As I write this, I am reflecting back on a tumultuous week, one marked by several tragedies.

A beautiful young woman in our church died in a traffic accident. She was an innocent passenger in a car. Her death has left her single mother without any children. The whole church community came together in grief and love… and the mother, a stranger to church, was embraced by their love. 

Days later, I received a phone call about a young man, (the grandson of dear friends) who had been taken to hospital Emergency after a terrible accident. Rather beautifully, he was conscious enough to ask for his grandfather. Although the young man was not a follower of Christ, his grandfather was… and the young man now hungered for everything his grandfather represented. 

On the same day, I learned of the anger and bitterness of a young woman towards Christianity. She had lost her faith, embraced a non-Christian lifestyle, and was now shoring up her position by hurling atheistic half-truth claims at Christianity on social media. Tragically, she was exhibiting a bitterness of spirit that is horribly corrosive to the soul. Her Christian friends have seen it and it has left them greatly saddened.

And in recent weeks, I learned of the betrayal of two wives by their husbands. Both men had walked away from their Christian faith some years ago. The justification for their adultery makes perfect sense in a non-Christian world where “personal happiness” is the final, and only determinant of what is “good”.

It’s been quite a week! 

What am I to make of it as a Christian?

Perhaps this: When dark clouds come, no one is doing very well without God’s love, truth, hope and help.

So, to whom will you turn when you are in intensive care, when you lose a child, or when you are abused and betrayed? Whatever you do, please don’t be indifferent about God.

I recently listened to the testimony of how a friend of mine, a highly successful author, came to faith. It was a terrific story that included an account of her, an adopted child, being reconnected with her birth mother. She didn’t initially want to be reconnected and was happy to be classed as a “hostile non-seeker”. As I reflected on the phrase, “hostile non-seeker”, I remember thinking that it perfectly describes the new culture of atheism I am increasingly coming across. It is the culture of uninformed, visceral anti-Christianism. (How’s that for a new word?) The neo-atheism of today has, it seems, severed all ties to the Enlightenment and to rationality. Truth has been abandoned in favour of ignorance, and ridicule is now its only discipline. This is perhaps not surprising given that the whole notion of truth has been trashed by society.

I confess to being a little irked when bloody-minded ignorance masquerades as social sophistication. But, sadly, I have long since ceased to be amazed at the non-thinking of many who attack Christianity and declare themselves to be indifferent to the historical reality of Jesus Christ.

It has been my experience that when tragedy tests the “world view” by which people live, no one is getting on well without him.