Before You Read Anything Else

The first of the Letters to an Honest Skeptic

Dear friend,

You should know who is writing to you, because you did not ask for this letter. Somebody handed it to you, or sent you a link, or maybe you just wandered in. Either way, you deserve to know what you have walked into.

My name is Mark. I am a pastor of a small country church in Illinois, the kind of church with truck drivers and carpenters and farmers in the pews, and I have spent about thirty years doing this. I believe in God. I believe Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead. You may believe none of that, and you may have good reasons, or at least reasons that have never been taken seriously by anyone on my side of the fence.

That last part is why I am writing.

I have listened to a lot of skeptics over thirty years, and I owe some of them an apology on behalf of my profession. Too often the church has answered honest questions with a frown, a Bible verse fired like a warning shot, and a suggestion that asking was the problem. If that has been your experience, I am sorry. It should not have been. A faith that cannot stand questioning is not worth your Sunday mornings, and frankly, it would not be worth mine.

So over the coming weeks I am going to write you a series of letters, one at a time, each taking on one question. Real questions, the biggest ones. Does God exist? Can anybody actually know what is true? Why trust an ancient book? Who was Jesus, really? Did the resurrection happen, or is it a legend? If God is good, why is my life full of things that are not? Are all religions saying the same thing? Is faith just wishful thinking? Has science made all of this unnecessary?

Before we start, let me put my cards face up on the table. Here is what I promise you, and here is what I ask of you.

What I promise. I will not insult you. I will not treat you like a fool, a project, or an enemy, because you are none of those. I will not pretend your hardest questions are easy, and when a question is genuinely hard, I will say so. I will not ask you to believe anything blindly. Everything I ask you to consider, I will give you reasons for, the same kind of reasons you use every day to decide what is true, evidence, testimony, logic, and honest weighing. And I will not hide my aim. I am not a neutral party and I will not pose as one. I believe these things are true and I want you to believe them too, the same way I would want you to know if the bridge ahead of you was out. You would not respect me if I pretended otherwise, so I will not pretend.

What I ask. Only one thing, really. Honesty. Not agreement, honesty. There is an old line from the Hebrew prophets where God Himself says, “Come now, and let us reason together” (Isaiah 1:18). Notice that is an invitation to reason, not a demand to surrender. That is all these letters ask. Weigh the evidence. Do not believe anything because you wish it were true, and, this is the part that gets skipped, do not disbelieve anything because you wish it were false. Both of those are ways of putting your thumb on the scale.

And somewhere along the way, ask yourself one private question. Nobody will hear your answer but you. The question is this: if it turned out God was real, would you want to know?

Sit with that one before you answer it. It sounds easy. It is not. Because if God is real, then some things about your life and mine would have to change, and all of us, believer and skeptic alike, have a dog in that fight. I will be honest about my biases as we go. I only ask that you keep an eye on yours.

One more thing. If at any point you want to argue back, ask a question I have not covered, or tell me where you think I have gone wrong, my door is genuinely open. Not as an ambush, and not so I can win something. Some of the best conversations of my life have been with people who thought I was dead wrong, and a few of them changed my mind about things along the way. Iron sharpens iron, whichever direction the sparks fly.

The first letter takes on the first question, the one underneath all the others. Does God exist, and can a person believe that without shutting his brain off at the door?

Fair warning: I think the evidence is going to surprise you.

Come, let us reason together.

Your friend, Mark

Walshville Christian Church, Walshville, Illinois. These letters accompany a series our church is walking through together. You are welcome any Sunday, questions and all.