When Skeptics Think Twice
When Skeptics Think Twice
Hemingway was a swashbuckling adventurer who played and worked with reckless abandon—writer, hunter, fisherman, and soldier of fortune. It was Hemingway who coined the phrase, “Courage is grace under pressure.” The author probably arrived at that conclusion after observing someone suffering with resilience and dignity.
Such a person would have caused him to stop and think twice.
I remember a long-ago friendship with an atheist, a onetime philosophy professor at Georgetown University. It all began when I took issue with a statement he made: “God is D-O-G spelled backwards.”
I wasn’t about to let that one slip by, and so began an earnest and lively series of discussions. Finding so many things to disagree over where it concerned the God of the Bible, I was surprised that our times together continued. Our friendship would have ended sooner than it did, but one thing kept prolonging our conversations: My wheelchair and my response to it.
Once, while feeding me Chinese food with his chopsticks, he paused. “This,” I recall him saying as he rubbed his chin and looked at my wheelchair, “I can’t explain.”
My response to my disability made him think twice about God.
Sometimes skeptics will look at a Christian who suffers with grace and dignity, and try to deny that God is the real source of that individual’s inner peace.
To the nonbeliever, all this talk about heaven, God, and the joy of the Lord is escapism, a mental cop-out, a refusal to face reality. From time to time I’ve been accused of using faith in God as a psychological crutch.
When this happens, I merely point to the facts: It’s hard enough for someone who’s always been an indoor bookworm sort of person to adjust to life in a wheelchair. But most people—even those skeptics—agree that it’s even harder for someone such as myself who’s been very active. Believe me, when I was on my feet, I was always on the go, rushing ninety miles an hour from one event to the next. But now I operate on super slow speed because of my severe paralysis.
No mere set of do’s and don’t’s, no speculative religious philosophy dreamed up in my head, no belief in a vague and mushy all-Supreme First Cause could sustain me in this wheelchair. Nor could any such psychological mishmash actually release me to rejoice in my condition. Either I must be insane, or there is a living God behind all of this—a Personal Deity who is much more than just a theological axiom.
He is alive, active, and demonstrates His presence in my life again and again … sometimes in spite of myself. And this has made people think twice about Him.
When Christians suffer with grace under pressure, people who observe even casually are forced to consider the fact of a God able to inspire such loyalty.
The way you and I handle our big and little trials makes the world pause in its frantic, headlong pursuits. Our godly response to those obstacles and perplexities in our lives literally kicks the psychological crutches right out from under the skeptic. The unbeliever can no longer refuse to face the reality of our faith.
So hang in there, Christian. Your joyful obedience is a phenomenon that simply can’t be explained away.
For you, and a watching world, courage is spelled G-O-D.