Why would God allow suffering? If he is loving, how could he send people to hell? Why does Christianity have to be so exclusive? In The Reason for God, Keller looks at questions and objections he has frequently encountered over the years as a pastor in the heart of New York City. After responding to objections, he makes a case for the Christian faith and the reasons for God. 

We live in a fascinating, singular time in history, where both secular skepticism and traditional religious faith are both on the rise in our society. Until recently, sociologists predicted that rationality, science, and technology would ultimately supplant religious belief. Far from withering away, religious belief is flourishing and spreading all over the world and swiftly coming to the forefront of academic discussion. This unexpected dual-ascendancy of faith and doubt has led to a deeply divided culture because neither the skeptics nor the religious can readily identify common ground, a necessary component of meaningful discourse. Each side begins its critique from sets of assumptions that the other side rejects. This book is, in part, an attempt to establish a parcel of common ground between these groups. By fostering a deeper mutual understanding of opposing viewpoints, skeptics and believers can civilly and honestly discuss and debate rather than simply denouncing the other side.

Many object to the Christian message on the grounds that it is exclusive. The idea is that religions—particularly exclusive ones—inflame tensions and hinder world peace. From this viewpoint, the way to prevent discrimination, marginalization, and oppression, is to reject exclusive ideologies and embrace inclusive ones.

There are a few commonly proposed prescriptions for dealing with religious divisiveness: politically ban religion, culturally condemn it, or confine it to the private sphere. But these efforts to prevent the divisiveness of religion tend to be impractical and fail to achieve a unified, peaceable society. Sometimes such efforts can lead to new varieties of exclusivity. 

During the twentieth century, Nazi and Soviet regimes sought God-like sovereignty and violently repressed any religious loyalty that might subvert their own. The bans brought tremendous division. When a culture rejects a religion outright on grounds that the belief system is exclusive, that culture perpetuates the very exclusion it sought to eradicate in the first place. Cultural condemnation eventually fails because the double standard is unsustainable. Finally, the idea of constraining religious ideas to the private sphere is naive, as some sort of guiding cultural narrative and moral code—even if implicit—will inevitably emerge in the public realm, rendering the confinement of moral-spiritual ideas to the private sphere impossible.

A related objection concerns the question of fundamentalism. The common cultural assumption that fundamentalism is inherently dangerous fails to ask a subtler question of whether a religion’s “fundamental” beliefs make a difference. We must ask which fundamental set of beliefs will lead its followers to be humble, loving, and tolerant toward others. While religion can pose major challenges to peace, Christianity, in its truest and fundamental form, has brought forth these virtues in its devotees. In a seemingly tolerant, pluralistic Greco-Roman world, it was the early Christians who looked out for the marginalized and cared for believer and non-believer alike during the plagues; in short, they modeled the sacrificial love at the heart of the Christian message, of Christ dying on the cross for humanity.

While the church has not always exemplified these core beliefs, when it has stuck to its fundamentals, it has been a force for tremendous good and modeled tolerance and peacemaking. 

Another objection that people raise is the difficulty of reconciling a loving, all-powerful God and a world full of seemingly pointless suffering and evil. The hidden assumption here is that God and evil cannot coexist, and while neither theists nor most atheists consider this argument a defeater for God, the existence of evil remains a problem with which the believer and non-believer alike must grapple. Simply dismissing God does not make the problem of evil more manageable.

For many, the philosophical debates fail to address and mollify the emotional objections to a good God allowing evil and suffering. Christianity does not try to provide an answer to the why behind each and every instance of suffering, but it does provide tremendous resources for people, giving them courage and perseverance to face that suffering.

In Christ, God took on flesh and bone and lived among a hurting humankind. In doing so, he showed a willingness to identify with human frailty and even die a humiliating, painful death, enduring not just immense physical pain, but the spiritual pain of utter separation from the Father as he absorbed hell itself (that is, separation from God) for humanity’s sake.

It is a comfort to know that God is not distant or indifferent, but present with us and able to identify with us in our suffering; however, this does not alleviate the frustration or fear that our suffering might be in vain, without any kind of purpose. The Resurrection gives hope that we have not just the consolation of Christ’s presence, but restoration in Christ; that death and pain do not have the final word, but that all creation—including our individual experiences—will be made right and will be all the more beautiful for being made whole.

While many think of Christianity as the death knell to individuality, Christianity is actually the most adaptive and diverse religion on earth. The Bible is an Asian book, and Christianity’s early influences were Hebraic and Hellenistic. Unlike other religions, whose adherents still reside mainly in the land where the religion originated, Christianity has spread across the globe. And far from destroying local cultures, Christianity has taken on the distinctive cultural flavors of the regions where it has been embraced. In Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where the vast majority of Christians live, the expressions of faith are vastly different.

