WHAT IF GOD DID EXIST?

The famous atheist scientist, Richard Dawkins tried to answer this question, but he finally reverted to: ‘there probably is no God, so stop worrying and enjoy your life.’

There had been times I have been tempted to resort to that life choice as well, but I’ve never been satisfied, because the idea that someone, rather than something or nothing should take responsibility for life–including mine was somewhere in the back of my mind. I was never happy with the idea that nothing, or just chance could take the credit for such intricacies as human life, for example.

And so, rather than looking for proof, of which there is none, I searched for evidence. Evidence translated as snippets of clues, just like they do in the CSI series, that provide some answer to someone responsible for some of the things in my human existence that I cannot explain; especially since I am not controlled by machine, battery or string.

In fact here’s the irony: I am controlled by ‘choice’, my own choice.  I do however also have a machine built in me called ‘heart’ and ‘brain’ which controls the functions and choices. But who controls those organs? Who charges them up every night?

You will notice that I am no scientist and I try to steer far away from making any theories. However I can’t help to notice the unexplained issues of life and therefore I desire to know. I know this at least that my existence did not come about by chance. I refuse to believe it! I am too wonderfully put together to have come about by chance.

Both the Christian and Jewish bibles asserts, with conviction, that in the beginning the Christian’s God created the universe. (Genesis 1:1). It also says that 'God formed a man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being' (Genesis 2:7).

So then - what if God did exist, I asked? Are their evidential clues?

 And so I looked. In my quest two ideas arose, found in the concept of Creation and in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ respectively.

1)      If God says He Created – are their clues?

One clue that stands out for me is the question of the weekly 7-day cycle. I thought about and realised that every natural cycle pertaining to creation can be explained scientifically. Whether it is the yearly, seasonally, monthly or daily cycle – it can be explained in a rational way. For example a day runs for 24 hours, because that’s how long the earth takes to make one revolution around its own axis. A month means the length of time the moon takes to make its way around the earth. A yearly cycle means the amount of time the earth takes to make its way around the sun. When it comes to the weekly cycle of seven days, this concept can only be explained from a creation context. We learnt it not from science but from history, Creation history.  As the Bible indicates that it was the great idea from God’s mind that initiated this cycle, because He said ‘You have six days each week for your ordinary work, ¹⁰ but the seventh day is a … day of rest… On that day no one in your household may do any work.… For in six days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them; but on the seventh day he rested. (Exodus 20:8-11).This weekly cycle makes sense to us because we govern our lives around the 7-day week, and it is definitely the way humanity had existed as far as anyone can remember or history’s books have ventured. We live for Friday, because we know the weekend is coming for us to be refreshed in order to be ready to start the cycle all over again the next week. Yet it is this concept, according to the bible, that God initiated after he created the earth. Perhaps the truth about the existence has a point rather than not.

2)      The existence and ministry of Jesus Christ

It was C.S. Lewis that wrote the following quotation:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” ― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Jesus Christ claimed to be the representative of God. In the Bible he states the following to one of the men who was eager to know who God was: ‘Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?

In one sweep Jesus claims that he somehow represents or embodies who God is. In other words if you want to know what God is like, you only need to look at the characteristics of Jesus. Studying the life of Jesus reveals a life of love, forgiveness, care, and open rebellion against minds and attitudes that foster unfairness, injustice and unnecessary laws.

I say this because many people put the existence of God out of their minds mainly because of the so-called silence of God toward humanities  sufferings, global calamities, and universal tyrants. They say if God is not able to respond lovingly toward the creatures he created, how can he exist? 

Friedrich Nietsche for example, asserts that ‘God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section 125,

Nietsche somehow believes that the results of the selfish acts of humanity have killed God. In the same way Richard Dawkins ‘sees religion as subverting science, fostering fanaticism, encouraging bigotry against homosexuals, and influencing society in other negative ways’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Delusion)

Perhaps these men are right, and maybe there is an argument to be made to what God is made up to be through the actions and attitudes of those who proclaim to be His followers. No wonder the life and ministry of Jesus Christ contradicts the life and ministry of those who claim to follow him. Perhaps this confusing scenario can be seen in the Old Testament account too, where we see God as the blood-thirsty tyrant. Could the acts of the people who claimed to be his followers have shown God in the light of how they understood him? In other words, could they have highlighted the wars and the laws too much, because that’s what their society was all about that the time?  As a result the love and care of God had become drowned out by the sound of blood and fighting – yet it still exists if you look closely enough?

So if God exists, perhaps his existence is not demolished by any fault of his own, but rather perhaps by those who claim to be his followers. Perhaps I will put the blame on those who claim to have an understanding of him, and claim to have a monopoly over him and as a result claim to speak for him on his behalf with authority, conviction and arrogance. Perhaps I put the blame at the door of those too who have harmed the reality of his existence by the way they represent him – rather than a loving, forgiving and a good natured being, but rather as a tyrant who persecutes, abuse, make war in his name and his church. As well as those who have made him to be the judgmental, fault-finding, self-righteous being he is not.

 Perhaps that’s why God has been quiet and left those ones to go about with all their might, to allow people like you and me to explore the real person He is, through the wonderful evidences of his Son Jesus who claim to represent him the correct way.

Clifford Herman

Minister- Plymouth Adventist Church

 

And so the next question? If he exists?

1. Why is he doing nothing about evil in the world. What if he was doing something about evil?
2. If the many clues are in the bible. Could the bible be true? What if it was true?