I recently heard about an atheist who prays to Jesus because “there is power in his name.”

Can you imagine anything more strange than that statement? A person that denies all things divine or supernatural, prays to a 1st century construction worker because of a mysterious “power in his name.” This makes no sense. Logically, it is indefensible. If one believes there is no God, there can be no “power in his name.”

Except he is right. There is something about Jesus. There is something about him. There is something about his name. We cannot stop looking at his life and talking about his words and thinking about his otherworldly-ness. Strangely, this is especially true for many who have turned away. They feel compelled to look again over their shoulder while walking away. They have to check now and then to make sure he’s not who he said he was. Reading atheist message boards, there is much discussion of Jesus in a constant effort to explain away his divinity. Why is that?

Because there is power in his name.

An atheist can stumble onto religious truth without even trying, as Jesus himself said, “All things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.” (Let’s pause here for a quick aside, so I don’t sound like I’m on the Prosperity Gospel bandwagon. This doesn’t mean you will receive money or power, it means you will receive spiritual gifts. Recall Jesus praying and fasting in the desert, rejecting the three great temptations: 1. material comfort, 2. fame and honor, and 3. power.)

A non-believer can still feel the urge to ask for God’s help. The notion to pray is the part of religion that we can’t shake even after we turn away. For modern people living in comfort, the idea to pray only arrives in desperate times, in a transactional model, where we want to put in a coin into God to get a drink when we’re thirsty, only to toss God away like an empty can once satisfied. Many of us today who live in a normal house with modern appliances live in greater comfort than any king or queen throughout our entire human history, but we don’t consider that when we watch Netflix and eat ice cream from the freezer while sitting in front of the gas fireplace on a winter night. We are more likely to unearth this desire to pray when comfort is taken away. A time of uncertainty is where many discover the need for God, but like the parable says, the seeds of faith can be sown on a barren path, or on rocky ground, or in seemingly good soil that is riddled with thorns and thistles. Our prayer may start and end with a crisis, or it may continue through suffering but later wither and die under a new kind of stress. The urge may carry us a long time, through much growth, but then amid success, weeds can spring up and choke us before we bear any fruit.

Both suffering and success are equal tests, and depending on how they are received, each can either heighten or reduce our relationship with God. Hitting bottom can provide a spark for the light of faith, and can be a great blessing in hindsight. As many reverted atheists and addicts come to learn, there is power in Jesus’ name when you have no where left to turn. Success on the other hand can make you forget to give thanks, as a sense of self-sufficiency can shove aside any idea of grace or blessing. Wealth and honor are the weeds that convince us we did it all ourselves, or that we pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps, and just as suffering and struggle can cause us to ask, “Where was God?” so too can prosperity.

In suffering, we blame God. In success, we ignore God. We have even tried to kill God, only to find out he rises again. We can blame him, but we cannot ignore or kill him. And that is why the strange notion to pray comes back to the non-believer, because his heart is wired for it, try as he might to rid himself of the one thing that will satisfy.

When Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” even a great doubter can sense that something is different about Jesus than anyone else who ever lived. Great ascetics, seekers, teachers, and storytellers have lived in various eras, but we don’t pray to those people. We don’t pray to those persons, but maybe we adopt their ideas or methods of living. We don’t pray to Buddha or Confucius or Socrates or Isaiah or Moses as being infused with the divine, but we see them as souls who could reach out to the divine, or the divine reached out to them, or both. They sensed the Higher Power, they communicated with something beyond the world, and they articulated something that we can all feel. But we don’t consider them to be supernatural beings themselves.

Take John the Baptist, for instance, who fasted and prayed and preached repentance. He was a great ascetic and inspiring spiritual leader. But no one gets fired up and angry and denies the existence of John the Baptist. Families don’t split over him. No one’s life changes radically once they read about John the Baptist, except in the light of Christ. Believers and non-believers alike do not feel even a fraction of the push or pull toward the name John the Baptist as they do to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. We do not cry out to John the Baptist, or for that matter any other human being, like Albert Einstein, or Martin Luther King, or the President, or any other earthly name. There is only one name in which we believe God took human form and walked with us here on earth.

So yes, there is power in Jesus’ name. It is undeniable. He said he would bring a sword that divides us, and sure enough we see this every day. Families and countries are divided over who Jesus was, because if his words are true, then the world changes radically. Concern about John the Baptist and his beheading is not a daily conversation across the world. The death of Socrates does not stir us to hold ritual celebrations worldwide. There is only one person that causes such devotion and change, and it is because he said, “I am the way.” He did not say, “Here’s the list of things you need to do to live a good life.” He showed us how to live, yes, but that is secondary to the belief in him as the son of God, which he repeatedly stated as the prerequisite. “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”

When I think of these moments where doubters discover the notion to look toward Jesus (and especially for one who take the next step to pray to him), the thought that comes to me is the quotation that unnerves me the most, even as a believer. An atheist who prays to Jesus would surely enjoy reading the line: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.”

