Are Christians wasting their lives?

Two week ago, a man walked into the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs and opened fire. 26 people died. The following day, news broke that Ian Squire, a British missionary and charity worker being held hostage in Nigeria, had been murdered by his captors.

Tragedies like this remind me of what my Christian faith is really about. When the lives of Christians are cut short, we are forced to wonder whether we are wasting our lives. Why should we dedicate so much of our short lives to our faith? Shouldn’t we be making the most our lives rather than wasting our time on something that might not even be true? Was Pastor Frank Pomeroy right to spend hours of his life in church meetings and Bible studies when he could have spent that time with his 14-year-old daughter, Annabella, who died during the attack?

Sometimes people talk about religious beliefs as if they are just a matter of taste. Religions, they say, are just different ways of helping people to find meaning in our short lives. We have a right to pursue happiness in our lives and if we want to do that through Islam, Christianity or none of the above, it’s all equal. We can pick whatever moral code suits us best as long as we don’t impose it on others. If someone’s faith helps them to be a better person, then we have no right to judge what they believe.

But when Devin Patrick Kelley opened fire on the members of First Baptist Church, what his victims believed about life after death really mattered.

Religion is not a matter of personal preference. It’s a lot more like life insurance. Life insurance might give you peace of mind in life, but what really matters is what happens after death. The true test of a policy is whether it pays out. The peace of mind it provides is irrelevant.

Of course, Christianity is about more than just death. It does provide us with a moral code. It is a refuge when life is hard. But if Christianity turns out to be wrong about life after death, then it would be nothing more than a faith of false hopes.   It would be as much use as a life insurance policy that never pays out.

The Bible itself such as much. In 1 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul addresses those who deny that Jesus rose from the dead:

“¹⁵If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. ¹⁵ More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.¹⁶ For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either.¹⁷ And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. ¹⁸ Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.¹⁹ If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”

There is no inherent value in faith. It’s not rewarding to dedicate your life to to a God that doesn’t exist- it’s delusional.  

If what Ian Squire believed in the wrong God, they he died for nothing. If 26 victims of the Sutherland Spring shootings were wrong about life after death, then they ‘of all people [should] be pitied’. If they were right, then every moment they spent on their faith was worth it.

There is no middle ground.

"I know everyone who lost their life that day, some of which were my best friends, and my daughter. "And I guarantee without any shadow of a doubt they are dancing with Jesus today. God gets the glory."

Pastor Frank Pomeroy

“Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”
C.S Lewis

How can God ask us to worship Him?

The idea of God demanding to be worshiped is difficult to swallow. It makes God seem like an attention-seeker who relies on our praise to bolster his fragile ego. The idea that He would create the world or cause events to happen in order that he would be ‘glorified’ through them seems equally problematic.   Even as a Christian, it’s taken me a while to understand how a God who asks us to be humble could ask us to place Him at the centre of our lives.  

Some people answer this objection by referring to God’s role as the Creator of mankind. Just as the carpenter owns the table or chairs she creates, the act of creation gave God certain rights over us, including the right to be worshipped.

I can see the attraction of this argument. But it’s always seemed flawed to me. I am not a mahogany table. I see no reason why the carpenter who made me would be free to let me gather dust in the attic. Having a right to use an object as you please is very different to having unlimited rights over a person. We have word for the latter: slavery.

Even our parents, who literally created us, don’t have a right to use us as they please. I love my parents. But heaven forbid they ever have unlimited rights over me. They are flawed people. We all are.

Every one of us is flawed and so the thought of them having unlimited rights over us is terrifying. When we talk about a God that wants us to praise Him, he sounds like yet another flawed human being. And only the most flawed and selfish people every openly ask anyone else to worship them. He may be powerful, but that doesn’t make His claims over our lives any more valid. If His strength was the only reason He could command our obedience, God would just be another despot.

But God has a right to our praise not because of His strength, but because of His moral perfection. That’s why the act of worshipping God is fundamentally different to worshipping a person. Perhaps it is closer to worshipping a virtue. Most of us, I imagine, would consider the worship of an ideal to be more acceptable than the worship of a person. In fact, many of us already worship a virtue. “Love trumps Hate” seems to have been the standard response to so many of the horrible things that have happened recently. We put our faith in Love. We put our hope in Love. We think of it as the guiding principle of our lives. That sounds a lot like worship to me. 

Don’t get me wrong, worshipping Love is not the same as worshipping God. I do not believe that God is a metaphor or an abstract ideal. (How could anyone worship a metaphor?) Though God is outside of this universe, I believe that He is as real as the world around us. (Yes, I know that Elon Musk, the Independent and Morpheus from the Matrix question whether the world is real,  but let’s forget about them for a minute…)

But in God those virtues are embodied in a person. If God is, as the Bible claims, Love, then worshiping Him is fundamentally different to worshipping a person. To worship something else would be to worship something that wasn’t Love. If only God is perfect, then to worship something else would be to worship something morally imperfect.   If only He is just, then to worship something else would be worship injustice. That is why, I think, God can only allow people to worship Him.  I don’t see how God could be perfect if he were happy for us to worship something that was imperfect. And by God, I mean the Christian God of the Bible.

If God were content for us to worship anything, be it a totem pole or Allah, then he would again be saying it was ok to worship something that wasn’t the perfect embodiment of love, compassion, perfection and justice.

If God were not Love, I don’t believe He would have the right to demand that we worship Him. I’m not certain, but I don’t think the fact that He created us would alone be justification for worshipping Him.

I know this is far from a complete answer. Perhaps it even raises more questions than it answers. Where do the virtue of Love, Justice and Compassion come from in the first place? Are they set by God or are they independent of Him? Some, I know, will find it difficult to accept the claim that God is love itself. But I hope this at least explains why I’ve become more at ease with the idea that God has the right to demand that we worship him.