A life without constraints is impossible, in life generally and in the moral-spiritual realm in particular. A more realistic question would be, “What are the restrictions on freedom that are worth tolerating?” A violinist, for example, submits to an intense practice regimen for the sake of freely playing her instrument with ease and proficiency. She gives up “free time” and alternative activities for the sake of a better freedom. 

Love is the best constraint we can place on ourselves. By committing yourself to another, you limit yourself, in a sense, but, paradoxically, you can become freer through the independence you relinquish for the sake of the relationship.

When in love, you do all you can to please your lover and anticipate wishes. You want to do what the other person asks. This kind of selflessness isn’t stifling if it brings you pleasure, too. When we remember that Christ changed for us, taking on flesh and bone, laying down his freedom and ultimately his life for our sake, the act of giving up freedom in order to follow his wishes begins to make sense.

The notion of a God who judges people and sends them to hell is distasteful for many in Western cultures. Love seems irreconcilable with judgment so harsh. This objection is typically made on emotional grounds rather than philosophical grounds, but it is carries hidden assumptions that are worth unpacking.

In the past, the assumption about reality was, “We conform to reality as much as we can.” Modern intuitions have reversed this: “As much as we can, we make reality conform to us.” The modern optimism that we can change the physical order has bled into our understanding of the metaphysical order. Hell is one of those notions that our culture has sought to do away with.

But what is hell? The popular image is a fiery abyss of eternal pain and suffering where God sends those who fail to make good life choices. This, however, is a grossly inaccurate picture. Simply put, hell is one’s refusal to identify oneself with God—it is to pursue an identity founded on self rather than God. Such a person is consumed by his own selfishness and freely chooses it over God ad infinitum. As C.S. Lewis puts it, “There are two kinds of people—those who say, ‘Thy will be done’ to God and those to whom God in the end says, ‘Thy will be done.’”

Another common reason for rejecting Christianity is the belief that science has disproven it. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, for example, submitted in his book The God Delusion that any truly intelligent, scientifically-minded individual cannot also be religious. Are we truly forced to choose between science and religious faith?

The topic of miracles is a major point of disconnect for many. Science deals with observable phenomena in the physical world. A miracle cannot be tested according to empirical metrics, and so the possibility of miracles is dismissed out of hand. The same logic is used to disprove God’s existence. Philosopher Alvin Plantinga likens this dismissal to the drunk who insists on looking for his car keys under the streetlight because he can see things better there. It is fallacious to assume that because God is not clearly observable under the street lamp of science that he does not exist at all. 

Evolution is another hang-up for many. But it is possible for a Christian to believe in evolution without committing to philosophical naturalism, that is, the position that the physical universe is all that exists, and, therefore, the only valid explanations for phenomena are materialistic. Dawkins sees conflict as the only possible dynamic between faith and science, but dialogue, integration, and independence are other options. God could have, for example, used natural evolutionary processes to bring humanity into existence. This is one of numerous models for how science and faith can interact.

But doesn’t evolution disprove the Genesis account? We must be sure that we read the Bible not literally, but literarily. In other words, we must bear in mind the genre of the book and what the author was likely trying to communicate to his original audience. Genesis 1 is an artistic, poetic expression of the creation event. To read it as a science textbook would be a mistake.

While there do not exist any formal philosophical proofs for God’s existence, there are compelling arguments that God’s existence is plausible, which we can conceive of as clues. Each clue on its own is not a philosophical slam-dunk, but as more of these clues accumulate, they gain a critical mass worth pausing over. The plausibility of God’s existence could seem less outlandish than the open-minded skeptic might have initially anticipated. Here are a handful of clues that merit consideration.

1) The Big Bang Theory

Scientists now believe that the universe began to exist a finite time ago. This raises the question of how something could come from nothing. An Unmoved Mover, or Creator, fits nicely with this recent discovery.

2) The Fine-Tuning of the Universe

There are a multitude of conditions that need to be “just right” in order for life on earth to be possible and sustainable. Were one of these factors off—even slightly—then life would not exist. The chances of these conditions converging are statistically infinitesimal, making the delicate balance astounding. 

3) Nature’s Regularity

David Hume famously maintained that there is no certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow. It’s enough to keep a philosopher up at night! Science helps us to accurately predict natural phenomena, but scientists and philosophers still take it on faith that the physical order will continue to operate as it has in the past. The belief in a personal, all-powerful God who sustains the created order makes this a less befuddling prospect.

