The Gospel in the 21st Century

The definition of who we are boils down to what we believe we are. If we are materialists we believe that physical matter is the fundamental substance of nature. Mind and consciousness arise from material interaction and depend on physical processes. Materialism believes Christianity has become unnecessary. The resurrection of Christ, as Adam Francisco writes “may retain some private religious meaning, but educated people surely do not believe that a dead man actually walked out of a tomb  but Christianity as a world view has had its day”.

Charles Murray, a man formed in an academic culture regarded Christianity as something the intelligent people had out grown writes the book, Taking Religion Seriously. He admits that science had moved into the spotlight too quickly.

For example, a generation ago, the New Atheists were all the rage. Sam Harris in “The End of Faith” (2004) and Christopher Hitchens in various essays drew a direct link between religious belief and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Richard Dawkins’s international bestseller “The God Delusion” (2006) bluntly asserted that religion was responsible for most if not all of the world’s man-made evil. Daniel Dennett’s “Breaking the Spell” (2006) purported to explain religion in terms of evolutionary biology. Hitchens’s “God Is Not Great” (2007) made the same claim, its unsubtle subtitle being, “How Religion Poisons Everything”.

Since the momentary bout with atheistic scientists has all  but vanished from provability, Francisco writes that many of the assumptions inherited from the last century that science pushed God out of existence, are now under reconsideration.  “The universe actually had a beginning. Living cells contain staggering amount of information. Consciousness remains stubbornly resistant to electrochemical activity, while human beings continue to speak of good and evil, reason and myth, beauty and human dignity are realities rather than evolutionary preferences”.

Christianity does not end with the proposition that God exists. Christianity goes further. The universe is not self-explanatory.  than to say   has somehow rendered God unnecessary is increasingly difficult to maintain. Modern science Much had been written about “an intelligent designer”. And many of us fell for that. As Francisco writes, it isn’t just a proposition that God exists. “Christianity makes the astonishing claim that the one through whom the universe came into existence entered the universe it rules”.

We are not talking about and intelligent designer. God entered into the universe. God the word became flesh and dwells among us.  John 1:14