Inter-Varsity Press

Contents

Introduction

1 Distant, uninterested and silent?
What kind of God doesn’t make himself clearer?

2 Outdated, out of touch and old-fashioned?
What kind of God is still relevant?

3 Rape, child abuse and Aids
What kind of God doesn’t prevent suffering?

4 Carbon footprints, global warming and climate change
What kind of God doesn’t care about his creation?

5 Crusades, inquisitions and car bombs
What kind of God allows violence in his name?

6 Hypocritical, divided and judgmental
What kind of God lets the church represent him?

7 Petty, intolerant and exclusive?
What kind of God allows only one way?

8 Repressive, restrictive and restraining?
What kind of God would limit my sexuality?

9 Condemning, unjust and arbitrary?
What kind of God sends sincere people to hell?

10 ‘Vicious, sadomasochistic and repellent’?
What kind of God would send his Son to die?

11 Awesome, loving and amazingly gracious
What kind of person would reject a God so good?

12 Over to you now

‘The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive,blood-thirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.’ So begins Richard Dawkins, in a public reading of his book The God Delusion. The listening crowd cheers and applauds.

‘The concept of an omniscient God has profoundly damaged humanity . . . The world might be a great deal better off without “him”.’ So says the blurb of another book on the subject. The accusations are not so much to do with whether God exists, but with what kind of God he is. Frank Zappa put it this way in his song ‘Dumb All Over’: ‘Hey, let’s get serious . . . God knows what he’s doin’ . . . He wrote this book here . . . An’ the book says: “He made us all to be just like Him,” so . . . If we’re dumb . . . Then God is dumb . . .(An’ maybe even a little ugly on the side).’

I spend a large part of my time on university campuses,explaining the message of the Bible and answering questions.What I have discovered over the last couple of years is that most of the questions I get asked are about God himself. The issue is not so much God’s existence as his character. How can God be good, when he authorizes war, allows suffering, represses sexuality, punishes his own Son and excludes people on the basis of their beliefs, condemning them to hell? What kind of God would be represented by hypocritical churches and fundamentalist movements? Why does he allow the environment to be ruined? How can such an old-fashioned concept have any relevance to me today?

Whoever we are, these questions are of massive importance.The question of God’s goodness is not just an intellectual one. It is also deeply emotional. The conclusion we come to will have a massive impact on every area of our life. If God is not good, then even if he does exist we wouldn’t want to trust him. However, if he is good, then it will change the way we think about not only him, but ourselves as well.

As a Christian, I find these questions deeply challenging. The kind of God portrayed by Dawkins is very different from the one I had come to believe and trust in as a young lad growing up in Leicester, England. I had come to the conclusion that God was good and that he loved not only the whole world, but also me personally. I was convinced that he was totally just and completely trustworthy. However, it didn’t take me long to realize that not everyone thought the same. As a teenager in an all boys’ school, I discovered there were plenty of people who found the concept of God both ridiculous and repressive. I had a choice to make. I could ignore the accusations and go on believing in spite of them. Alternatively, I could face up to the questions and think them through: were they valid?

In the end, I chose the latter. If Christianity is public truth and not just a personal belief, then it has to stand up to reasoned questioning and discussion. So I and the other two Christians in the school organized ‘Grill a Christian’: a question time during a lunch break, where people could come andask any questions they liked about God. To help us out, we asked a member of our local church to come and answer the questions.

In the build-up to this event we plastered the school with posters, and on the day it seemed everyone was talking about it. We arrived at the room to discover that it was already full. Mayhem was breaking out. Bananas and half-eaten sandwiches were flying across the classroom, while some pupils were smoking out of the back window. I was nervous. I couldn’t see how a farmer from a local church would be able to cope with the questions of 60 angry students.

Whether or not the next hour had any long-term impact on anyone else, I don’t know. However, the impression it made on me was deep. As I listened to the questions being answered, simply and sensitively, a realization dawned. What I had always believed to be true was true. It stood up to questioning.There were answers to the accusations and they sounded good.

Ever since that lunchtime event, I have sought to adopt the same attitude when I am being asked questions. I want to think them through honestly and seek to answer them as best I can from the Bible. I have tried to do just that in these pages. Obviously, the answers are not an exhaustive treatment of their subjects (so I hope they won’t be exhausting, either). However, I have added a list of further reading, in case you want to look into any of the questions in more detail.

Where to start . . .

It’s up to you to decide where you want to start reading thisbook. There may be one particular chapter that interests you especially. Well, feel free to start with that one; and then after that, whichever ones intrigue you most. (Occasionally some themes are repeated, as they are relevant to the subject being dealt with.) You don’t have to read every chapter, but it would be a good idea to make sure you read the last one before you finish. Of course, you could just read it all in the conventional way, starting at the beginning and finishing at the end. I don’t really mind how you do it; but please do read it!