We all as humans have something in common. We live in a world where we will one day be no more. For the atheist, he believes he will cease to exist; for the believer, he goes on. But what about the agnostic?

To the atheist—I believe there are plenty of arguments for the existence of God, not just any God but Yahweh, the God of the Bible. That is not the path I choose to go down today. Today I’m addressing the agnostics, specifically the agnostics that hope God is real. See, there are a lot of people out there that don’t even want God to be real, and I have my own theories on why that is, but that’s a topic for another day.

Agnosticism is the adoption of a particular stance of “not knowing”. With that being said, if there is any hope in your heart for God, this is the most illogical place to end your journey. Let me explain.

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1)

Faith is not about knowing; faith is about hoping. It’s believing without seeing. I believe I’m going to wake up tomorrow just like I did this morning. I don’t know that I will; I can’t see into the future, but I have hope that I will. Because of that hope, my actions follow suit. I prepare for tomorrow; I look forward to tomorrow. Not a single person on this earth knows what happens after we die; it’s not possible to know. There are some nonbelievers, believers, and stronger believers, but everyone falls on a spectrum of sorts; we are confined to this spectrum as long as we are human. To be content in claiming the title agnostic is to claim you don’t know and don’t care what happens after you die.

For the sake of this blog post I’m going to break agnostics into two categories. Let’s call them “hopeless agnostics” and “hopeful agnostics”.

If you had the ability to choose, choose for God to be real or to simply cease to exist after death, what would you choose? Would you choose God? Would you serve Him? Would you worship Him? If your answer to these questions is yes, there is hope. I want to encourage you to choose to live as if it were true even if you can’t see it, even if you can’t prove it.

Besides hoping, there is something else that characterizes faith. Obedience. Faith isn’t about knowing; it’s about living your life as if the things you hope for are in fact truth. It’s about submitting yourself to the God you hope to be real. People who choose to be content in agnosticism would rather sacrifice being with God in the end than submit to His authority, live by His standards, and be wrong. The truth is though, if you’re wrong, you would never know because you wouldn’t be here anyway. Everyone, everyone will one day cease to exist in this world.

I want to share a story from my past. I was young, and so was the young man I believed I was in love with. We had a very chaotic on and off relationship. The fact that he claimed to be agnostic, and I was a Christian was the main reason (I believed) we couldn’t be together, and I made countless attempts to evangelize him. Ironically enough, instead of evangelizing him, I was actually evangelizing myself. It was during this time God drew nearer to me. The closer I got to Him, the further I drifted from him. I realized if I truly believed in God and His Word, I wouldn’t have fallen for him to begin with. Realizing we couldn’t be together, I still wanted to convince him of God’s existence. It was (and still is) one of my deepest desires to be able to help someone in that way.

I don’t remember exactly when it was, but I asked him a question, a very specific question that I should have asked from the very beginning. It was one simple question that would have completely altered my course of action regarding him from the get go. I asked, “Don’t you at least hope God is real?” And I’ll never forget his response. He said “Not really. I don’t care either way.” Those words were like a knife in my heart. I hadn’t ever truly mourned him like I did in that moment because it was in that moment I realized we were incompatible in this world and the hereafter as well; I realized that it was hopeless, and he was beyond repair. He didn’t want God to be real, so he had no reason to seek and no reason to believe.

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. (Matthew 7:7) Keep knocking, and He will answer!

For all the hopeful agnostics out there, I pray this isn’t the end of your journey, but the beginning. Read, research, ask questions, pray. Prayer takes faith, and God responds to faith. It may not be immediate, but the more you hope for something, the more you are willing to seek, the more you are willing to pursue. Believe me when I tell you that God will reveal Himself to you when you choose to walk in faith, the undying hope of things not seen.

YouTube channels rooted in thorough research I recommend for the hopeful agnostics: Mike Winger, Apologia Studios, and Melissa Dougherty