No God

I have a friend who is an atheist. Says that there is no God as I call a God. How could there be? Evolution and chaos rule and to him there is no evidence to there being any supreme being.

Though there is a lot of commentary that says Psalm 14 begins by speaking of the atheist, I don't think that's what David is throwing out here. Spurgeon seems to be on my side as well, so I'm in great company.

The fool has said in his heart, "there is no God." This isn't someone who goes around defending his belief that there is no God, it is one who has said it in his heart. This is the person who lives however he wants whenever he wants whether or not he is disobeying one of God's laws or not. The evidence is in the word the psalmist uses for God here. He uses "Elohim" not "Jehovah." This suggests that David is talking about the one who is great with talking about the God of the universe; the creator, the one who put the stars in the heaven. But also the one who lives without regard for the will of God. "Deity in the abstract is not so much te object o atttack, as the covenant, personal, ruling and governing presence of God in the world. God as a ruler, lawgiver, worker, Saviour, is the butt at which the arrows of human wrath are shot," says Spurgeon.

The fool, then, is the one who speaks as though there is a God, but lives as though there is not one. This, Spurgeon says is the reason that there is so much suffering, so much injustice in the world. The psalm 14:1 says at the end that there are "none that do good."

Sins of omission must abound where transgressions are rige. Those who do the things which they ought not to have done are sure to leave undone those things which they ought to have done. What a picture of our race is this! Save only where grace reigns, there is none that doeth good; humaity, fallen and debased, is a desert without an oasis, a night without a star, a dunghill without a jewel, a hell without a bottom.-C.H. Spurgeon

In other words, if we are willfully doing the things that we shouldn't do, there is no way that we are working toward the other side where we do the things that go against our human nature and do the right thing. There is no way we are reaching out to those on the underside of power and caring for the hurting because we have said in our deepest parts that we don't need to care about the things of God.