Sharing Your Faith
A cross in the sky
What would it take to convince the world that God exists? Consider the hypothetical cross in the sky visible throughout the world simultaneously as described in Our Lady of Zeitoun. At 1200 Greenwich time a spectacular cross appeared in the heavens and was simultaneously viewed throughout the world from Greenland to the Antarctica. Day or night, cloud coverage or no, everyone could see the blazing cross. Fifteen minutes later it disappeared.
Would all of us now believe? Would all atheists, or even 97% of them, convert? 60%? Would Islam and other religions watch a mass emigration to Christianity? The answer, of course, is no. I think it would be safe to anticipate an upsurge in church attendance the following Sunday as the nonbelievers and marginal believers reconsidered their positions. Media would concentrate on the event – for a while. Soon talking heads would appear on television explaining the event as something which, although it can’t be explained right now, when you think about it and in view of the billions and billions of stars and galaxies it was perhaps inevitable that sooner or later such a coincidence would occur. Moreover, if this were really a message from God, the words ‘Jesus Saves’ would have been written above the cross.
The television program would then be interrupted by a news bulletin that a former prostitute has proof that 15 years earlier the President of the United States was her customer. The dominating news event would then shift to things earthier and more understandable. Adios God and hello beloved scandal. Memory and news coverage of the cross would diminish and recede until it was unofficially categorized as one more, among many, unexplained events such a UFO flying over Phoenix or an image of Jesus on a piece of toast.
Presenting the case for Jesus
Numerous surveys have shown a general migration away from Christianity to agnosticism, atheism, or “I don’t bother to think about God anymore.” Atheists generally argue that to convince them we need to prove God exists. Former Christians say they left the church because of a growing intellectual skepticism about the existence of God; everyone seems to need scientific or compelling evidence to convert or return to their faith and they say there is none.
Now, imagine you are a lawyer presenting the case for Jesus to a jury. Would you rather argue a complex stream of logic and abstractions based upon the writings of, say, St. Thomas Aquinas and other theologians and scholars (of course the other side has their theologians and scholars who have reached the opposite conclusions) or would you prefer to present empirical evidence in the form of unassailable and multiple corroborative witnesses and even video and other tangible evidence that by any objective standard show God revealing himself, and that this evidence compels us to conclude that the story of Christ is true?
It should be plain by now, after centuries of philosophical debate and syllogisms, that Christianity can never be proved or disproved by philosophical musings and recourse to traditional arguments. We are intellectually stumped because we are attempting to solve a problem that cannot be solved by logic or argument. We simply do not have the intellectual or language resources to grasp the mysteries of the universe. When it comes to the question of God, argumentation and apologetics only seem to reinforce one’s system of beliefs.
Sharing the faith
Stick to the facts as described in Help my Unbelief and throughout this website. Our objective should not be to win arguments but to open the door and allow Jesus to enter. Belief in the resurrected Jesus is not an intellectual affair. Logic and traditional apologetics don’t work, except as a starting point. Belief generally requires (1) a desire to believe, (2) an awareness of the events and evidence described in Evidence Independently Verified and (3) Prayer. This triage should produce a firm belief for anyone who has an open mind.
Jesus will call
A common perception in the USA is that faith should come instantly. “I was born again!” or I Was There When It Happened. Without doubting the reality of immediate conversions, I would expect that many come by their knowledge of God through a more gradual process. The shepherds on the hill on Christmas night received instant knowledge of the Savior. The magi from the east came by their knowledge through a longer and more tedious process. Even Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb didn’t recognize the Risen Jesus at first (John 20:11-18). It was only after Jesus called her name that she recognized the Lord. Maybe the same will be for you or the person to whom you are speaking. Jesus is always searching for his sheep; sometimes it appears he’s just waiting for them to look for him.
Deflecting the red herrings
Sometimes arguments to disprove Christianity are made which really are not arguments; they are nothing more than observations or puzzling reflections. One is the unlikelihood of and our absolute inability to understand who or what God is and his attributes, in particular his ascribed characteristics of omniscience, omnipotence, and free will. Another is the number of different belief systems (literally thousands of denominations or faith traditions) within Christianity, and the attacks by one group of Christians against others because they don’t believe exactly the same thing. These attacks distract and divert. These two issues are dealt with in Incomprehensible God and Christian Unity and Division.
The question that trumps all
God showered us with gifts to help us in our journey. He gave us the Bible, the Apostles, their successors, the universal church, lives to emulate, each other, appearances by the Blessed Virgin Mary, physical evidence, miraculous cures, and miraculous and loving events. He gave us his mother to be our mother. Her job – bring us closer to Jesus. Above all, he gave us prayer, including the Rosary (see Understanding the Rosary). He gave us all of this to show that he is available for all time to all people. These are powerful allies, but they are useless if we don’t call upon them.
If you reject Jesus after having considered the empirical evidence and the depth of his love revealed in his life and passion on the cross, please answer the following question:
What would you do if the sky turned black as midnight in the middle of the day and you knew that Jesus would return within 24 hours? If Jesus comes tomorrow, what then?
Don’t allow yourself or your loved ones to be left standing at the station when the gospel train pulls out. We have been given a ticket to ride – discarding it is an eternal mistake. Remember, we have nothing without God, and that’s what he’s been trying to tell us for uncounted thousands of years. Hollywood celebrities have everything, and yet they have nothing. Suicide, drugs, sexual abuse, and trouble are the natural consequence of turning to ourselves for pleasure, ego stroking, all the answers and to our fellow creatures for adulation. Instead of loving God and our neighbor we love ourselves and try always to fill the void created by a spiritual vacuum. That void can never be filled except by God and through his grace.
But first we have to ask. We should consider doing this. For inspiration, you may wish to listen to Here I am, Lord.
The hard-core nonbeliever
Here is a sad reality. We need to acknowledge the unfortunate fact that there are hard-core nonbelievers who would reject the Risen Christ even if Jesus had emerged from the tomb in front of them. Regardless of the evidence or even a cross in the sky they will not accept any conclusion except that Christianity was built upon a foundation of lies or legend.
If you’ve ever seen the “Dog Whisperer” on TV you know that Cesar Millan spends a lot of time training dogs that misbehave badly and even are just plain mean, while at the same time rehabilitating their owners. The end result after instruction by Cesar and sometimes months of implementation by the owners is a dog that now fits into the family and can be trusted (I wonder?!). The dog’s life has been saved and the sanity of the owners preserved. But think now about all of the loving dogs abandoned in animal shelters who are denied a home because of the time and energy diverted from them to the recalcitrant one. Perhaps Cesar should tell the owners that if his plan does not result in a loving and trusting dog/owner relationship within a specified period of time, the effort should be abandoned and the owners need to rescue another dog or dogs that’s trembling in an animal shelter. When it comes to proclaiming and defending the Gospel maybe we need to recognize that our individual resources are limited and curtail the amount of time spent with hard core skeptics so that we can bring those who are graced with a receptive mind to accept the Gospel.
There are those who do not want to accept the biblical Jesus. This may seem strange to you and me, but it’s a sad fact. Paraphrasing Jesus, “Even if one were to rise from the dead they would not believe.”
Footnotes and Attributions
The photograph of Jesus on the cross in the sky was retrieved from this YouTube posting.
Last modified October 10, 2019