But Is It Real?: Answering 10 Common Objections To The Christian Faith

By Amy Orr-Ewing

Your relationship with God is just a psychological crutch. Belief in God is dangerous. I used to believe, but I've given it all up.

Is God real? Is it possible to know anything, let alone know him? Why do bad things happen to people who worship this God? What about the spiritual experiences of other faiths?

All of these accusations, objections and questions have come directly from real-life situations.

Amy Orr-Ewing writes, 'I hope that the thoughts offered here will help you see what the Christian faith has to say amid all the pain, confusion and complexity of life.'

• Language: English
• Publisher: IVP
• Release date: Jun 20, 2024
• ISBN: 9781789745344

Amy Orr-Ewing

Dr Amy Orr-Ewing is an international author, speaker and theologian who addresses the deep questions of our day with meaningful answers found in the Christian Faith. Travelling internationally Amy is a regular speaker across university campuses, businesses, parliaments, churches and conferences as well as on TV and radio. She holds a PhD in Theology from the University of Oxford and is the author of multiple publications and books including 'Where is God in All the Suffering?' and bestselling, 'Why Trust the Bible?' For more info visit www.amyorr-ewing.com

Book preview

A provocative, informed and challenging book, which is certain to stimulate thought and conversations.

Alister McGrath, Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at the University of Oxford, and President of the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics

The apostle Paul gives some great guidance on how a worshipper of Jesus should talk about their faith: ‘Let your conversation be always full of grace’ (Colossians 4:6). In her brilliant new book, Amy Orr-Ewing takes this advice to heart. She defends the truths of Christianity with grace and intelligence, boldness and gentleness. If you’re a Christian, this book will help you do the same. Or perhaps you’re just starting out on a journey to find out if Christ and his claims are real. If so, Amy’s clear thinking and friendly voice will help you along the way!

Beth Redman, author of Soul Sista

With respect, but also with devastating clarity, this book challenges the spirit of lazy secularism that is so prevalent in our society. The author looks at the most common objections to religious belief, and Christian faith in particular, and shows that they are as irrational as the beliefs they believe they are attacking. Christian faith makes a claim of such importance about the way the world is that no one should reject it without at least testing it properly. This book demonstrates that belief in God is at least as rational as unbelief, and far more rewarding.

Jane Williams, St Mellitus College

Amy Orr-Ewing is one of the foremost British evangelists and apologists of our generation. Her writings are clear-thinking, thoughtful, and persuasive. Together with her husband Frog, she has built up a dynamic local church in South London.

Nicky Gumbel, pioneer of the Alpha course

For my boys

Zachary and Elijah

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. What about other people’s genuine experience of God?

2. Your ‘experience of God’ is delusional, not real

3. Your relationship with God is just a psychological crutch

4. How can you say you have found the truth if you haven’t tried all the alternatives?

5. If Christianity is about a relationship with God, why does he let bad things happen to his friends?

6. If Christianity is about a transforming relationship with God, why are Christians so bad?

7. If God is so loving and relational, why did he go ahead and create when he knew people would end up in hell?

8. Belief in God is dangerous

9. I used to believe, but I’ve given it all up

10. How can I know?

Notes

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you first and foremost to my husband Frog for your help, love, patience and encouragement as I have worked on this project. Thank you to my outstanding PA Hanni Seddon for all of your hard work and support, and to Simon Wenham for chasing up references and details for me. Thank you to the IVP team and to my agent Erik Wolgemoth. Thank you Sylvia Lawson Johnston for your hospitality at Inverenan whilst I was writing. Thank you to friends Julia Manning and Ioanna Eju-Konem for praying for me and encouraging me, and to all the Tuesday Women at All Saints Peckham. Thank you to Tim and Julie Wanstall for reading and commenting on this so helpfully. Thank you finally to all of the unnamed people from whom the questions in this book originally came in conversation – I hope that some of the thoughts offered here may be of help.

INTRODUCTION

It was strange walking down a hospital corridor with a growing sense of foreboding, getting closer to the consultant’s office and wondering what he would say. I was fifteen years old and was having the afternoon off school to receive the results from the operation I had undergone the week before. A mole on my leg had begun to turn dark, and my doctor had decided to remove it as a precaution. My mother and I entered the office together and sat down. The consultant leaned over the desk and said, ‘I’m afraid it’s cancer.’

