The title of this blog is “Simple Answers”, but don’t be misled, we will wrestle with some difficult questions and I plan to offer detailed explainations. My goal is not to lob softballs that I can easily knock out of the park, but to answer tough questions that people really have about spiritual things. Many of these entries represent actually questions that people have asked me. Some questions, like today’s, are big questions that every human being needs to ask.
I also want this blog to be a safe and open forum for you to ask questions. Please feel free to pose a question, either through the comments section or by sending me an E-mail at pastorandy@calvarywoodland.org.
I am answering these questions from an evangelical Christian point of view. The answers here will reflect that worldview. I will always be respectful of other worldviews and I welcome dialogue and debate.
I have a Bachelor’s degree in biblical Theology, a Master of Divinity degree, and a Master of Theology degree. I have been a senior pastor for a little over a year. There are plenty of people with more education and experience; I’m just sharing what I have.
Question #1-
Is there a God?
Historically this question has been answered one of two ways, either from the bottom up, or the top down. Humans try to prove God’s existence through their own reasoning or they look for how God has communicated to us.
A couple of the more famous attempts by philosophers to prove the existence of God came form guys like Anselm, Pascal, Aquinas, and Paley.
Aquinas believed that you could prove the existence of God from observing the world around us. His best argument was as follows:
Every event in this world is caused by some event prior to it.
Either- a. the series of causes is infinite, or b. the series of causes goes back to a first cause, which itself is uncaused.
An infinite series of causes is impossible
Therefore, a first cause, God, must exist.
This argument still has a lot of merit to it. Science can only speculate so far back. Evolution is an attempt to explain where humans came from. The “big bang” is a theory that attempts to explain who our universe formed. But the question as to where the basic building blocks of the universe came from still persists. Was stuff just always here? There has to be some starting point.
Another famous attempt to prove the existence of God is called the “watchmaker analogy”. If you were walking along a mountain path and found a watch you would deduce that it was designed to serve a purpose and that it had a creator. It would be reasonable to suggest that someone made the complex watch. It would be unreasonable to think that the watch came into existence through natural causes or some sort of accident. The created world around us is far more complex and intricate than the workings of a watch. The complexity of creation demands a creator who designed us with a purpose.
Another attempt to prove the existence of God through philosophy or reason is know as the “God-shaped Hole Theory”. This idea has been spoken of by Pascal, Augustine, and other theologians. It reasons that inside every person there is an emptiness; a longing for something greater; a deep desire to worship. This emptiness of the soul is often filled with work or money or pleasure, but the only thing that can truly fill the void is God Himself. God has created within humanity a longing for Him. So the fact of humanities need for God proves His existence.
These philosophical arguments, and many others, have been argued over by theologians and philosophers for hundreds of years. In the end, while these arguments for the existence of God are intriguing, they all fall short.
Even though the existence of God might be a reasonable inference from what we see around us, we can’t prove God’s existence using reason alone.
That brings us to the other method of determining if there is a God, from the top down. In order for finite, created beings to know something about an infinite creator, that creator would have to reveal himself to us. In other words, we can’t know God unless He makes Himself known to us some how.
There are a number of new age spiritual beliefs that teach that God is everything and everything is God. Some believe in mythical gods akin to the Greek gods. Some don’t believe in a personal God, but think of God as more of a force of nature or a power.
These belief systems suffer from a similar problem. None of them can adequately answer the question, “Does God exist”. Their understanding of God doesn’t come from logical reasoning, or from God revealing Himself, but from superstition, tradition, or humanistic theories.
As a Christian I can confidently answer, “Yes, God does exist, because He has told me so.” God has revealed himself to His creation. He has told us how the world came into existence. He has explained to us who we are and why we were created. The only way we can know if God exists is through this self-revelation.
And as a Christian this revelation from God came through conversations he had with His people, written down in the Bible, and ultimately revealed through the sending of His son, Jesus Christ.
While there are other books out there that claim to be a revelation of God to humanity, the Bible stands alone as the most historically accurate, intellectually defensible, and internally coherent.
This is why Christians hold the Bible in such high regard. It not only provides the way of salvation, but it teaches us about who God is and who we are. Without the Bible we could not know God. Without this revelation we could never really be sure if He even existed. Without it there would be no hope for a relationship with Him.
Our arms are just too short as finite creatures to be able to reach up and find God on our own. The only way we can know that He exists is for Him to reach down and communicate with us.
Does god exist? The answer is yes. We know He exists because He told us He does. Not only do we know He exists, but we can learn so much more about Him through the Bible.
That brings up another question, how do we know that the Bible is reliable? I’ll deal with that one next week.
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