Ball tampering and the existence of God

Many people in our country have grown disillusioned with religion with all its competing religious ideas, and I don’t blame them.

Maybe you consider yourself an atheist and don’t believe that God exists; or an agnostic and you believe that even if God existed, we can’t know him.

Maybe you are militantly opposed to religion, especially Christianity.

Allow me to give an argument for the existence of a good, creator God.

The evidence is the Australian Cricket team’s ball tampering.

Or more precisely, the evidence is people’s reaction to the Australian Cricket team’s ball tampering.

Cameron Bancroft was caught on camera with what looked like sandpaper in his hand.  His aim was to roughen one side of the cricket ball to create extra spin.

Cricket fans around the world have been up in arms and massively upset.

I would think that if human beings were simply randomly evolved organisms from mucous slime over millions of years, we would think that ball tampering (especially when you’re not caught) is a great idea for gaining the evolutionary advantage.

In evolutionary theory you must gain the advantage, or die.

I dare say that if we were evolved from slime, we would be in admiration of the Australian Cricket team for their ingenuity.

But we are appalled.

We have an inbuilt sense of right and wrong.  We have an intrinsic longing for justice.  We have a deep-down desire for fairness.

Why is that?

The Bible tells us that we are created by a good, just, fair God.

Therefore, we crave goodness, justice and fairness.

Our 4-year-old and 2-year-old cry “NO-FAIR” if we give one more sweets than the other.

We get upset at ball-tampering.

Here then is the great problem that the religions of our world seek to address.

We don’t always act fairly or justly or in a good way.

We often do the opposite of what we know is right.

The Bible calls this sin.  It is rebellion against God

The religions of the world seek to offer various ways that way we as human beings, despite our failings, can supposedly be right with a holy God.

But Christianity is not like the religions of this world that give us advice or rules or a philosophy.

Christianity is unique because it is centered, not around advice or rules or a philosophy, but around a real historical person who lived, died, and did not stay dead.

Jesus died to save us. He rose to rule. He will return to Judge.

What makes Christianity unique, true and unavoidable, is Easter.

What makes Christianity unique, true and unavoidable, is the death, resurrection and future return of Jesus.

Jesus didn’t teach about a way to God, he said that he himself was the way to God.

The reason Jesus is the way, and the only way, to God our creator is because of his death, which was the only acceptable sacrifice for sins.

But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. (Hebrews 10:12-13)

You and I are both guilty of something much worse than ball tampering. We have been found guilty of rebellion and treason, not by a Cricket Association, but by God.

However, because of God’s great kindness, he gave his Son to bear the penalty for our sin by dying on a cross so that we need not be suspended from His presence forever.

Jesus is waiting in heaven until all his enemies are finally subdued and then he will return to judge.

Either Jesus takes God’s anger for you or you take God’s anger yourself on that day.  But be warned: taking God’s anger yourself is like standing in front a tsunami wave of wrath. The Bible calls it the second death.

The symbol for Christianity is not a ladder. We don’t earn our way to God by following advice or rules, or by adhering to a philosophy.

The symbol for Christianity is a cross.  God himself has opened the way.

 

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