4) The Longing for Meaning, Love, and Beauty 

What do we make of the longing that we have for these things? It is hard to account for these longings on purely materialistic grounds. Reducing love and beauty to chemicals being released and neurons firing seem unsatisfactory. There is a hunger that we have that the choicest food, music, and sex fail to fully satisfy. With a longing so strong that this world fails to satisfy time and time again, perhaps we should be open to the possibility that there is more to reality than the physical realm.

One can develop a rational evasion for each of these clues, but taken together, they have substantial explanatory power. God’s existence makes sense of the natural order, its highly improbable viability, our longing for beauty, meaning, and love, and our capacity for rationality. Naturalist explanations, on the other hand, do not.

Here in New York, the common assumption is that morality is an individual preference and you should not impose your personal sense of morality on others. This admission opens up a philosophical can of worms because, while they want to maintain the individual as the measure of all things—including morality—most New Yorkers would also concede that others commit acts that are wrong. Who wants to say that the Nazi extermination of Jews should not have been stopped because they were simply operating according to their personal, cultural sense of morality? Barring Hitler, no one.

What this means is that most people really do believe that there is a moral standard that transcends individual preferences. This belief seems inescapable, and begs the question of why this pervasive belief exists.

The language of human rights is perhaps the closest we have come to a universal understanding of morality. But what legitimizes human rights? Is it the majority opinion? Is it natural law? If human rights are simply a construction by the majority or based on intuitions, they have no true basis because they are rooted in an opinion that is liable to change and reversal. Nietzsche himself understood that the absence of God meant no foundation for goodness or human rights.

God makes much better sense of our deep-seated conviction that napalming babies and selling women and children into slavery are, in fact, atrocious, independent of people’s actions or beliefs to the contrary. If the Cosmic Bench is empty and there’s no one who cares about what we do, then whether we are kind or cruel does not really matter.

An important distinction should be made between religion and the gospel. “Religion” refers to salvation through personal effort. The gospel refers to salvation not by personal morality but by grace.

Sin typically leads to two forms of pride and self-absorption: irreligious and religious; breaking the rules or trying to keep the rules. Neither path leads to God, and it is actually those who try to keep the rules who are in greater danger. Pharisees were the religious leaders of Jesus’ day who took great pride in their religious rites. This led to a smug self-righteousness and distaste for the rule breakers. Ultimately, self-righteousness is a focus on self and not on God. It is this unattractive disposition that Jesus was constantly denouncing and which, in our day, has left many people hurt and confused about the true heart of Christianity.

Grace is what makes the gospel distinct from all other religions. Salvation is not based on moral effort, but on what Christ has already done on the cross. With religion, the thought process is, “I obey in hopes of gaining acceptance.” The gospel reverses this: “I am accepted by Christ, therefore I obey.”

This also radically changes the motivation from fear (“I need to do x, y, and z to be accepted”) to gratitude for the gift of salvation. Your identity is not dependent on what you have done, but on the fact that, in Christ, you are loved by God, something that can never be taken away.

The truth of the Christian faith hinges on the reality of the resurrection. It is important to bear in mind that the burden of proof does not fall only on the believer, as is often assumed, but also on the skeptic to construct an alternative interpretation of historical events.

A common interpretation of events is that a primitive, gullible, first-century crowd was far more open to superstitious events like miracles, and so intense was the grief they experienced over Jesus’ death that it led to visions and dreams of Jesus. He was alive in their hearts, and his presence was guiding them. As the spirituality developed over time, more entrenched became the belief that it was not just a vision, but a physical, bodily resurrected Jesus. The gospel’s messages were created to spread this belief.

There are several problems with this account. It assumes that the two most crucial parts of the written accounts—the empty tomb and eyewitnesses—were made up. What, then, would make sense of Paul’s letters to the early churches, written less than two decades after the crucifixion, which speak of the resurrection as a concrete, historical event that the reader can investigate for him- or herself by speaking with any of the countless witnesses in Jerusalem who reported that Christ had appeared to them? This claim would have been easy enough to expose as a falsehood.

Furthermore, the accounts were written in a historical style, with an eye for detail and accuracy, including the embarrassing details. That the first eyewitnesses to the resurrection were women was something that would have detracted from—or even invalidated—the account’s validity in first-century Mediterranean eyes. So why include details like that in the account? Also, the fact that there is not just one stray account, but several, adds a corroborative power that historians would love to have for other historical events. Most historical events that we take for granted as true are founded on far less evidence than the evidence surrounding the resurrection.

If the earliest believers were trying to persuade and gain a following, they managed to ignore significant spiritual, cultural, and literary conventions that would have aided them in making their message seem credible.

These insights are just an introduction. If you're ready to dive deeper, pick up a copy of The Reason for God here. And since we get a commission on every sale, your purchase will help keep this newsletter free.

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