KNOWING GOD
The Rev. Harold Shepherd, CD, M.A., S.T.M., LL.B., LL.M.,
Ph.D.
Sermon from September 12, 2004
Fools say in their hearts, "There is
no God." They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there
is no one who does good. The LORD looks down from heaven on
humankind to see if there are any who are wise, who seek
after God. They have all gone astray, they are all alike
perverse; there is no one who does good, no, not one. Have
they no knowledge, all the evildoers who eat up my people
as they eat bread, and do not call upon the LORD? There
they shall be in great terror, for God is with the company
of the righteous. You would confound the plans of the poor,
but the LORD is their refuge. O that deliverance for Israel
would come from Zion! When the LORD restores the fortunes
of his people, Jacob will rejoice; Israel will be glad.
Psalm 14:1-7
The more things change, the more they stay the same. The
psalmist exclaims that fools say in their hearts that there
is no God. They do not call upon the God of Israel, but
rather attack the people of God and invade their land. They
have no knowledge of God, do not seek him, and engage in
wrong conduct. The psalmist is not necessarily implying
that the people he is criticising do not believe in the
existence of any deity, as this would not have been true of
any people in the ancient world. Each would have been
committed to a particular patronal deity of the nation. The
point that the psalmist was making was that, although they
may pledge allegiance to their national deity, they deny
that that God of Israel is the Supreme Being to whom all
humans owe allegiance. As a result, they persecute
God’s people out of ignorance. The psalmist looks
optimistically to the day in which God will restore the
fortunes of his people and deliver Israel. This would fit
well during the period of the exile after which God’s
people had been “devoured” and the exilic
community looked forward to the day in which God would
restore Israel to Judea. In addition, the first great
affirmation of monotheism in the Hebrew Bible can be found
in literature that dates to the exilic period (the
Deutero-Isaiah, and possibly Jeremiah). Before the exile,
Israel was cautioned to be faithful to the God of Israel,
although the existence of other national deities was
accepted. This belief, sometimes referred to as henothism
(see, for example, Psalm 82:1), denotes allegiance to one
God, though not necessarily the denial of the existence of
others. However, Exilic and post-exilic Judaism clearly
affirmed that the God of Israel is the Supreme Being and
that no other deities exist. Psalm 14 reflects this view.
Given the aspiration of future deliverance, it likely was
written in Babylonia during the exile and represents the
contempt that the exiles felt for Babylonian religion and
for the persecution of the Jewish community. The
psalmist’s categorisation of those who do not pledge
allegiance to the God of Israel as atheists is similar to
views held in ancient Rome. For them, Christians were
atheists because they did not believe in the Greco-Roman
pantheon of gods. In the ancient world, nobody would
publicly declare that they did not believe in the existence
of a higher divine power.
This is no longer the case today. The first step to
divorcing the world from the creative power of God took
place in the seventeenth century with the Age of Reason and
the development of Deism. According to this approach, God
created the world, then withdrew, much like a watchmaker
would create the clock, wind it, then walk away. By the
nineteenth century, contemporary atheism emerged in
academic treatises and popular culture. German philosophers
like Feuerbach and Nietsche are but two examples. Today,
atheists comprise a significant percentage of the general
population. According to Statistics Canada, the percentage
of the Canadian population who identify themselves as
atheists, agnostics or those with no religion rose from
7.4% in 1981 to 16.2% in 2001. During the same period,
those who identified themselves as Christians dropped from
90% of the population to 72% Hindus rose from .3% to 1%,
Muslims rose from .4% to 2% and Jews dropped from 1.2% to
1.1%. Among Christians, a drop from 47.3% to 43.2% was
recorded among Roman Catholics. Hardest hit were
Protestants who dropped from 41.2% of the population in
1981 to 29.2% in 2001. Between 1999 and 2001, the Anglican
Church of Canada declined by 7% to 2,035,500. The United
Church declined by 8% to 2,839,125. The largest growth in
any religion was found among Wiccans and other Neopagans
who increased by 281% to 21,080 members. Between 1999 and
2001, Muslims grew by 129% to 579,640. About 21% of
Canadians say that they attend religious meetings weekly.
From these statistics, it appears that atheists form the
second largest faith community (defining atheism as a form
of religion), consisting of about 4.8 million Canadians.
The largest is the Roman Catholic Church at 12.8 million.
Third is the United Church with 2.8 million members, with
the Anglican Church in fourth place with 2 million members
(i.e. those who identify themselves as Anglicans, not
necessarily how many are on Parish lists). This contrasts
sharply with the situation in 1901 when 98% of the
population identified themselves as being Christians. These
statistics show that Canadian society is very much
pluralistic from a religious point of view. Traditional
Christianity has lost considerable ground to atheism,
neopaganism or other new age religions. Many find that
Christian dogma to be archaic and out of touch with
postmodern world views that reject the idea of absolutes.
As Christians, we are failing in mission to present the
good news of Christ as a fresh, vibrant and living message
that can change and enrich our lives with the power of the
Holy Spirit. When we have invited Jesus into our hearts, we
taste of living water that alone can quench our
thirst.