The main thrust of the Does God
Exist? ministry over the past five years has changed from
the pattern of its beginning in 1968. In the early years of this
work, our outreach was to college students and young professionals
who came to public presentations in college auditoriums, motel
meeting rooms, and rented public facilities. There were usually
eight to ten presentations, each followed by an open-ended
question/answer session that lasted for several hours. (One went
over nine hours!) These sessions involved a limited number of people
in one location, were labor intensive and costly, and always
involved a local congregation. I never really knew when I set up one
of these programs what kind of congregation I was going to be
working with. In the 40-plus years I have been involved in this
work, I have had involvement with every kind of congregation you can
imagine, and some you could not possibly imagine.
When the Internet became available,
we were led to realize that here was a better way to reach more
people. I will always be indebted to Lyle Lindholm, a young
telephone company engineer, whom God used to enable us to get
established on the web about fifteen years ago. We are now able to
present our material all over the world and we have videos of our
material available free on doesgodexist.tv
(1); our free correspondence course and bimonthly on
doesgodexist.org (2), along with a variety of our printed booklets;
discussion of pain and suffering on whypain.org (3); and now a new
children’s interactive website at scienceterrific.org
(4). We are 
also using QR (Quick
Response) codes in our publications to make it easier for those
using smart phones, tablet computers, and webcams to scan the codes
and go directly to our sites without having to type in the URL. You
see some of those codes here and we encourage you to try them out.
The most important part of all this to me personally is the fact
that I have a constant open-ended question/answer session going all
the time as people can e-mail me at jncdge@aol.com. Every day I have
the honor of talking with people all over the world about faith,
evidence, and the validity of the Christian system. Once I get
through the rants of atheists, the sales pitches, the scams, and the
solicitations, I have anywhere from 10 to 200 daily questions from
sincere, seeking people, most of whom have been through bad
religious experiences and want a secure relationship with God. In
our world of pluralism, religious hypocrisy, atheism, politics,
economic uncertainty, theological diversity, immorality, church
inconsistency, greed, and selfishness it is easy to understand why
so many are struggling. Here are some suggestions based on personal
experience that I hope will be helpful to you.
1.
REALIZE THIS IS BETWEEN YOU ALONE AND GOD.
In the 40-plus years of this ministry,
I have had a lot of opposition. The hostility of atheists I
expected, but the most destructive criticism has come from religious
people, and a majority of those claimed to be Christians. A great
Christian preacher told me when I started this work, “Remember,
John, you can’t outpuke a buzzard.” There are lots of religious
buzzards out there and you cannot allow these tools of Satan to stop
you. Jesus told his followers, “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do
not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them
under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces” (Matthew 7:6). When the apostles spoke
to people the approach was always personal. “Work out your own
salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians
2:12) does not mean to do it any way you want, but to use
God’s Word individually in building your faith. The Bereans were
praised because they “searched the scriptures daily” to see if it
was as Paul said (Acts 17:11).
The people around you — family, friends, associates, and
neighbors — cannot tell you what to believe and do. This ministry
has survived attacks and abuse by keeping our focus on Jesus Christ
and relying on his Word alone. I have found 2 Timothy 3:16 –17
to be true and workable in building my faith and my life’s work.
“All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking,
correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the servant of
God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
2. BUILD YOUR FAITH ON EVIDENCE.
I was raised in a home where belief in God was not accepted and was
even ridiculed on occasion. I came to faith through my studies in
science. I began my ministry in apologetics in 1968 when I realized
how many young people were being given destructive, inaccurate, or
evasive answers on important questions that I had wrestled with
myself during my journey out of atheism.
When atheists and religious critics attacked me, I had to reexamine
what I believed. Sometimes that meant going back to the Bible and
reexamining what I understood. Sometimes I had to go back to the
original language or look at the context and the culture more
carefully. Sometimes I had to study the scientific evidence more
carefully or look at a new discovery and learn what implications it
had for what I believed. The more I looked at the evidence, both
biblically and scientifically, the stronger my faith became. There
were beliefs I had to change and understandings that were different
from what I had originally believed; but these changes enlarged and
deepened my faith and that growth process continues to this day.
The web and the media are full of these challenges to faith. The
vast majority of these challenges are wild, ignorant speculations
that have no evidence to support them, are invented to deny faith,
cannot be falsified or tested in any way, or have much evidence
against them. It is important to deal with the evidence, not “what
if” or “perhaps” types of speculations. We need to keep up with new
discoveries and look at any new evidence. The lesson of history is
that when new discoveries are understood they inevitably support
faith in God and in the teachings of Jesus Christ.
3. LOOK AT THE ULTIMATE END OF A BELIEF.
Many years ago during a lectureship at a major university, I had a
young man who had asked many questions and posed many challenges,
stand up and say, “I can’t deny what you say, but I don’t want to
change how I am living so I reject belief in God.” Recently in an
e-mail exchange that same young man, who is now an active Christian,
told me what changed his mind. “Shortly after you were on campus my
live-in girlfriend left me for another guy. Four girlfriends later
and after a bad experience with drugs, I asked myself if this was
really the way I wanted to live and the kind of people I wanted to
be around? I realized it was time to make a change and Romans 6:4
convinced me I could become a new person and start over.”
When a person adopts the belief system of atheism, Islam, Hinduism,
etc., what is the effect upon him personally? That question needs to
be answered both in an eternal sense and in terms of how it effects
this life. In an eternal sense, atheism offers absolutely nothing
except an end to the pain of life. In a daily living sense, atheism
offers an intellectual guide to life but it is based on the
assumption you are the “fit” in “survival of the fittest.” Where
atheism has been tried, it has been a dismal failure.
Compare the teachings of Jesus in Matthew 5 – 7 with the
Koran, the Vedas, or the writings of Buddha or
Bahá'u'lláh. Ask yourself what the position of women
is in these systems, and how polygamy and its effect on a population
compares with the biblical view of marriage. Jesus said it well,
“Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them” (Matthew 7:20). If you do not like
where your life is going, the obvious answer is to change it.
4. BE CAREFUL WITH WHOM YOU ASSOCIATE.
“Bad company corrupts good character” (1 Corinthians 15:33) is a
truism. “No man is an island” is another truism. I can really relate
to the person who says “A walk in the woods brings me closer to God
than any preacher.” The fact is, however, that we are all social in
nature and living with trees and animals only lasts so long. We need
each other and we choose whom we 
spend time
with. One of Elvis Presley’s early hits was “Heartbreak Hotel”, and
there are a myriad of songs built around the idea that misery loves
company.
I do not want to be around people all the time who do not share my
values and views. The whole idea of church is made up of people who
are “called out” of this world and passages like 1 John 2:8 –11 talk about building a
life in which love for one another dominates. The biblical concept
of church is not an adherence to ritual or control or politics. The
picture of the church that we get in Acts
2:42 – 47 is people who ate together, shared with one another,
were joyous at being together, and took every opportunity to learn
and grow.
As an atheist, I had been indoctrinated with the notion that life
consisted of winning. Whatever it took to win in life was what you
did. Survival of the fittest meant always covering your back and
trusting no one. As I got older, that kind of existence became
increasingly lonely and hard to accept. You eventually realize you
can trust no one but yourself and sooner or later we all become less
fit, and life becomes unbearable. Being around people who have such
a negative viewpoint is a destructive experience, and reading
nothing but atheist websites will ultimately depress anyone.
I am not a Christian today because I inherited the Christian faith.
I have retained my sanity in the face of religious hypocrisy and
opposition by focusing on God and maintaining a relationship with
Jesus Christ. I would urge you to do the same.
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JanFeb12.