What Does God Believe about Atheists?

In the Fourteenth Psalm, King David said a number of interesting things about unbelief.

In the first verse, he said:
"The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God.'
They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds;there is none who does good."

He starts off without fanfare, proclaiming that unbelief is foolish. In our modern society, atheists proclaim their devotion to reason, to logic. But God is unimpressed with their declarations. Rather, He says, the problem is not logic, but righteousness. People believe in all sorts of crazy things, while proclaiming their rationality: aromatherapy, crystals power, aliens. But the question of God is in a class by itself. He has no place in their world of fantasies. Why? Because, in spite of their protestations, it isn't about logic. Rather, unlike crystals, candles, or little green men, the reality of God stands in the way of their hedonistic desires. 

David emphasizes this again in verse 3:
"They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt;
there is none who does good,not even one."

This is not news. We know from plenty of other places in Scripture that the natural man is wicked: Even as early as Genesis 6:5, we read, "The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." The difference is that David moves that idea from the field of morality to the field of rationality. Men make their choices by reasoning from their wicked desires, not from a concern for objective truth.

However, David rips the band-aid off the delusion of the wicked in verse 5:
"There they are in great terror,for God is with the generation of the righteous."

While the atheist pats himself on the back, congratulating himself for kicking God out of his consciousness, David exposes his real fear that the awareness of God will creep back, exposing the shallowness of both his reason and his hedonistic devotion. the Apostle Paul makes the same point in Romans 1:18: "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth." Just like squeezing one end of a balloon, the suppression of awareness at one point threatens to burst out at another, to the terror of the unbeliever.

David offers a solution, one that requires true reason, in verse 7: "Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion!" "Zion" is used in the Old Testament poetry as a reference to the church. the hope for the unbeliever is the Gospel proclamation sent out from God's people. What is the content of that proclamation? It is God's invitation to the wicked man, when he becomes weary of hedonism and hiding from the knowledge of God: "Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to Me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.  Incline your ear, and come to Me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant" (Isaiah 55:2-3).