For non-believers, that line sounds pretty positive at first, as it calls out religious hypocrites as not being saved. The second phrase, on the other hand, should concern us all. Only the ones who carry out the will of God will be saved. In light of Jesus two commandments to “Love God” and “Love one another,” this means we have a two-part task. That line gives me a shudder, even as a revert, particularly when I go on to Jesus’ followup line: “Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.’”

For the modern people that enjoy the idea of the “chill” Jesus, this is one of those difficult passages where he plainly suggests that hell is a real thing, and some of us are going there. Who am I kidding, he actually suggests that many of us are going there. But as we cherry pick the hippy-Jesus lines that suit our culture of Hakuna Matata, we forget about this declaration and the other ten places in the Gospel where Jesus talks about dividing the sheep from the goats, the wheat from the chaff, and assorted other obvious metaphors regarding souls being judged and sent into heaven or hell. When we do not live in line with the Gospel, with faith, while doing God’s will, it seems we may hear that line on the last day, “Depart from me, you evildoer.”

I will admit: I know various atheists who live virtuous lives, more so than some professed Christians. The idea of being “Good without God” is true, it can be done and is done all the time. The problem is that if you read the accounts of Jesus’ life, the one thing he criticizes repeatedly is the outward appearance of “goodness” when the interior state is godless. The “good without God” mantra of today is attractive because what it really translates to is “all things are permitted.” It aligns perfectly with the idea of “if I’m not hurting anyone but myself, it’s ok.” This belief is held by millions, and I’m not talking solely about drug addicts on the fringe of our society, but men who condemn others’ sin while they browse porn daily instead of investing in their marriages. In fact, the state of the world today is edging toward a place where all is permitted but nothing is forgiven. Looking good, acting righteous, saying the right things, paying taxes, volunteering, doing charity work: not one of these “Good without God” ways of life satisfy the commandment of Jesus, explicitly stated, the very first commandment, to “love God.” This first commandment is a non-negotiable, and there is no kingdom of heaven for those that disregard it, whether you are “good” or not. This is a difficult concept of faith, but the critical step. And for many to “love God” seems a bridge too far, so they fall back to the fortifications of self. If I had a nickel for every time I walked that route…I’d have a lot of nickels.

This is a hard pill to swallow for those who cannot cross the river of disbelief. This is the port to faith that first must be reached, or you can never find the narrow gate that Jesus speaks about. Heck, I’m still groping around for the narrow gate. But one thing is very clear to me: people cannot be coerced to faith. This is not possible. I don’t think that human beings can even be scared into faith, which is why the hellfire and brimstone only can get a heart so far. I do believe, now after turning back, that the saying “fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom,” but without question that fear of God must be rooted in love of God. Consider children who are constantly shouted at and always face stiff consequences for all bad behavior. They do not learn love, they learn how to lie, and act virtuous solely to avoid punishment. However, when meted out properly and well, a loving parent’s discipline instills a different kind of fear, which might more properly be thought of as duty. A loving God inspires a sense of duty, and a joy in fulfilling those requirements. As I’ve mentioned before, I once thought the devil and hell were not real, until I found that I could not escape my flaws and walked like Dante all the way down into a hell. And it was there and then that I discovered, to my utter astonishment, that prayer could solve my most difficult challenges. I was stunned. Having tried everything else, it was this simple and free act of taking action as if I had faith that granted the gift of faith itself. What a surprise to discover that this is one of those “learn by doing” things, not that different from thinking about playing piano versus actually playing the piano, or like imagining yourself doing woodworking instead of getting some lumber and a saw. Of course, I only took those actions because it was a last resort, but when people say that “faith is a gift,” I formerly rolled my eyes, and now I nod in agreement. Oddly enough, that devil and hell that I did not believe, I now believe in, and the fear of hell never pulled me toward God until I was fully immersed in the pit and snares of this same devil. Catching a glimpse of another way, I could see the escape. Now, let me pause: for non-believers, you may call this cosmology and belief as being merely a “metaphorical truth,” that the devil or hell are metaphors that provide simple-minded folks like myself images on how to behave. The scientist may consider these metaphors as a kind of behavioral therapy. Call it what you like; as for me, I am sticking with the Trinitarian God as the solution to battling demons, avoiding despair, and falling into the fire.

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