The Embarrassing Claim of Christianity (An Excerpt from Coming Back To God by Patrick Morley)

It is best to call things plainly, to call them as they are. Many of the basic claims of Christianity are not only the most difficult to explain but also the most embarrassing. A Christian writer, however, has the duty to explain Christianity, not explain it away. There is one claim in particular that many Christians find terribly embarrassing: Christianity makes the remarkable claim to not only solve the problem of futility but also to cause it. Christianity teaches that the whole world has been subjected to futility (synonyms: frustration, vanity, and meaninglessness) by God. He has done this with the hope of liberating us from our bondage to decay and bringing us into the fold of God’s children. It is the Christian view that if man could find even a trace of meaning in any earthly pursuit apart from God, he would take it. In an earlier chapter we saw how Solomon pursued every conceivable earthly avenue to find meaning and happiness independent of God, and he came up empty.

Christianity teaches that God causes every system that seeks meaning and happiness apart from him to end in futility, while at the same time teaching that this futility is considered a “grace” or kindness from God. In other words, failing was for Solomon’s benefit. Christianity teaches that God makes us feel the weight of futility in every worldly pursuit—getting the big promotion, making the big bucks, living in the big house, or getting none of those things. He makes us so miserable through futility that we choose him of our own free will. He sovereignly removes any possibility of finding meaning except in him. We might put it this way: Futility is the chief tool by which God sovereignly draws us to himself of our own free will.

God will not force a man to revere him, but he will make it impossible for a man to be happy unless he does. Solomon said it this way: “I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him.” So even if we get exactly what we want, we will still not be happy apart from God. Apart from God, life has no meaning. That’s the deal. I am just reporting it; don’t shoot me.

Read the book Coming Back to God by Patrick Morley.