Dr. Z, an OBGYN, was working with Doctors Without Borders in the Congo. Dr. Z had decided he simply had to go because he felt it was his calling as a Christian to help alleviate some of the enormous suffering in the world. For months Dr. Z labored tirelessly in a makeshift camp, desperately attempting to help the young girls and women who had been raped and mutilated by the interminable civil war of the region, a war fueled in part by the West’s insatiable demand for coltan and other precious metals from the region (got to get the materials to run our PlayStations and replace our cell phones every six months from somewhere, don’t we?).
For some reason, it was the eight year old that did it. When she was brought in her legs had been amputated and somebody had rammed a large blade up her vagina. As Dr. Z cradled her head in his knees it was clear that they could do nothing for her but deliver her a dose of morphine to help alleviate the pain. Perhaps it was because she was eight, the same age as his own daughter. Perhaps it was the look of anguish in her eyes. Perhaps it was the unforgettable screams of her desperate mother. But through it all he felt his faith splintering.
Later that night he sat up with a colleague drinking a glass of brandy. Suddenly the tears started rolling down his cheeks. He turned to the other man, a GP and a fellow Christian. And with his face wet with tears he whispered hoarsely, “I don’t know if there is a god.”
In that moment Dr. Z did not believe the proposition “There is a God.” According to some people, Paul makes claims in Romans 1 which are sufficient to say that Dr. Z is, in that moment, wickedly suppressing the natural revelation that calls out to him. From where exactly? The killing fields of the Congo?
