One of my favourite places in all of New York is the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). This temple to 19th-21st century art is extraordinary and exhibits works by many of my favourite artists, including Rothko and Picasso.
When we visited MOMA last December one of the more puzzling works we came across was titled A wall pitted by a single air rifle shot, by American conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner.
As you can see from the photograph above (albeit a poor one) the name of the piece extends across a large wall and underneath there is a seemingly blank canvas.
My second child Archie and I pondered, wondered, wandered, and examined this wall, searching for the mark left by a single air rifle shot, but we were unsuccessful. After a few minutes we moved on to the next work, one we could actually see!
Many people claim to have found the bullet hole in the wall, adding to my confusion as to why I couldn’t see it when I was standing right in front, with my nose only inches from the wall. More recently I looked at a photograph I took of the work and for a moment I finally discovered the indentation, but as I touched the computer screen the dust particle disappeared! I have since learned that I am not crazy and I am not blind; there is no pit in the wall, for there was never any air rifle pellet shot into the wall.
Perhaps A wall pitted by a single air rifle shot is a satirical and somewhat whimsical commentary about human delusion. Perhaps it is a combative statement designed to explode the stupidity, yet reality, of human naivety. Like the art, perhaps the meaning itself is absent.
This art work reminds me of one of the ways skeptics paint Christian theism – that Christians claim to believe in and know God, but upon close inspection there is nothing to know or believe in. There is no ‘God hole’ in the canvas of the universe.
The problem with the skeptic’s position is that there is a mark and it is not a tiny pellet-sized hole; instead there are multiple gigantic strokes across the canvas communicating to the onlooker that there is a God.
“There are multiple gigantic strokes across the canvas communicating to the onlooker that there is a God”
Here are four key imprints we ought to consider:
1. The universe itself
The entire canvas is a testimony to the existence and power of God. That a canvas exists at all tells us there is an artist responsible for it. As one steps back and takes in the universe, both at the molecular level and in its most expansive forms, it is nearly impossible to conclude that there is no God.
The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words,
whose voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world. (Ps 19:1-4)
We may be forgiven for thinking that many people, certainly intelligent people, believe with tremendous reasoning that there cannot be a God and that there does not need to be a God. However, this is not the case. In the world today, as throughout history, very few people are atheist. Many more are agnostic and not certain, but very few are truly atheist. Certainly many academics in science reject the notion of God, but it is also true that many are persuaded theists, including some of the notable scientific minds of history – Galileo Galilei, Blaise Pascal, Isaac Newton, Francis Collins, John Polkinghorne, and many more.
At Mentone Baptist Church we have members who lecture in Melbourne universities across several disciplines, and we have had church members who hold doctorates in various scientific fields including chemistry and biology. They each firmly believe that God not only exists, but that he is the God of the Bible.
Allan Sandage, whom Professor John Lennox calls the father of modern astronomy, has stated, “I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be an organising principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation of the miracle of existence – why there is something rather than nothing.”
In his book, The Reason for God, Tim Keller retells this analogy offered by philosopher Alvin Plantinga:
He imagines a man dealing himself twenty straight hands of four aces in the same game of poker. As his companions reach for their six-shooters the poker player says, “I know it looks suspicious! But what if there is an infinite succession of universes, so that for any possible distribution of poker hands, there is one universe in which this possibility is realised? We just happen to find ourselves in one where I always deal myself four aces without cheating!” This argument will have no effect on the other poker players. It is technically possible that the man just happened to deal himself twenty straight hands of four aces. Though you could not prove he had cheated, it would be unreasonable to conclude that he hadn’t.
2. Sense of the Divine
He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. (Eccl 3:11, NIV)
Atheism is not natural. Belief in God is natural. One may become convinced over time that there is no God, for intellectual reasons, experiential reasons, or emotional reasons. But we are not born that way, and most human beings do not live that way.
Painted in our inner being is a God-given reminder of a reality beyond ourselves, and we necessarily and properly long for it.
Painted in our inner being is a God-given reminder of a reality beyond ourselves, and we necessarily and properly long for it.
One of the common threads woven through every culture and every generation is the innate belief that there is a Divine Being who made the universe and who exists today. That there are many different religions and various views of God should not surprise us, for as the Bible explains,
…for what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. (Rom 1:18-23)
People know God exists, but we do not want to be answerable to him and so we constantly and creatively reinvent what God is like so he can conform to the whim of the day. Despite this, the innate belief that God is there remains.
3. The Bible
Christians believe God is transcendent (beyond space and time), which is the reason scientists do not discover God through telescopes and microscopes. We should be very surprised if we discovered God empirically. And yet, this same eternal God has revealed himself because he is a personal God and desires us to know him. God has revealed himself in a true and personal way in the Bible. Authors often use books to teach and speak and show themselves to people, and it is the same with God.
There is no room here to list all the reasons for accepting the Bible as the very words of the true and living God, but I would encourage every person to carefully read and consider this book, at least once in their life.
Here are three reasons why everyone should read the Bible at least once:
- Without doubt this book has influenced and changed more lives for good, and led to belief in God, than any other book in history. It remains the most widely read and studied book in the world today.
- Religious texts often discount the historical, but the Bible insists upon it. It calls for the reader to think and examine the evidence and reasons.
- The Bible offers an analysis of the human condition that is more honest and goes deeper and offers greater hope than anything else I have ever read.
Without doubt [the bible] has influenced and changed more lives …than any other book in history
4. Jesus Christ
It is very difficult to speak of Jesus Christ and not be tempted to use language stronger than evidence. Is he the proof for God?
There are very few scholars in secular universities who do not accept that Jesus was a real and historic figure. There are also very few scholars who consider the Gospel accounts of Jesus in the New Testament to be untrustworthy.
Dr John Dickson has now famously retorted, ‘I’ll eat a page from my Bible if Jesus didn’t exist.’ It is a meal that he is unlikely to ever endure, because the evidence for the historical Jesus is overwhelming.
Jesus Christ has left a larger footprint on the world than any other figure. Given the historic verifiability of the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life, the profundity of his teaching, the stature of his character, the plausibility of his miracles, and the unique nature of his death and resurrection from the dead, the most reasonable human response is to properly consider who he is.
It is ridiculous to claim that there is no reason for belief in God, when the world has been forever altered because of the man who claimed to be God.
To argue there is no God isn’t like studying A wall pitted by a single air rifle shot. It’s like looking at Van Gogh’s extraordinary and stunning Starry Night and concluding there is nothing to see, only an empty canvas. The only way to deduce there is no God is to block our ears, close our eyes, shut down our brains, defy our inclinations, and drain our hearts of our inmost hopes.
If God is there, and this God is found in the person of Jesus Christ, what does this mean for us? That is another question well worth exploring.
