Reasons for God

Andrew Costilow

Apologetics

Dr. Durst

28 May 2009

The Reason for God

Timothy Keller writes a book called The Reasons for God, in which every chapter addresses a different subject that should help us to come to know God better. In the first chapter he addresses whether there is one true religion. He says that he had gone to a discussion panel, where he was the Christian representative. In this panel there was one statement that they all believed was true. The statement said that if the Christian view of Jesus was right then the Muslim’s and the Jew’s had a wrong view of God and vice versa. This is completely correct because the Jews and Muslims do not believe that Jesus was God and the Christians do. One way or another one of us is wrong. Some people think that if there were not religions then the world would be at peace, so some say that it should be outlawed, condemned, or privatized. Keller does not believe any of these would work and I agree with him. Making something wrong will not make people stop, but will make people want to do it all the more. He then goes on to tell us that most other people and religions believe that if they just live a good enough life they can get to heaven. Bur our belief is that Jesus came to die and forgive us so we can get to heaven.

I love what Keller says in chapter two about why God could allow evil. He says, with the help of C.S. Lewis, that suffering is more of an argument for God rather than against him. People, who don’t believe in God, wonder how we could believe in one who allows pain and evil to exist. They seem to believe in a way that ought to be if there was a God. But where does this belief come from? How can a person who does not believe in God get this so called sense of just and unjust? If atheists believe that this world came by chance and we evolved then their belief “depends on death, destruction, and violence of the strong against the weak” (Keller, 26). All the evil and pain in this...