Benefit of a Doubt

A few weeks ago, my wife Beth and I stopped at a coffee shop at Great Lakes Mall. Now this is not Starbucks, but it’s still kind of expensive (about $3.00 for a small cappuccino!). So we only get coffee there a few times a year as a treat. We stood in line and finally got to the cashier, a twenty-something-year-old woman who was also the manager. Beth ordered a regular coffee and I ordered a cappuccino with whipped cream on top. I pulled out a couple of customer loyalty cards (one for regular coffee and the other for specialty coffee) and handed them to the cashier. Now these cards have been riding around in my wallet for a couple of years. But every time, I get coffee at this chain, I get the cards punched and when all the card punches are complete, I’m supposed to get a free cup of coffee. I wasn’t quite due for free coffee yet, but the manager looked at the cards and then asked, "Where did you get these two punches?" "What?" "Where did you get these two punches? I know what our punch looks like and this is not it?" She handed me the cards. And sure enough, there were two punches on one of the cards that looked different from the other fifteen punches. I was dumbfounded. "Um. I guess it was punched here or in one of your stores in Pennsylvania or another state." "Well," she said, "I’m not going to accept it." Beth said, "What’s she talking about?" I said, "She’s accusing me of punching these cards myself." The manager assured me that she did not "make false accusations lightly." I assured her that the cards were punched at one of their stores, but she would not budge. So I cancelled my order. Beth dumped her coffee in the trash. We drove to Starbucks. And I wrote a letter to the coffee chain’s national office. All because the manager was not willing to give me the benefit of a doubt.

It’s hard to trust sometimes, isn’t it? Turn on the television and we see the latest scandal involving people in positions of authority: politicians, clergy, teachers, police, doctors, lawyers, you name it. A few weeks ago, The Plain Dealer rated many of the presidential TV ads with the label "a whiff of doubt." Meanwhile, the television pharmaceutical ads market miracle medicines and then say, "Ask your doctor about . . ." In other words, "Don’t trust your doctor to know about our product and to recommend it if appropriate. You be the expert and bug the doctor." It’s hard to trust sometimes.

Why? Part of the problem is that we simply have more information about each other than we used to. Mistakes that would have been kept quiet in the past, are now splashed across the Internet, TV, and newspaper for all to see. We get constant reminders of our sins and failings. It’s hard to trust sometimes.

Thomas had trouble trusting that Jesus had been resurrected. He said, "Hey, I’m not believing unless I see the nail marks in his hands, put my finger in the nail marks and my hand in his side." In other words, I’m not believing without some evidence.

I agree with Thomas. It’s hard to trust. And I’m not going to believe in Christ’s resurrection without some evidence. I’m not talking about absolute proof, mind you. But I want some evidence before I stake my life and death on the resurrection. Don’t you? So I’m going to do something very simple in this sermon. I’m going to make a few arguments for the existence of God and for the resurrection.

Not long after graduating from college, when I was about 22 years old, I began exploring the claims of the Christian faith seriously for the first time in my life. I already had faith. What I needed was some intellectual backing for what I believed. "Faith seeks understanding," said the early church father, Anselm. That’s what I needed.

A new church friend of mine introduced me to a little book written in 1943 by the Cambridge University literature professor and Christian covert C. S. Lewis. The book is entitled Mere Christianity. Using non-technical language, Lewis makes a clear, brief argument for the Christian faith.

Here are some of his points in a nutshell. He says, all over the world, in every culture, people have a sense of right and wrong. And they have the sense that sometimes they do not do what they ought to do.

This sense of right and wrong, good and evil means that there are absolute values. Different religions argue some of the fine points of those values, but they do agree that there is such a thing as right and wrong, good and evil, and thus there is something outside us that causes us to feel this way. For example, if I were to steal from you, you would say, "That’s wrong. That’s bad." And I would understand your argument. You would be appealing to an absolute value. And any time we make a moral argument claiming that something is good or bad, right or wrong, we’re actually admitting that we believe in some sense of goodness and rightness beyond ourselves. We’re admitting some sense of the divine, some sense of God. (This is particularly frustrating for atheists who claim there is no God, but who also want to argue for some sort of absolute values of "goodness" and "rightness.")