Those words still echo in my head now as I write them; the shock, the fear, the bewildering emotions rushed through my body from head to toe. He went on to explain that it was, in fact, a borderline case of melanoma and that they would need to do a further operation to make absolutely sure that I was in the clear. But those stark words ‘it’s cancer’ stayed with me. What was life all about? What was it for? Was there a purpose for my life? Was my life over?

Well, as you have probably guessed, I survived. My life was not yet over; it was to last longer than my fifteen years. Through the experience of the cancer, I encountered a God who is near us in suffering, a God who makes his presence known. I remember lying in my bed, shaking with fear and calling out to God, who then tangibly filled my bedroom and lifted the fear and blackness from my chest. As Psalm 30:1–3 says,

I will exalt you, O L

ord

,

for you lifted me out of the depths

and did not let my enemies gloat over me.

O L

ord

my God, I called to you for help

and you healed me.

O L

ord

, you brought me up from the grave;

you spared me from going down into the pit.

As life has gone on, friends have died suddenly, members of my community in London have been on the receiving end of horrific violence, and the questions of the human heart have kept on coming year after year as I have travelled and met people of different ages, backgrounds and nationalities.

I have found that many people have questions about Christian experience. These questions can be genuine objections to Christianity or things that trouble Christians in the back of their minds. During my journey of talking to the many people who have asked me all the questions in this book, I’ve discovered that finding answers is a real challenge, because the questions do not just touch on intellectual ideas but are undergirded by emotional realities and the pain of life. The issues examined in this book have all emerged during conversations in the course of the last couple of years.

Is God real? Is it possible to know anything – let alone to know him? Why do bad things happen to people who worship this God? What about the spiritual experiences of other faiths? All these questions and more have come out of real-life situations, so whether you are an atheist or someone who wonders if there just might be something more to Christianity than you first thought, I hope that, as you read this book, at least some of the thinking offered here will help you to see what the Christian faith has to say amid all the pain, confusion and complexity of life.

1.WHAT ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE’S GENUINE EXPERIENCE OF GOD?

A few years ago, an Oxford student asked if I would come and talk with his friend Jack, who had some questions about Christianity. We arranged a time to meet, and on a grey October Monday afternoon we sheltered from the rain in a coffee shop. At first it was a little awkward – we all knew why we were there, but, being English, we skirted around the subject of God and chatted about the weather, the improving quality of hot drinks in Oxford’s cafés and a number of other trivial subjects.

After a little while, Jack began tentatively to ask questions about Christianity. We talked about the nature of proof, whether science had dispensed with God, and the problem of suffering. It seemed quite difficult to make any progress, because as soon as I answered one question another unrelated issue would be brought up. As I was beginning to wonder whether this was purely an intellectual exercise or a genuine search for answers, I said: ‘I’ve tried to answer all your questions, and I’ve asked quite a few myself. So tell me, what do you feel your most important question is?’

The guy didn’t miss a beat. ‘My Christian friends claim to have a relationship with God and assert that Jesus is the only way to come to God. Isn’t it arrogant, even ridiculous, to nullify the genuine experience of Tibetan monks on the basis of your own experience? How can you say that your experience of God is real and theirs isn’t?’

One of the reasons this question is so powerful is that, at its heart, Christianity really is all about a personal relationship with a living God, and these ideas are in direct contradistinction to the fundamental beliefs of Buddhist monks. If Christianity is primarily about relationship with God through Jesus Christ, what is Buddhism all about? A brief synopsis may be helpful here for those less familiar with Buddhist ideas.

Buddhism

The Buddha (the name means means ‘enlightened one’) was born Siddhartha Gautama in Lumbini (in present-day Nepal) into a wealthy princely family of the Sakya clan. The date of his birth is variously placed between 624 and 448

bc

, but the commonly accepted date is 560

bc

. Guatama renounced his comfortable life at the age of twenty-nine and lived the life of a travelling sage, seeking out teachers who could instruct him. At the age of thirty-six, during the full-moon night of May, he received what he believed was enlightenment. This happened in Gaya (in present-day India). During the full-moon night of July he delivered his first discourse near Varanasi, introducing the world to the ‘Four Noble Truths’. At the age of eighty, he died, and his death is referred to as Parinibbana, or final release.

The Buddha’s teaching is encapsulated in his Four Noble Truths:

1.The noble truth of dukkha (suffering, stress): this word is notoriously difficult to render accurately in English, but it seems to encapsulate the idea that life is fundamentally fraught with suffering and disappointment of every possible description.

2.The noble truth of the cause of dukkha: the cause of this suffering and dissatisfaction is tanha (desire)