But what would convince you, my friend?

‘What would convince you to believe?’ It’s a question I once put to an atheist, not expecting a particularly thorough answer.

Clearly, though, he’d been asked the question before. His reply was instant, detailed and emphatic: ‘If God rearranged the stars in the sky to spell the Ten Commandments, then I would believe.’ When it comes to setting the bar for evidence, my friend set it to galactic heights. How to respond?

Actually his challenge prompted two simultaneous thoughts. (I’d like to point out this is unusual. I average two thoughts per month but I’d had three coffees that morning and my synapses sparked unexpectedly).

Response Number One: Are you aware that the current arrangement of stars is miraculous? Before we rate the improbability of constellations ordered as Hebrew consonants, consider how improbable it is for an ordered cosmos to exist at all, let alone for it to contain life, let alone for it to contain conscious life able to observe the order, then dismiss its significance. It’s bonkers, seriously. No rearrangement necessary. Already the stars (and our thoughts about them) represent miracles upon miracles.

But that’s not the response I voiced. Instead I went down a different path.

Response Number Two: Would you like such a God? If a supernatural power moved galaxies to tell you ‘Thou Shalt Not’, would you warm to such a Being?

His answer was immediate: ‘No! I could never like God, but if He proved His existence I’d have to acknowledge it.’

At that point my friend and I agreed. We both disliked the God he doubted. But the God he doubted is nothing like the Lord of the heavens.

The One who actually ‘stretches out the heavens’ reveals Himself through those heavens as outgoing in declaration, speech, voice, revelation, knowledge (Ps.19:1-4). And when the Psalmist zeros in on one particular aspect of the revelation, he points to the sun (v.5-6). It is the Light of the world, it’s like a Bridegroom and like a Champion who runs the course for us. Every day, the sun makes the High Priest’s journey from east to west in the sky. Day after day, night after night, the heavens are pouring forth speech. But it’s not, most fundamentally, ‘Thou shalt’. The heavens aren’t declaring your life, but the Lord’s.

When Paul summarises the starry message of Psalm 19, he calls it ‘the word of Christ’ (Rom.10:17-18). And this is the God who stands above us all: not a tyrant shouting down commands but a life-giving Lord.

That’s what I tried to convey to my atheist friend. The God he doubts is not the God of the heavens, not the God of Scripture, not the God of Jesus. When you think about it, none of the Biblical miracles are anything like what he requested (unless you count the devil’s suggestions in Matthew 4!). In the Bible, miracles are life-giving mercies – feeding the hungry, healing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing lepers. Writing ‘You will obey my authority’ in the sky is not how the God of the Bible rolls. All of which highlights how important it is in evangelism to establish which God we are talking about. Most of my evangelism with atheists involves me joining them in their unbelief. If God is like they imagine, count me out!

And this should help us to focus our efforts more fruitfully. I’ve wasted enough time in evangelism trying to corner unbelievers into grudging acknowledgements of ‘some kind of deity’. Even when it works, it doesn’t work. Worst of all it risks misrepresenting God entirely. His starry message is not ‘Behave!’ but ‘Behold!’ So let’s join the heavens in declaring a God who is Light and Life and let’s pray for the Spirit to open blind eyes to a Lord utterly worthy of our trust, adoration and praise. As Blaise Pascal said 350 years ago, we should make people ‘wish it were true, and then show that it is.’ That first step is vital.

Glen Scrivener is director and evangelist with ‘Speak Life’ in Eastbourne, which trains Christians in personal evangelism, in person, in podcasts and videos.