My property is blessed with beautiful trees. But trees get old, like us. We became concerned about one, more than 100 feet high, leaning lovingly towards our house. Time to take the old oak down.
I called my friend, Joseph Lampkin, 85 years young. He’s fair-priced, prompt, and efficient. He has a few younger men to climb trees and dispose of the remains, but he handled the chainsaw that barked its way through 150 years of rings, and laid the tree exactly where he predicted.
It was hollow. Heart rot, they call it. I can still see Mr Lampkin shaking his head. “Brother, the Lord preserved you. The winds come right through that gap. He was keeping that tree from crushing your house.”
Although he’s licensed and bonded (“faith without works is dead,” James 2:26), Mr Lampkin observed, “The Lord’s first in my business.”
As I examined the core of that mighty oak, I couldn’t help but think about our beloved country. How tall it stands! How blessed! And yet…
At America’s heart is the decaying rot of unbelief. Unbelief isn’t an issue of the mind. It’s a heart problem. “For with your heart you believe and are justified.” (Romans 10:10, BSB)
I can’t muster enough faith to be an atheist. One fellow told me, “Atheists don’t believe in faith.” Believe. Faith. What a strange thing to say. In the Bible, “believe” and “faith” are the same word! His belief didn’t include belief. It certainly didn’t include hope or certainty.
What’s happened to the so-called “New Atheists”? They’re not new anymore. Two of them, Dennett and Hitchens, sadly went to meet their Maker. Snarly Richard Dawkins isn’t resonating with Gen Z.
The only one with some kick left is Sam Harris. Unfortunately, he painted himself into a philosophical corner, saying free will doesn’t exist. I wanted to hear his latest lecture, but it turns out I didn’t have the freedom to attend.
Enter some new New Atheists. “Cosmic Skeptic” Alex O’Connor is refreshingly respectful but remarkably predictable, plying the same old arguments. Along with Drew McCoy, aka “The Genetically Modified Skeptic,” they’re the infidels du jour.
McCoy’s claim? He used to be an Evangelical. “The presence of God was something I felt pretty often.…I mean, I had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.”
Then he realized that people of other faiths felt similarly. “I was dishonest to continue to think that my experiences were special,” he concluded. So he just decided to unfriend Jesus? If so, he never really knew Him.
In God’s business, “the mind conceives what the heart first believes.” You can’t prove His truth from the outside. The skeptic says, “If I see it, I’ll believe it.” Jesus said, “Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see?” (John 11:40). When faith believes God, the evidence is obvious.
Unbelief starts small, like tree rot. It sounds clever to say, “I keep an open mind.” But G.K. Chesterton observed: “The purpose of an open mind, like an open mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.”
Here’s something solid. Jesus said, “He who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.” (John 5:24)
Don’t confuse being open-minded with being hollow.
Article published August 9, 2025 in the Commercial Dispatch.