Over the past year I’ve started to realise that atheism is perhaps not nearly as common as I thought it was. To be fair, it’s pretty easy in 21st century Australia to get the impression that most people don’t believe in God. The vast majority of Australians aren’t in church on any given Sunday, and talking about God or any spiritual topic at all just seems to be a no-go zone. So you could easily think that most people are atheists. That was certainly what I thought, until about 12 months ago.
A Surprising Discovery
Last year I started working with the local group of Christian students at the University of Western Australia. One of my favourite things about the role is that I get to chat to lots of people who don’t yet know Jesus.
Throughout 2019 I spoke to more than 50 students who identified as non-religious. To be clear, this was in a walk-up (or ‘cold contact’) context, where I’d walk up to strangers on campus and ask them if they’d be willing to share what they think about ‘spiritual stuff’. (People are a lot more open to this than you’d think). Unsurprisingly, most students respond with something to the effect of, “Oh I’m not really a good person to talk to, I don’t have any beliefs.”
But then here’s where things got interesting.
I then asked them a follow-up question: “do you think there’s a higher power?” And to my surprise, more than 90% of people say “yes.” They claim they don’t have any beliefs (by which they often mean they’re not ‘religious’), but overwhelmingly, the young Australians I meet say they do believe in a higher power of some kind. But here’s the catch: almost everyone says that although they think there is a higher power, we just can’t know who or what that power is.
How Can We Know?
It’s a valid question. Even if there’s something deep inside us that makes us think there’s some kind of higher power, how could we know for sure? How do we know if it’s the Muslim god, the Christian one, the many Hindu gods, or for that matter the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
Well Jesus makes a pretty shocking claim: he says we can know this higher power. And how? Not by emptying our minds in meditation or by looking inside ourselves, but by looking at him. In John’s Gospel, one of the early historical biographies of Jesus’ life, he says, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). That’s a pretty radical claim. Jesus is saying that anyone who has seen him has seen the very God who made the universe.
Now someone might object, well sure, Jesus claimed that about himself. But why should we believe him? Are we just meant to take it on blind faith?
But actually, Jesus doesn’t expect us to take it on blind faith. This is something we can investigate for ourselves. Because you see, unlike the Flying Spaghetti Monster, we actually have extremely good historical reasons for taking Jesus seriously. We have multiple independent eye-witness accounts of Jesus’ life, giving us an excellent idea of what he was really like as a historical person. And this means you can examine for yourself whether or not you think Jesus can be trusted.
Investigate For Yourself
Maybe you’re reading this and you think there probably is a higher power of some kind, but you just don’t think we can be sure who or what that is. If that’s you, let me just encourage you to investigate Jesus for yourself. Read one of the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John ) – these are primary historical documents that help you see the life of Jesus and his followers, warts and all.
(You can watch a quick video overview of Mark’s Gospel here to get an idea of what it covers).
A lot of people say we can’t know who or what the higher power is, but ironically, that assertion is often based on blind faith. They haven’t actually examined the evidence themselves. So why not check it out for yourself? What have you got to lose?
Worst case scenario, you’ll come away better informed about one of the most influential figures in recorded human history. But who knows, you just might find that as you look at Jesus for yourself, there’s very good reason to think that he’s something more.
As New Testament scholar N.T. Wright has said, “If you want to know who God is, look at Jesus. If you want to know what it means to be human, look at Jesus. If you want to know what love is, look at Jesus… and go on looking until you’re not just a spectator but actually part of the drama that has him as the central character.”
