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So you want to get the best out of life. Don't we all? The difficulty is to know what is the best - and how to get it. If you think sitting in a dull church, listening to dull sermons, is about the last way you would choose - Who would blame you for that? Certainly not I. But, because you find churches and sermons dull, is it necessarily true that belief in God and all that goes with it must be dull too? Is religion just the bunk that feeble-minded people need to give them some feeling of safety and stability? You seem to think it is. I am convinced that it is not . You say that you are getting on fine without it. You hardly need to give it a thought. You go off to your work and after that there is plenty of good amusement, sport and what you will to fill in your leisure time. You don't need God and you don't want any of the do's and do not's that go with church. So you have your own philosophy and up till now, you say, it has worked out all right. After all, you don't do anyone any harm - you believe in living and letting live.
The trouble is that living and letting live is not so easy as it sounds. All can go well for a while but sooner or later every man and woman is up against it. We come face to face with the inevitable. Even if it were possible for the whole of our lives to run smoothly yet not one of us can, in the end, avoid death. That this is so is brought home to us in various ways.
The friend down the road, yesterday laughing and joking with you, today lies in the mortuary, killed outright in a car crash. You are stunned with shock. You go to his funeral. You stand by the grave watching the coffin being lowered into the hard, unfeeling earth, and you see his parents stricken with grief. You think of your friend's laughing eyes and jolly face. Gone - gone for ever.
But, as you go on your way home, you feel it can't be true. There must be something else for Tom. You vaguely hope that there is some power, somewhere, which is like the kind old man you used to believe God was, when you were a child. He would do something for Tom. His very kindness would make Him do it. But, then, what would Tom do? Of course, all that stuff about playing harps is old-fashioned nonsense, but what could Tom do? You suppose, in one way or another, he would have some connection with God: he would, kind of, be with God. But then the awful thought seizes you that Tom would not want to be with God. He never believed in Him and he scorned everything to do with Him. Being with God would be worse than not being at all. No, that couldn't be right. God would make Tom so that he did want to be with Him. God would make poor Tom what Christians call "good."
But that is where you are mistaken. In Tom's life God wanted Tom to be associated with Him. He wanted him to become a character of moral worth, something like God is Himself. But there are some things that God cannot do. He limits Himself so that He cannot do anything which is contrary to His own character. And it is contrary to God's character to force His creatures to love Him. He cannot put goodness on a person in the same way as one might put a coat on him. Goodness, because of its very nature, is something which must grow. God cannot make an unwilling person good. If He did, the person would no longer be a person. He would be a machine or a puppet.
You are not a machine or a puppet - and you do not want to be either. Neither did Tom. Tom, like you, had it the way he wanted. He rejected God and consequently he never grew into a character which was worth perpetuating into eternity. He had his chance and he threw it away. Tom is gone for ever.
And what about you? You have your chance. Will you, too, just throw it away? Would it not be better to have the courage to put faith in God so that you can find an anchor which will hold you fast through all the trials of life and through all its tedium, that, in the end, you will have become a character which is suitable for eternal life ?
This is all very well," you say. "I wish I could believe. But how can I know that there really is a God? How can I be sure that the psychologist was not right when he said that God is merely a piece of imagination, an illusion. which people who have never mentally matured need to have for support? I would be willing enough to worship Him if only I could be sure He exists…
But supposing He does exist, what then? Life will not become a bed of roses. Characters of moral worth are not built up in the easiest circumstances life can offer. The people who are most worth knowing are usually those who have been "through it". Those who have had an easy life are often spineless. But God does offer you a challenge. He gives you something to live for, something which is enduring and worthwhile. Sometimes the work is tedious, but the friendships made in the course of it are not lightly to be despised.
Of course. not all preachers are brilliant orators, and from time to time they send us to sleep (we will be realistic and honest). But they are those who are labouring, often with difficulty, to show others what it is that makes them tick - when otherwise they would be wound down. They are those who believe that there is an answer to all the suffering and tragedies of this life. They want to offer you the satisfaction which they, themselves, have found
The Christian church is full of blemishes. From its very earliest days, back in the first century, it has been the same. It does not pretend to be a "museum for saints," but a "school for sinners." It is a school at which no pupil need be without the prize. And that prize is the security and happiness which each of us desires. It is the school which gives us the best out of life and, finally, victory over death.
And is not that just what you are wanting?
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