#clark bates

When I am struggling in life I often turn to the Psalms. They’re a safe place for all of my emotions. Am I scared? There’s a Psalm for that. Am I sad? There’s a Psalm for that. Am I angry? There’s a Psalm for that. Do I need to praise? There’s a Psalm for that. And what’s beautiful about the Psalms is that they don’t try to sugar coat the emotions or soft pedal my feelings. When the Psalmist is angry at God in Psalm 88 it doesn’t end with him being happy. Sometimes, suffering doesn’t end right away, and sometimes we aren’t happy with the outcome even when it does. The Psalmists new that, and it shows in their songs. But what else it shows is that God is okay with me pouring out every range of emotion on Him; even those that would get me in trouble in church.

How does apologetics play into this though? Because it’s through apologetics that I have the confidence for the very groundwork of all that gives me strength in my sorrows. I have spent many nights crying out to God for help. Why? How do I know that there is a God? Because I live in a world of design, amongst galaxies of design, possessing rational and logical thinking that could not come about through natural processes. Because I have a sense of injustice and wrong that points me to the need for an objective moral good and “right” ness that doesn’t exist in the material world.

I cry out to God for help because I know that He cares about His creation. I know this because of the cross of Christ. The life, death and crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth are the embodiment of a God that cares deeply about the sufferings of His people. I know this because Jesus wasn’t just crucified for being a political upstart but for claiming to be the very God who designed the universe! And he proved that it was true through his resurrection from the dead. I know that he was resurrected because a physical resurrection is the only answer for all the questions surrounding the onset and spread of Christianity. A hallucination can’t appear to 500 people in the same way. A hidden corpse or conspiracy cannot be maintained by 12-500 individuals, and it cannot explain the conversion of someone like Saul of Tarsus. A Jesus who never died on the cross is a physical impossibility. And if the resurrection is true it means that the God I cry out to hears me and cared enough about me to not leave me in my sins but come and suffer and die for me; and then to conquer death, so that I might have hope in eternity.

What’s more, this same Jesus that I am crying out to suffered in every way, just as I am suffering. He was mistreated. He faced injustice on a scale that I will never know. His family left him. He felt lonely and tired and scared. He even cried out to God to spare him from his final act of suffering. And yet, in all of this, he did not become self-righteous or vengeful, or even slip into pity; though he had every right to. I’m reminded that I’m following after the one who came to redeem the world but that the world hated him for it, and that suffering comes with the territory. I’m also reminded that I’m not crying out to someone who doesn’t know what I’m going through. To cry out to Jesus is to cry on the shoulder of a friend that not only knows me best, but experientially knows everything that I’m feeling.

How do I know any of that is true? Because it comes from the stories of his life, the gospels. It comes from the message of the Bible, the most well-attested book of ancient history. It comes from documents that show evidence of first-hand reporting and inter-connected coincidences that cannot be designed by a storyteller, let alone multiple storytellers far removed in time, location and experience. It comes from texts that possess more manuscript evidence than any existing body of work and have been repeatedly demonstrated to contain accurate details of the life, teachings, and death of Jesus.