Once we agree that there is a God, then everybody has to decide what kind of God we’re dealing with. As Lewis pointed out in 1943, many folks cling to the vague idea of God as "Life-force." They imagine this Life-force created us, sustains us, but makes no claims or demands upon us. Since we have no expectations, no responsibilities, we have no sins either. And when we die we’re just absorbed back into the Life-force, no questions asked, no judgment. What a plan! But deep down, we know better than that, don’t we?

Christians believe that God is not merely a Life-force but a living Presence we cannot fully know by wandering around in the woods, fishing in a stream, or putting on a golf course (as pleasant as those activities are). God is an intelligent, loving, and ultimately all-ruling presence. God’s guidance, expectations, love, and forgiveness have been revealed in the Law and the Prophets, and finally in God’s very Son, the crucified and resurrected Christ.

Can anybody prove that Christ was resurrected? No. But through the centuries millions of Christians have been willing to sacrifice their lives for that belief. And millions upon millions of Christians have been shaped into braver, kinder, more generous, more just, and more loving people. As John wrote, "that through believing you may have life in his name."

Of course, the hardest question the Christian faith (or any faith) has to address is the problem of suffering and evil. Lewis believed, and the church has always believed, that, of all the faiths, the Christian faith has the best answer to that question. The cross. Christians point to the cross and say that God has taken the deepest, darkest suffering and evil, redeemed it, transformed it to bring about the salvation of the world in the resurrected Christ. If God can do that in Christ, God will surely be at work to bring good out of the suffering and evil you and I experience, and in the suffering and evil you and I cause.

Let me try another spin on the problem of suffering and evil. In one of his novels, Father Andrew Greeley has this quote from a Christian thinker. He said, "‘Just as believers in a beneficent deity should be haunted by the problem of natural evil, so agnostics, atheists, pessimists and nihilists should be haunted by the problem of friendship, love, beauty, truth, humor, compassion, fun. Never forget the problem of fun.’" (Andrew Greeley, quoting John Horgan in The Bishop Goes to the University, 116.)

"The problem of fun," I love that. If there is no God, where does fun come from? Heck, if there is no God, why is there something rather than nothing? The Christian faith is for thinking people. The Christian faith makes sense. In fact, the Christian faith is what helps us make sense of the world.

Novelist John Updike worships in an Episcopalian church. He says, "I just accept the reassurance . . . I remember the times when I was wrestling with these issues that I would feel crushed. I was crushed by the purely materialistic, atheistic account of the universe . . . I am very prone to accept all that the scientists tell us, the truth of it, the authority of all the men and women spent trying to understand more about atoms and molecules. But I can’t quite make the leap of unfaith, as it were, and say, ‘This is it. Carpe diem. (seize the day), and tough luck.’" (Interview with Hillel Italie on the Internet, 6-3-06)

Thomas was looking for evidence that Christ had been resurrected. "I’m not believing unless I see and touch the marks in his hands and put my hand in his side." So Christ gave Thomas the benefit of a doubt. Christ made a special trip back, even through a locked door, to help Thomas and his faith. And Thomas shouted his faith in response, "My Lord and my God!"

How about you and me? Does our faith seek understanding? What are we doing to develop that understanding? Our Sunday School classes are good places to talk about it and to grow. And I’d be happy to sit down and talk with you about it too (even over a cup of coffee). Sometimes it’s not easy to trust. But God gives us the benefit of a doubt. And if a locked door didn’t stop Christ from helping Thomas come to faith, nothing will stop the resurrected Christ from coming to us again and again that we too may have life in his name. Amen.

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