by Matthew W. Bassford<\/p>\n
In my time as a preacher, I\u2019ve had my share of conversations with people who thought they had a moral or philosophical justification for their agnosticism\/atheism. They found something in the Bible they didn\u2019t like. Maybe it was God commanding the slaughter of the Canaanite children. Maybe it was God condemning the practice of homosexuality as sinful. Maybe it was God\u2019s foreknowledge of human activity. Regardless, there was something that displeased them, they couldn\u2019t see how it was consistent with their understanding of God, so they concluded that God didn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/searching-300x300.png\")
I believe there are answers to all of these objections (and the others like them), but there\u2019s an even more fundamental problem with that line of reasoning. All of these scenarios begin with the doubter constructing their version of God (possibly in good faith; possibly as a straw man), comparing their construct to the Biblical record, and concluding that the God of the Bible doesn\u2019t measure up. Their God wouldn\u2019t do that!<\/p>\n
To which I say, \u201cSo what?\u201d The God of the Bible doesn\u2019t make sense to them. Why should they have any expectation that a being of vastly greater understanding (which is how the Bible presents God) ought to make sense to them?<\/p>\n
I am quite confident that five years ago, when I told my children that they couldn\u2019t eat Halloween candy for three meals a day, it didn\u2019t make sense to them either. \u201cCandy tastes good, and it is there to be eaten. It tastes better than stuffed peppers, so we should have it for dinner instead of stuffed peppers. What am I missing?\u201d<\/p>\n
Children don\u2019t know what they don\u2019t know, and they don\u2019t understand what they don\u2019t understand. And yet, my five-year-olds were much closer in intellect to me than I or any atheist doubter is to God. If the child is unable to understand the parent, how much more will the creation struggle to understand the Creator!<\/p>\n
Consequently, we should expect there to be many times when God does or tells us to do things that don\u2019t make sense to us. A God who is omniscient ought to be incomprehensible to human beings who aren\u2019t. Just like the toddler isn\u2019t going to back Mom into a logical corner so that she offers up candy on demand, we aren\u2019t going to be able to use the times that God doesn\u2019t make sense to us to prove that He doesn\u2019t exist. The problem isn\u2019t Him. It\u2019s us.<\/p>\n
Indeed, it is the comprehensible God who looks much more like a figment of the human imagination. The gods of the Greeks were comprehensible. They got in ridiculous fusses with each other as people do. They committed adultery as people do.<\/p>\n
Despite their greater power, these gods fit into a human frame. They were idols, crafted to resemble people not only in outward features but in personality and scope. They made sense because they were human in origin.<\/p>\n
The God of the Bible does not make sense like that because He did not come from us. He is not human or human-like. He doesn\u2019t even exist in the same state of reality. He is utterly alien to us, and it is a tribute to His skill in communication that we are able to understand Him even as well as we do.<\/p>\n
The alien-ness and incomprehensibility of God, rather than being a sign of His non-existence, really is proof to the contrary. If we don\u2019t understand Him, that is as it should be. We can expect to have unanswered questions for as long as we live and maybe thereafter. Conversely, if we think we do understand Him, we\u2019re missing something.<\/p>\n
Our job is not to make God make sense. It is to seek to please Him. As Moses wisely observed in Deuteronomy 29:29, \u201cThe secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may obey all the words of this law.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Matthew W. Bassford In my time as a preacher, I\u2019ve had my share of conversations with people who thought they had a moral or philosophical justification for their agnosticism\/atheism. They found something in the Bible they didn\u2019t like. Maybe it was God commanding the slaughter of the Canaanite children. Maybe it was God condemning…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27],"tags":[1088,184,90,761],"class_list":["post-24229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-agnosticism","tag-atheism","tag-god","tag-understanding"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":80849,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/jesus-the-truth\/","url_meta":{"origin":24229,"position":0},"title":"Jesus, the Truth","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"December 3, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"by Terry Wane Benton \"Jesus said to him, \"I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me\" (John 14:6). Jesus is the truth about everything. Do you want to know how this world began and how life, moral conscience, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":92271,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/nine-types-of-atheism\/","url_meta":{"origin":24229,"position":1},"title":"Nine Types of Atheism","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"November 20, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"by Perry Hall Emotional Atheism: Many have experienced personal harm in their lives. They are dealing with the \"problem of evil\", not from a philosophical perspective, but from daily pain. For example, the loss of a child, parent, or spouse. Hypocritical Religious Atheism: This paradox in terminology comes from their\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8372,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/how-do-i-convince-an-atheist-to-believe-in-the-bible\/","url_meta":{"origin":24229,"position":2},"title":"How do I convince an atheist to believe in the Bible?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"February 5, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: How do I convince my friend to believe in the Bible, as well as God?\u00a0 My friend doesn't believe in God, Heaven, the devil, anything that the Bible teaches.\u00a0 This friend told me that, to her, the Bible is complete fiction.\u00a0 I know that I cannot even begin to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":25548,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/the-atheists-motives\/","url_meta":{"origin":24229,"position":3},"title":"The Atheist’s Motives","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"August 30, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Text: Proverbs 4:20-27 \u00a0 I.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Consider the offer \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Atheism offers \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a01.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0No absolute morality. Everything is subjective. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a02.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0No meaning to your life. Life is just a span of time, where you suffer for a while before you are squished into oblivion. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a03.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0No hope about your future. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0B.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Christianity offers \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a01.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A clear, absolute morality\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Audio"","block_context":{"text":"Audio","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/audio\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15681,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/how-do-you-teach-the-scriptures-to-an-agnostic\/","url_meta":{"origin":24229,"position":4},"title":"How do you teach the Scriptures to an agnostic?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"July 5, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: I have an agnostic friend who was raised Catholic and believes that 'something' is 'up there' and created all of this. 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However, after reading the gospel accounts, I found a problem with Luke 21:31. \"So you also, when you see these things happening, know that the kingdom\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24229\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}