Last week I had the opportunity to call a man ‘a fool’.  I resisted the temptation.  He certainly was a fool – but calling him out as one was not exactly the way to win friends and influence people.  More importantly... I wanted him to keep the door ajar for possible further conversations in order perhaps to be instrumental in his conversion from a fool to a wise man.

So, what led to my highly judgmental evaluation of this man as a fool?  The man had recently been in hospital and he was telling me his woes after I enquired about his health.  I then said to him, “If the worst happens are you prepared to face your Maker?”  His reply would be that of thousands of others in today’s society: “John, there’s nothing there... when we die, then ‘Poof’ and there’s nothing.”

So, how does that make the man a fool?  I took the cue for my judgmental attitude from King David in the Bible.  David didn’t seem to think it was so bad to call out a fool.  Apparently David wasn’t too fussed about winning friends and influencing people.  In both Psalms 14 and 53 David begins with the words: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”  Actually, I had more reason for calling this man a fool than David did.  David was addressing a situation where someone merely thought that – he said it in his heart.  In my case it was being said aloud in the company of others.

So why does David call the atheist a fool?  I can think of at least four good reasons.

First, if there’s no God then there is no Creator and then creation is simply the result of time plus chance.  I must confess that I don’t have enough faith to believe in that.  It means I have to believe that once there was nothing and that this ‘nothing’ then created something.  At each step of nature’s evolution I have to believe that yet another evolutionary miracle took place.  I’m eternally grateful that I can simply believe there is a Creator God.  While that doesn’t remove all the mystery of creation – nor does it answer all my questions, yet it means that there is the Divine mind of a designer-God behind all that I see in the world around me.  The man I was talking to believed he ‘just happened’... the product of random chance.  I believe mankind was created in the image of God.  So who is the fool?

Secondly, I suspect David may have called the atheist a fool because if there is no God then there is no divine law-giver.  Anything to do with ethics and morality is up for grabs.  Okay, it’s possible to be an atheist with high moral standards.  But measured by whose standards?  Morality is then determined either by the consensus of society or it is imposed by some dictator.  Either we vote on whether killing people in gas chambers is moral or that is determined by a totalitarian state.  Psalm 14 shows that claiming that there is no God leads to moral breakdown.  I’m thankful that there is a God who has given us a moral framework – beginning with the Ten Commandments and that Jesus, the Son of God, explained its deeper meaning in the Sermon on the Mount.  So who is the fool?

Thirdly, if there is no God then ultimately I don’t know why I am here and my present existence is really quite meaningless.  Is it any wonder that with the growth of atheism in our society we have had huge increases in mental health issues and in suicide statistics?  If we crawled out of the swamp of some primordial soup and there is nothing after death then what’s the purpose for our existence.  Let’s all just eat, drink and be merry, because tomorrow we die.  However if there is a God who made me for fellowship with him and who will take me to be with Him when I die, then it makes sense to see that the goal of my life is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

Fourthly, I suspect that David called the atheist a fool because then there is nothing to hope for beyond this life.  If there is no God then there was no one to send Jesus Christ to pay the penalty for sin and to grant us the gift of eternal life.  Believing that is wisdom indeed.

John Westendorp