You Gotta Believe

Atheist or Not, You Already Have More Faith Than You Realize

One day back in the 1970s a nihilist came to visit Francis Schaeffer at L'Abri. Like so many skeptics Schaeffer had encountered, this young man insisted that God did not exist. But as an extreme nihilist, he went much further, maintaining that even the physical world is an illusion. Schaeffer listened intently as the man expounded on the unreality of it all, then he issued the man a challenge, essentially noting that if he were so convinced of the truth of nihilism, then he should behave accordingly. No worldview is worth its salt if it cannot be lived out in a practical way. So he told him to "go live like the nihilist you say you are." After just a few hours the man returned to Schaeffer and...