The Everyday Club

1/26/12 Alfred, about 24

 Can an atheist believe in Jesus?

At the IIT student center we met Alfred, a graduate student from France who agreed to talk about his beliefs. Alfred's grandparents were Catholic and he had nominal involvement in their church, but he decided early that God doesn't exist because of all the evil in the world and, as Alfred put it, "God never did anything good for me".

We talked for awhile about reasons for belief in God, and then about the implications if God does, indeed, exist. Does all the evil in the world indicate that God doesn't exist because, if He did, why would He allow it to continue?

Much of our conversation focused on the sources of evil in the world and in our own hearts. Alfred said several times that he gets disgusted not just by the bad behavior of others but what he sees in himself. He could see that he can't even keep his own standards which, according to the Bible, comes from his God-given conscience. He agreed that though he knows better, his selfish desires often keep him from doing the right thing.

Alfred was beginning to see the connection between our own immoral choices and the problems in the world around us that he had blamed God for, and he was slowly taking responsibility for his sin. There was so much more I wanted to tell him - especially about Jesus - but I didn't want to mistake intellectual progress about biblical truths for spiritual progress such as conviction and repentance of sin.

Should I have gone ahead to explain the Gospel and tell more about Jesus? As far as I knew, he still considered himself to be an atheist. So how could it help to describe a right relationship with God through Christ if he didn't believe in God in the first place? Can one believe in the true "Jesus" if they don't even believe in God?

I believe the wisdom of scripture knows the atheist mind better than they know themselves, so down at the deepest levels no one is truly convinced that God doesn't exist. Everyone believes there is some sort of higher power to whom we are morally accountable. The excuses and rationalizing that comes with breaking their own morality tells me that much.

In the end I think I need to be attentive to the verbal and nonverbal messages people give me about their level of continued interest. I think Alfred had already heard more than he could comprehend with his atheistic world view, and he had much to think about. I didn't want to "get ahead of my skis" so to speak, wearing out my welcome to the point that my insistence would distract from my message, so I gave him a good book and my contact info should he want to talk further.