November 5: University of North Florida - Mike is a pre-med student at the University of North Florida. Evidently, he has had fun heckling other campus preachers before and came out prepared to do the same with me. I don’t think he quite knew how to respond when I didn’t participate in his childish antics. I did, however, begin to engage him in serious dialogue by asking what he wanted to do with his life. He said he wanted to become a doctor and go help the invisible children in northern Sudan. He had already stated he was an atheist totally convinced that evolution and natural selection were true, so I called him to account.
“Why would you spend years of your life and tens of thousands of dollars in tuition only to go to third world country to help desperate people if you believe there is no God?” He seemed baffled by the question – perhaps even a bit stunned as he stood there with nothing to say.
So I asked again. “If there really is no God, then these people really have no more value than a cow. And, if you believe in the survival of the fittest, these people are obviously not fit to survive on their own. They need your help, but natural selection tells you that you should be concerned about your genes being passed on to the next generation, not some starving, diseased kid in Africa. So I ask you again: Why would you invest all this time and money in these kids if you honestly believe as you say you believe?”
Many atheists don’t realize just how much Christian ideas have influenced their thinking. Most religions, ideologies and governments consider human life to be cheap and expendable. Not so with Christianity. We believe every life is sacred for it is made in the image of God. We also believe the value of human life was demonstrated when Jesus Christ chose to give His life in exchange for ours. He wouldn’t die for someone he didn’t value. People matter to God. We may not be worthy of His sacrifice, but we are not worthless in His eyes.
I explained these concepts to Mike and suggested that something deep inside his soul that made him want to help poor and needy people is evidence that God is real and that he is made in the image of a loving God. Even if he denied the existence of that God, there is no other way to explain the love and concern in his heart. And there really isn’t. We are all made in the image of God and even though we have marred that image, it still remains in even the most depraved of human beings. It explains why we love and want to be loved, why we believe in justice and are bothered by oppression, why we wonder about ideas like infinity and eternity and why, down deep, we are all aware that there is something more “out there.” Mike stayed for a couple more hours without a word to say – just listening. Later, I found out that he frequents atheistic and God-hating web sites. I believe God touched his heart that day and I hope he keeps seeking the Lord and does not fall back into the prey of other God-haters.
