For years I was a campus youth minister. I’d stroll the grounds of a university looking for some bored student who was sitting on lobby furniture. Then I’d walk up and try to engage him in faith-friendly dialogue. As you can imagine, most politely gave me the brush-off. However some did talk with me. We would end up volleying ideas and objections back and forth until finally came the moment of the trump card. You could tell they were saving it for that crucial point when they would triumph over “preacher dude” and prove that faith in essence, was a ridiculous notion. “Prove God right here and now and I’ll believe it,” more than one of them said to me. That was it.
The request always meant to provide a special effects display that would prove to their skeptical soul the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Being in this universe. Typically it also indicated our intelligent conversation had come to an end. Not because I couldn’t prove God, mind you, but because you can’t really prove much of anything on the spot. Most people know this and know the difficulty of it, so that’s where they go when it’s time to lay that last card down and win the game.
If the student had asked for me to prove the existence of an island nation off the coast of Africa called Madagascar, I wouldn’t have been able to do it, either. Imagine the hardship. I could cite common knowledge (everyone knows that there’s a Madagascar), but then he’d say it was a common delusion, something everyone had been fooled into believing. I could show him a map but he’d say those same deluded men had drawn it. I could get someone from Madagascar to come and talk to my doubting friend but he’d say the guy was lying.
Proof isn’t just a theological problem; it’s an everything problem.
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