Always be Ready to Explain Your Faith

“Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.  Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence, keeping your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who defame your good conduct in Christ may themselves be put to shame.  For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that be the will of God, than for doing evil.”

This week’s 2^nd reading from St. Peter’s first letter is an exhortation to us to explain our faith when called to do so and to do it with grace, gentleness, and reverence.  We live in a world that is constantly challenging us to explain our beliefs, especially those the world deems outdated. 

As believers we are challenged on many fronts, ranging from simple belief in God, practicing and following a religion, holding to certain beliefs on the dignity and sanctity of life, marriage, helping the poor and down trodden, to public practice of our religion.  We cannot cover all of those here in the next 5 minutes so maybe looking at just one of those challenges will suffice.

Why don’t we start with the first one, the simple belief in God.  Most people do believe in some type of God, over 90% of the world’s population believes in some form of deity and or after life, be it heaven or some state of nirvana.  Yet, Atheists make a lot of noise, they make sure that they are heard, in some ways I do not blame them, everyone tries to defend their own position, that makes sense regardless if the position itself makes sense, at least they think it does.  It is our responsibility as believers to reasonably explain why we believe in God.  We do this as St. Peter said, “Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence, keeping your conscience clear.”   

Atheists usually look for some type of scientific proof for belief in anything, they need to prove that something exists or through the means of scientific experimentation and deduction.  A problem already presents itself, since the Atheist makes a claim, “God does not exist.”  If he does make that claim we can respond and ask, “Please show me proof that God does not exist.”  His way out of this will be to say the burden of proof rests on the believer.  But, why, as children will often ask.  If I make a decision to believe in something am I not obligated to use my reason and all the means available to me to come to my conclusion or do I just accept things blindly?  No, the Atheist if he or she adheres to their position they are obligated to provide “proof” for it.

Another approach is to focus on love.  St. Augustine does not provide the same “proofs” as St. Thomas Aquinas.  St. Augustine’s approach is based more on relation, especially love and the idea of God whereas St. Thomas follows Aristotle’s proofs which are based on reason; the ability to use logic to prove that there is a God.

We can ask the Atheist, “What is the difference between a rock on the ground to that of your child or your spouse or your parent or sibling?”  The reason I ask this question is because it is obvious, a parent loves their child, spouses love each other, etc.  However, if no God exists, the rock and the child, or spouse, or parent wind up in the same place, a non-existence, eventually since we may have to wait longer for the rock to dwindle away.  Regardless the rock and the person have the same end, which is nothing.  The Atheist may respond and say, “My child is an extension of me and the rock is not.”  That is true, but it still does not explain love.  The Atheist will respond that love is an emotion which is a byproduct of evolution, I always thought that is such a cold response.  I would argue that love is much more than just an emotion but something present in the very core of our being.  Why do police, fire fighters, and first responders run into burning buildings, burning forests, raging rivers and floods to save another human being, especially if there is no God?  What drives people to do this, to risk their very lives for strangers?  They are no more valuable than a rock on the ground, if there is no God.  But there is, for “God is love.”  That love is imprinted in each and every human being.  It does not come from just simple evolution or by chance, but there is intention there, an intention of the will, i.e. to jump into a raging river to save a drowning child.  It is love that makes that happen.  What caused St. Francis of Assisi to give everything away and live like the poorest of the poor, or St. Paul to give up his own life, or for Mother Teresa to pick up a dying person out of the gutters?  It was love, and not just chance or evolution.

All of us know someone who does not believe in God and like the Apostles before us we are to engage people in dialogue and show them the reasons for our hope and that our hope is not unreasonable, but rather quite reasonable.  The proof for God is just one such example of how to share with others our faith, there are many ways in which we can share what we believe.  In the end we must never shy away from doing so, but when we do that we do so with, “gentleness and reverence, keeping your conscience clear.”