The fool says in his heart there is no God (Psalm 14:1). Some folks over the past 200 years have become durn fool enough to say it out loud. People have been questioning God far longer than they have questioned his existence. The questions mainly come from disappointment, and the disappointment comes mainly from a false sense of our own innocence. When things don’t go well, people turn to God for help, too often as a last resort. At such times, they focus on their own needs, their own helplessness, but not on the reality of sin.

I’m adapting this post from a Sunday school lesson on Isaiah 44:21-26, but all the prophets had basically the same message. They wrote to a society that had turned away from exclusive worship of the one true God to the worship of pagan gods. So what was the big deal in worshiping these gods? If they couldn’t do any good, they couldn’t do any harm, either, right? Wrong! False gods are demonic, demanding, and sometimes require human sacrifice. Any worship devoted to them cannot be devoted to the living God.

In times of trouble, people of the time would cry out to whatever gods they could think of, not recognizing that they had violated a solemn covenant with the living God, in which they had promised not to serve other gods. That covenant contained a curse for disobedience. By continuing to fashion and worship other gods, the idolaters brought the full force of the curse down on their entire society.

Today I suppose every Christian knows at least a couple of people who say they don’t believe in God because of some particularly urgent prayers that God did not answer in the way they wanted. The person they prayed about died. They didn’t get the job they prayed for. In an economy tanking because of massive greed, they lost the house they couldn’t afford to have bought in the first place. They do not acknowledge the power of sin. They do not acknowledge the possibility that the trouble they experience can actually be within a loving God’s perfect will.

Isaiah himself wrestled with these same issues. He knew of God’s love and grace. He also knew of God’s justice, which demanded punishment for sin. In fact, from the earliest days of his ministry he had predicted both a glorious future for Israel and total destruction and loss. How could he reconcile what seemed to be two incompatible truths? The short answer is that Israel would first be destroyed, and then restored. God judges sin harshly, but judgment is never his last word.

Nowadays, of course, we don’t make statues, call them gods, and pray to them, but there are only superficial differences between Isaiah’s time and ours. We do look to our own resources to get us out of trouble before we turn to God. We do think that what we can see and touch is more substantial and dependable than what we cannot. We do fall for the same old demonic lie, and it has the same consequences today it always had.

Disappointed people, who have not sufficiently turned to God in the first place turn away from him even more. Whatever they say with their mouths, in their hearts they proclaim atheism. God calls them fools–and then promises that fools can repent, turn to him in true faith, and see his power start to work in and for them. If you haven’t repented yet, what are you waiting for?

Photo credit: Some rights reserved by jurvetson.

(It was a struggle to come up with a good picture for this post. I selected one called “Santa’s Tombstone” partly because of the photographer’s comment that it was like reading Nietzsche–a well-known fool who declared the death of God. But we can also take the child as a metaphor for all kinds of fools who feel betrayed by believing in anything less than God.)