Essentially it was a rant – admittedly a very calm and collected one, but a rant nevertheless – by Richard Dawkins who is supposed to be a proponent of all that is best in the scientific method. However his chief concern often appears to be to ridicule and denigrate religious people.

Did anyone watch ‘The root of all evil’? What was it about?

Essentially it was a rant – admitedly a very calm and collected one, but a rant nevertheless – by Richard Dawkins who is supposed to be a proponant of all that is best in the scientific method. However his chief concern often appears to be to riducle and denigrate religious people.

The programme looked at many examples of the worst kind of excesses that you will find among religious people. The Crusades of the Middle Ages left a bitterness in the heart of Islam towards Western Europe which is still felt today. Closer to home we have the troubles of Northern Ireland. Then you have the ethnic cleansing in the early years of the Turkish republic. Today the strife between Hindu and Muslim in India, or between Muslim and Muslim in Muslim Iraq. Not to forget to mention the continuing persecution of Christians by Hindu and Muslim fundamentalists. It also looked at some rather exotic practices, eg snake therapy!

Now it is not my purpose to defend religion against Dawkins’s attack nor to attack Dawkins – that can be left for another day – for it cannot be denied that there is some truth in his criticism. But the Bible has something to say about both sides of this divide.

Listen to what Paul wrote to the Corinthian church. 2000 years ago it was a very important city, now it is less so. The nearest airport is 40 miles away.

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who believe it is the power of God. For it is written: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and bring to nothing the understanding of the scholar. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For the Jews ask for a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.¹

For us the Greek may be represented by Dawkins. His religion – and it really is one though he would hate to have to agree that it is – is faith in human reason, faith in human thought to find the answers to everything. There is bit of a contradiction here: how can you have faith in human reason? If human reason has been brought about by chance events taking place over 000s of Ms of years then is there any good reason to think that it is itself nothing other than random thinking which only has the appearance of order and rationality about it? The Greeks were full of this also. They had supreme confidence, as Dawkins does, in the ability of man.

The Jews on the other hand are the religionists. Paul is not here talking about the man in the street, but about the leaders and fundamentalists among them. He was one himself before he was converted. They are fanatic about their religion. For them there was no distinction between religion and politics after all Israel had been formed as a theocracy. Power and religion went together. It is always the same when men think that the kingdom of God is of this world. They have to impose their ideas and ways on everyone else. Islam would like to do that today – even in this country – you hear calls for Sharia law to apply and in the USA you will find some who want to try to impose the old laws which applied to the Jewish state. Dawkins is right to expose the shortcomings of this kind of religion.

But do you see what the result is? Neither the Jew nor the Greek, neither Dawkins nor the religionist, understand what God was doing in Christ.

The Jews wanted a king who would take political power and subdue the other nations. The religionists want to do that today with the resulting fallout of evil. For them a man who died on the cross was a failure – it was shameful – it was a stumbling block. How could a king allow himself to be dealt with in such a way?

The Greeks wanted a man full of wisdom and strength. Not necessarily a king, but a man who by reason and argument would demonstrate the superiority of his philosophy. Dawkins looks for that today. For him, as for the Greeks, faith is a sign of weakness. The way of death was only for the fool – let us eat drink and be merry, they say, for tomorrow we die. The cross is foolishness.

So when Dawkins looks at the cross, or when the religionists of today do so, they only see failure, folly, a stumbling block. Like the crowds around the cross they can only shout out: if he is the [Son of God]… let [God] deliver him!² They cannot see that in the death of Christ, God was dealing with the most fundamental problem of all: man’s sin.

Deal with man’s sin and you deal with every other problem. The Greeks and Dawkins of this world must come to see that it is not human reason that will solve everything, but a recognition that human reason marred by sin needs to be straightened out. For the Jews and religionists it is not the imposition of their truths on others that will solve everything, but a recognition that God in Christ on the cross was doing that by reconciling men to himself.

So what of us? Are we going to be on Dawkin’s side or the side of the religionists? There is no other choice for the man who will not come in repentance and faith to Jesus Christ. Either we follow Jesus, or for us the cross will be a stumbling block, weakness or folly.

_{^{¹ 1 Corinthians 1:18-24.
² Matthew 27:40-43}}