I am sure at one time or another most people ask questions like “God is real?” These questions can also be phrased as “Does God care about me?” or “Why does God allow suffering?” All of these questions really point to our questioning the reality of God and the His ways. The challenge is because we do not experience God with our five senses. Yet does that mean He is not real?
The challenge is found in the fact that God is abstract rather than concrete. I use these two terms narrowly to reflect on something that can be experienced physically (concrete) and those that we cannot (abstract). I used this illustration once and mentioned that God is abstract (He is a spirit) and the pulpit is concrete. Later a father shared what his son said proving he was listing to the message. He said, “Dad, I thought the pulpit was made out of wood and pastor said it was concrete.” Now, I do need to clarify that God has interacted with human senses through human history. That is also one of the reasons why the birth of Jesus is so important because God took on flesh and become a man. Yet for us today God is not available to touch, smell, taste, feel or hear so we ask the question, “Is God Real?” I have heard mocking questions of what makes God different from Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny or a Comic Super hero? It is a great question.
This past Sunday, in my message “Is God Real” I dealt with four ways that God’s existence is revealed (You can listen here). The simple truth is that the Bible never attempts to prove God’s existence; it just assumes that He exists. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1) The Bible makes it clear that God is known by those who accept Him and those who reject Him. It teaches us that both the person who accepts God’s existence and those that deny it do so by faith. It is assumed today that those who believe in God do so by faith, and those that reject God do so based on science. The problem with the latter view is that the existence of God cannot be absolutely proven one way or the other. There is no one alive that knows definitively that God does not exist. This means that rejection of God also requires faith.
So how can I know if God is real? At the simplest level you would examine the evidence of our world and select the option that provides the best probability for being true. The solution has to be something or someone that is responsible for what we see, and was not created, and is independent of creation. This is where the Ancient Alien theories fall short. If they created us, then who created them. These arguments just kick the can of the origin of life down the road. This is also a challenge for the “Big Bang” theory. This is where I believe the strongest support is found for God’s existence. I would recommend the excellent work “The Case for a Creator” by author Lee Strobel. A second more technical work that looks at the origin of life and makes a case for intelligent design is “Signature in the Cell” by author Stephen Meyer. These resources in addition to the testimony from the Bible remind us that we can see God’s fingerprints in our universe, in our world and even in life itself. The most incredible support for the reality of God is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
-Pastor Joe Parkinson