we are good people, but in God's eyes we are not. God says that we are all self-centred, and in the end God's judgment is the only one that counts. And remember that on one occasion our Lord Jesus himself said, "No one is good but God alone" (Mt. 19:17).
In the setting of our Psalm, the people's lack of goodness expresses itself in the general corruption of society, when the poor are devoured like bread. If we think that our enlightened era has left depravity and selfishness behind, all we need to do is read the headlines–they speak of hunger, homelessness, political corruption, terrorism, war. Although our rugged individualism may tempt us to deny it, there is not one of us who remains uninvolved in these realities. We contribute to them both by our actions, as well as by our inaction. The real illusion people need to overcome in life is not the illusion, as Hinduism teaches, that people are individuals, but the illusion that we are all basically good individuals, and that we therefore don't need to fear God, and that we don't need to share the gospel with others, for they have nothing to fear, and that we can be apathetic about God's existence, and that God won't hold us accountable to his holy, righteous standards for human life. No, that is the great illusion, for "all have turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one." "There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." And as Paul makes clear in his teaching to the Romans, "the consequence of sin is death" (Rom. 3:23), it is eternal separation from the only one who is truly good, the God who created us all.
An Apparent Contradiction: Having said all that we have, careful readers of Psalm 14 will notice that the second half of the Psalm appears to contradict the first half. The first half teaches that no one is good; but in the second half, there is a stark contrast made between "evil-doers...who do not call on the Lord" (v. 4), and "the company of the righteous" (v. 5), "the poor" who find refuge in the Lord (v. 6). If no one is truly good, how can we explain this contrast? If God sees us all as sinners, how can there be two different companies of people, the wicked and the righteous? Where does this leave us now?
One solution is to suggest that the text is portraying a divided society in which the strong and elite are feeding upon the weak and the poor. In this case, when the first half of the psalm says that no one is good, it is simply referring corporately to the oppressive class. It is certainly true that Jewish society then was divided along those lines, and that may well have weighed on the psalmist's mind, but when verse 3 says that there is no one who does good, not even one, can we so easily dismiss this blanket judgment and say it is referring to someone else, to the oppressive class, and thus say "we are good after all," and deny that all of us are bear some responsibility for the problems of the world? That is an awfully dangerous thing to say, and it has often been said in the past few years by the present government in the United States, which in a very black and white way calls other people and nations "evil-doers," and sees itself as the good defender of freedom. That is a tempting way to look at life, but it is far too simple. There is selfishness in all of us; we all bear responsibility for the suffering in the world. The clincher to the Biblical position is the way in which Paul quotes the first half of the Psalm. As we have already seen, he is unequivocal in stating that everyone, Jew and Gentile alike, are sinners in the eyes of God.
Grace: But if we cannot resolve the apparent contradiction in the psalm in that manner, how else can we explain the existence of the two groups, the evildoers and the righteous? There is only one way to resolve the problem, which can be summarized in one word–grace. The biblical good news is that God gathers sinners and forms them into "the company of the righteous." All people are tainted in God's eyes, but that does not mean God does not love them. We may not be good, but God is good, and God's goodness is seen in his loving act of taking a people who had all turned away from him and of forming from them a righteous people. And there is a special place among this people of God for the poor--for those whose lack of power makes it easy for others to take advantage of them, for the widows and the orphans, for the hungry and the sick. Such people are much more likely to recognize their need and to call on God's name for help. As the psalmist wrote, "you evildoers frustrate the plans of the poor, but the Lord is their refuge" (v. 6).
In saying so our Psalm also hints at the great good news of the gospel which would only come to full light in Jesus Christ. All human beings live at times as if God did not exist, and the consequences of such sin is death, but those who believe in Jesus find a refuge in God's grace. God is the sure shelter of all who acknowledge their weakness and trust in him. In spite of our rebellion, God is willing to restore and to forgive. Our own insufficiency and sometimes destructive actions are not the final word! Thank God that there is a wonderful source of life beyond ourselves. And thank God that our hope doesn't rest on our ability to obey, but on God's willingness to forgive. For it is precisely for those who have come up short that God sent his Son. The supreme expression of God's goodness is the amazing grace and inexpressible love that reached out to us when the Creator of Life laid down his life for those whom he had created. And now, by God's grace, people who were once called "not good" are called righteous. Now when God surveys the world, he has a much happier time than Diogenes did in Athens, for he finds many holy people, people who have humbled themselves and acknowledged their need of his Son, and who have therefore been made holy by the life Jesus laid down for them.
God's grace is not only the solution to our dilemma as individuals. It is much more than that. Grace is the solution to all of the trouble and suffering in the world. The world's fate doesn't rest in human hands, but in the hands of the holy, loving God who created all that is. What humans cannot achieve God will achieve, and is even now achieving as he works through his people. In grace Jesus is building his kingdom through the church, and in grace Jesus will one day return. On that glorious day God has promised to fulfill the kingdom, to forever put an end to all suffering and sadness. It will be a day of great reversals. Those who live today as if God did not exist will be brought low. Those who refuse to admit their need of a Saviour to save them from their own selfish natures will get what they asked for–eternal life without God. Those who don't consider their Creator and think it no big deal to live as if they were not accountable to the one who made them will realize their terrible mistake when God comes to judge and to defend the cause of the righteous and the poor. But for their part, the humble poor will be fed, the naked will be clothed, and the redeemed of the Lord will sing for joy! Those who acknowledge the one who made them will be acknowledged by their Creator. Those who by faith diligently seek Jesus will one day be rewarded by the Judge of heaven and earth.
Conclusion: So when all is said and done, God's grace is the ultimate reality. There is no one who does good, not even one, but God in grace reaches out to us and to our world to extend forgiveness and healing. Let us therefore honour God by living in such a way that we acknowledge God's existence. Rather than living as practical atheists, may we live as fully committed followers of our Lord and Saviour. May joy and gladness be our hallmark as the people of God, for our Creator is going to restore the fortunes of all creation.