One of my best friends is an atheist. We met when we were English literature

undergraduates at the same university and we bonded over our mutual love of the

English poet Philip Larkin. My friend knew I was a Christian, I remember him once asking me, how is it that you can enjoy

somebody like Larkin who clearly didn't believe in God?

The answer to that question has to do with what theologians call common grace.

Common grace is the idea that God showers gifts not only on those who love him, but also on those who don't. God gave Philip Larkin a particular sensibility and a facility with words which meant that he could describe the world and human nature with uncommon insight and beauty.

He was in a very literal sense God's gift to poetry. There is of course a real irony here. Larkin was a man who was given a gift by someone

and then used that gift to claim that the giver didn't exist. But there's another irony. Every time Larkin wrote he was

revealing a genius that could only have come as far as I could see from God

himself the very person he was denying. Now why does God do this? Why give gifts

to people you know will never say thank you or who will take those gifts and try to attack you with them.

Like a child you kindly lift up from the ground who then uses that vantage point to

deliver a roundhouse kick to your larynx, not that I'm speaking from bitter experience.

God showers his gifts quite indiscriminately. This is what Jesus meant when he said that God makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good.

He sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

That is common grace. Grace because it's God's undeserved goodness.

Common because it's universal.

He lavishes all people with his kindness, even those who ignore, belittle, or are hostile toward him.

One of these acts of common grace, which God showers on the world, is to restrain sin and its effects. As the Dutch theologian Abraham Kuiper wrote,

when God negatively curbs the operations of Satan, death and sin, that's common grace.

So why does God do all this?

Well, first of all, common grace demonstrates

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