Atheist admits God changes people

With growing attacks on Christianity by secularists during Christmastime, and with a vast wasteland of mostly anti-God media daily encouraging them, it's been an interesting holiday season. Who ever thought Christmas would become controversial?

But right in the middle of this growing skepticism against spiritual things, something amazing happened, which seems to have gone mostly unnoticed.

An atheistic columnist for the London Times courageously admitted in December that Christianity remains the best hope for the African people. Why? Because, he says, it truly changes them.

Matthew Parris, who spent his childhood in Nyasaland (now Malawi), recently returned 45 years later to observe one of The Times Christmas Appeal's charities called Pump Aid, which provides water pumps to needy villages.

Parris, who also traveled Africa extensively during his college years, always respected the Christian missionaries for their practical help (he even made sure to camp near their missions for safety reasons on his travels), but he now admits that they provide much more. In his article, As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God, he characterizes the African mindset as still in bondage to "tribal groupthink" and admits that it will have to be replaced with something else if Africa is to stand tall in the new century.

And the very thing he proposes to replace it with is... Christianity. Why? Because it provides the individual a personal link to a personal God.

As Parris puts it, Christianity's "teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being" has the power to break through the tribalism and pessimism of a people who feel they have no control over natural events.

He ends this article by saying, "Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete."

This remarkable admission grew out of Matthew Parris' observation of a true life replica of a Biblical principle. The Apostle Paul told the Corinthian believers that a strong dose of spirituality (being personally linked with the Father) would end their quarreling, strife and division (see 1 Corinthians 3:1-3 & compare it to 2:12-16).

When believers (and churches) major in spiritual growth rather than controversies, we become interconnected in healthy relationships within the Body. The Spirit can work, not being grieved (Ephesians 4:30) nor quenched (1 Thess. 5:19) by our foolishness in chasing selfish issues and agendas.

And when the Spirit works, life in the church flourishes in healthy ways. Love becomes the glue holding us together in a heaven-like existence where each individual believer has dignity and worth.

If even atheists recognize true life when they see it...