Atheism: Although much has been said about there being no such thing as an atheist, yet I think an argument can be made from the fact that man by nature is an atheist. Romans 1:19-21. He may indeed sense a mystery beyond himself; he may frame philosophies or deities to fill that void, but the God who truly is, the holy, sovereign, self-existent God, is hidden from him until revealed by the Spirit. Still, his ignorance does not erase the witness of God. The testimony of the Creator is written both in the world without and in the conscience within, leaving man without excuse. The heavens declare God’s glory without, and the conscience confirms God’s witness within. Romans 2:14-15. Every pulse of life affirms what revelation declares and what man would deny: GOD is!
The voice of creation surrounds us, and the voice of conscience echoes it within us. Yet man, loving darkness rather than light, suppresses both, closing his eyes to the heavens that declare God’s glory, and silencing the inward voice that convicts him of sin. Man’s estrangement from God springs not from ignorance but from enmity, not from blindness but from defiance. And only when grace gives sight does the heart finally confess what all creation has long proclaimed, “the LORD, he is the God; the LORD, he is the God.” I Kings 18:39.
Atheism is not an error of thought but a corruption of affection. God’s Word calls the atheist a fool, not for his ignorance, but for his alienation: “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.” It’s not the absence of knowledge, but the presence of hostility; a war of the heart against the God who formed it. “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” John 3:19-20.
Though man’s reasoning may clothe itself in eloquence and boast of enlightenment, the heart behind it beats with the same rebellion that began in Eden, the ambition to be as God. Genesis 3:5. It is the ancient sin of self-deification, now all repackaged. The first fig leaves have long withered, but man keeps stitching new ones, philosophy, science, culture, and religion, all to hide from the God he cannot escape. He no longer shelters among the trees but behind his own ideas, fashioning coverings out of intellect and progress, the worship of reason enthroned above revelation. It is no longer fig leaves sewn in haste to cover shame, but modern garments woven of humanism, pride, secularism, and religious self-worship. Yet nothing can silence the “voice” that still walks in the cool of the day, calling to man as from the beginning: “Where art thou?” Psalm 139:7-8. The lie never changes; it only changes its dialect. But grace alone unmasks it, for when Christ is revealed, man sees at last that the glory he sought to claim was never his to begin with, it belongs to the LORD alone.
There is, too, this staggering thought, that the ‘atheist’ draws life from the very God he declares nonexistent. Each inhale is borrowed mercy, each exhale a testimony to divine forbearance. He gives him the breath to blaspheme and the heartbeat to persist in unbelief. Can anything more clearly display the greatness of God’s longsuffering? Truly, God’s “ways are past finding out.” Romans 11:33. The blasphemer uses his borrowed life to resist the Giver, and to give utterance to his denial of Christ. Such patience discloses the immeasurable gulf between divine holiness and human sinfulness. Every moment of delay, every sunrise upon the unbelieving world, every heartbeat in the chest of one who despises Christ, is a testimony that God is longsuffering toward “vessels of wrath.” Romans 9:22-23. The sun still rises on the blasphemer’s field; the rain still falls upon the atheist’s roof. Each day of unbelief tolerated is another day of ‘grace’ displayed. And then, in the light of that, consider this even more staggering thought, that the Lord gives breath not only to those who hate Him, but to us, who, even after receiving mercy, have so often lived as though we had none. The same God who sustains the unbeliever’s rebellion sustains our ingratitude, our coldness, and our own forgetfulness. The grace that saved us through Christ still shelters us in Christ, for His love exceeds every failure and overcomes every sin. Romans 5:20.
Consider also, that no man, deep within, is entirely ignorant of the existence of God. Yet what Scripture shows us is that man suppresses this truth in unrighteousness. Romans 1:18. He may not be an atheist by confession, but he is one by condition. His lips may say “God exists,” yet his heart lives as though He did not. In this sense, atheism is not limited to those who deny God outright; it is the native posture of every unbelieving heart. It is not that man does not know God exists, it is that he does not want Him to exist. The carnal mind is enmity against God, and this enmity expresses itself not only in rebellion, but in indifference, in neglect, and in the proud attempt to live and reason apart from his declarative truth! It is here that the root of atheism and unbelief is fully exposed. Ephesians 4:18. God hath spoken, and man has replied with unbelief. To despise the authority of Scripture is to despise the authority of God, for His Word is not merely a record of truth, it is truth itself, breathed by the Spirit of the living God. When man sets his reason above revelation, he rejects the mind of Christ in favor of his own intellect. He will accept a god he can define, but not the God who defines him. Thus the Scriptures are ridiculed, revised, or ignored, not because they are unclear, but because they are unwelcomed. Man can tolerate religion, but not revelation; morality, but not submission. He will talk much about what he calls “faith,” but not absolute authority; and that rejection of divine rule is nothing less than atheism in its most deceptive form.
Atheism, then, is not merely the denial of God’s existence; it is the blindness of a soul cut off from divine revelation. I Corinthians 2:14. Even the idolater, who bows before wood and stone, is as much an atheist as the infidel philosopher, for both worship what their minds have conceived, not the living God whom the heart, left in darkness, cannot know. Only when Christ, the true Light, shines into the heart does man cease to be an atheist, when God Himself commands the light to shine out of darkness, and the mind beholds “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” I Corinthians 4:6. MPJ