This past semester I led a study called Thinking Like a Christian; it covered a wide variety of topics from Does Truth Exist, to Evolution, to World Religions. Throughout this study we kept coming back to the conclusion that not only is the Christian view of reality a very strong view, it is the only view which can adequately explain reality.
This should not surprise us because we believe that Christianity is the true truth upon which all reality rests upon. We do not merely claim that Christianity is true for us, but that it is universally true for all people at all times. This is a bold claim, but the Christian worldview can back it up.
Let’s say for a second that atheism, Darwinism, and relativism are true. If this is indeed reality, then all of sudden nothing has meaning or purpose anymore. To echo the words of Solomon in Ecclesiastes, without God everything under the sun is “meaningless, meaningless” and life is nothing more than “chasing after the wind,” that is chasing after what you cannot catch.
In the movie The Song the lead character sings a song called Chasing After Wind, where he says, “Why should I sing, if nothing has meaning?” The answer is, “There is no reason to sing.” Without there being a purpose to life, to the universe, the question of “Why?” becomes irrelevant because there is NO ULTIMATE MEANING.
If this universe came to be by time plus chance then your life and my life ultimately means nothing. This means there is no answer to the question we often ask, “Why?” This is where the beliefs of atheism eventually lead, everything in the end has no meaning and thus in the end everything is absurd and cannot be explained.
As Christians we should ask our atheist friends the questions “Why then do you care if we believe as we do? Why do you so vehemently rage against Christianity if in the end there is no meaning and no ultimate truth?” They, of course, cannot give us a satisfactory answer. If their view is correct then in the end a Christian and atheist arguing over the existence of God is no different than two rocks having a conversation. For atheists, in the end there is no real difference between the atoms found in a man and those found within a rock. Will they admit this? Probably not, but it is the logical conclusion of their faith system.
Thankfully as Christians we can consistently explain reality and we can answer “Why?” Colossians 1:16 is instructive to this end, “For by Him [Christ] all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through Him and for Him.”Everything in the universe exists through Christ and for Christ. He is the “Why” behind the existence of the universe.
Francis Schaeffer summed it up well, “There is only one philosophy, one religion, that fills this need in all the world’s thought, whether the East, the West, the ancient, the modern, the new, the old. Only one fills the philosophical need of existence, of being, and it is the Judeo-Christian God—not just the abstract concept, but rather that this God is really there. He really exists.” Christianity makes sense because it is true, it is reality. This means our God really does exist and that Christians are not just chasing after the wind.