People don’t’ ask me whether I believe in God – and I don’t tell them. It’s not that I want to avoid Bible-punching: more that I have some anxiety about being able to explain adequately why and what I believe in. I don’t worry that I shall let God down – He’s big enough to fight his own battles – it’s that, if I cannot express my belief convincingly, perhaps I do not really believe it myself.
I am a Christian and one of the chief sources of my belief is the Bible. Its words have undergirded this faith for over two millennia, bearing truth, evidence and instruction in the way of truth. One of its authors, a disciple of Jesus, Peter, writes: “…and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asks you a reason of the hope that is in you.”
In following Peter’s instruction when asked: “Why do you believe in God?” or, more starkly, “How can you still believe in that sort of stuff?” providing a rational and logical answer is not a very good idea. After all, it is likely that rationalism has led them to discount the idea that there is a god. An explanation of God within rational argument would mean to place God within a framework over which we have control – and, like the President of the country, we can (hopefully) vote him out of office if he fails us.
Living in a time when changes in communication, technology and lifestyles are altering the world so clearly, I am seeing history being made. This is also evident in the decline of belief in a God, particularly in the Christian god. Brought up in a nominally Christian home, attending a church school, set within a dominantly Christian society, my belief in God was the norm. Seldom did I meet an exception to this, and antagonism or scepticism was not in evidence. The scales were tipped in favour of the accepted faith, its festivals and holidays; its morality was the given standard of the day. Though in evidence since the Age of Enlightenment and before, beyond the pages of history textbooks the voices of non-believers carried little weight.
But that has changed. Human beings have entered the space in which for millennia God was present and filled it with their debates, scientific explanations, technological innovations and self-actualising identities. God is losing his place in this world, not because eight billion people are crowding Him out but because to believe in God is too illogical, too old and too demanding. In a society which values human individualism supremely, the idea of a God who is behind each human life and to which each human life is accountable does not go down well. Not only that, but a life without God is perfectly manageable: all it requires is to see that life only has meaning in the here and now and that, once you have done the bucket list, all you have left to do is kick the bucket. Ultimately, no one is keeping an account of your actions and it is your responsibility to make the most of what this physical world and its pleasures can provide.
It can be difficult to believe in God. Because we are physical beings, the desires and needs of our flesh govern our lives from day to day. Questions like: What is this world? Why is this world? become incidental to life which seems all about making things happen and not having them happen to you. Investing one’s time and energy into things which can be seen and experienced seems to present a far better return than on something that is nebulous, especially so when the existence of different faiths among the world’s peoples seems to contradict the idea of there being one God, or any god whatsoever. Different gods point to God being a human construct, developed in certain places owing to environmental influences, ignorance of the scientific causes of natural phenomena or a charismatically powerful individual. That religions differ in doctrine and practices implies that they are all human-sourced: some have sacrificed children; but others refuse to kill even animals. It seems that faith is a circumstance of where a person is born: it has no spiritual reality, originating in this world, not one beyond.
Why, then, do I believe? Firstly, it is personal, not in a private, subjective way, but in the feeling lodged within that I am a created being, with a Creator who knows me as the individual I am. The unique sense of being which every human knows is God-given; and the reason I believe it is given by God is that each of us has an understanding of what a good action and a bad action amounts to. I know when I lie, I know when I do not give something my best shot, I know when I avoid what needs doing. It is not an external standard which I impose on myself: I know what my best is and know when I am not giving it. That I have an understanding of good from within tells me that I was made by a God who is good and has given me the choice to follow his way of goodness and believe.
That I am the product of an evolutionary process begun billions of years ago through an admixture of chemical gasses creating the first forms of life does not add up with me. Such a theory has used one of the properties of this evolutionary process, the human mind, to reach this conclusion without accounting for the origin of what created that random chemical soup which sparked the process. Using the mind to explain how the mind exists is acting as both player and referee. Whether my reasoning cancels out the other is not important: God cannot be proved or disproved.
When I was a small boy, the idea of God that lodged most firmly in myself was that He saw everything I was doing and knew everything I was thinking. In both these departments lodged a fair sense of guilt: I knew there were things wrong about what I did and thought. As an adult such guilt feelings have diminished; what has replaced them have been rare moments of realisation that what had (or had not) just happened in my life was due to the action of God. Such moments bring goose bumps: so in the mould of making my way through daily life am I that the reality of God’s presence is actually frightening. In a world so dominated by human agency, the reality of God is seldom known.
Believing in God can be difficult. It implies that what happens in this world is in his control and under his authority. But the disorder, randomness and sheer tragedy which life continually presents is of such an order that if this is what God’s control allows, there seems little point in having much faith in his nature being good. Add to this the data astronomy gives us about the extent of the universe, with its billions of galaxies billions of light years in diameter, and the idea of an omnipresent, omnipotent and indivisible God seems a quaint notion. It’s not even that the creator has left the building: there was no creator.
But this is seeing things from the wrong end of the telescope. I believe we start with ourselves and believe that every being is created by God and is unique; having been made in God’s image brings me to believe in a God who does not exist as an abstract power or force, with human beings one of the manifestations of a creative principle which is unaffected by the actions of what has been created. God has given us life with which to glorify and enjoy Him. In our choosing to believe and obey, we use the freedom which our unique identity allows us to exercise. Having given us life, He cares for his creation and intervenes in it. He came to earth in Jesus Christ, knowing our human condition in the course of living as man. Out of love for us He sacrificed his life, taking the punishment which was our due so that we could know the love of God. The sacrifice of that life of goodness has not only brought us the forgiveness of our sins, but has also made manifest the power of God: Jesus rises from death and shows that evil cannot kill the pure and perfectly good.
Though I live in this faith, had not God intervened in my life dramatically and made Himself real to me I would not be where I am now. In a course of events after leaving school and beyond, I came to know the reality of the Holy Spirit in my life. Though I resisted and fought against this, I could not deny that the hand of the Lord was on my life: the occurrence of coincidences and incidents completely unorchestrated by human hand was evidence of God’s signature; whilst I was unaware, He was watching over my life. Having been in a place where belief formed no part of my life, faith in Jesus Christ established itself in me.
My faith is often weak. I struggle with fears about my physical security; I do not want to suffer; I want to live a trouble-free life. At heart I am a self-centred person who does not want my present circumstances to change much. Though my underbelly is more substantial than my physical one, I nevertheless do see signs that my faith has given me the desire and ability to do things for others which my naturally selfish nature would not have had me do before I found a spiritual reason for living. What I consider as a proof of there being a God, a natural sense of the good, the innate knowledge of whether one is doing the best one can, has been furthered when, though my heart seemed to lack the goodness to follow through, I have been able to do such – and know a joy in so doing. God has been very present in those moments: without there being a good God, I could not be good.
The best evidence for believing in God is not found on paper. Occasionally I simply know that life is good, the very ticking, breathing, moving thing about it. To be alive and know that it is good affirms God. To the person who thinks that existence is the only reality and that nothing lies beyond existence, life may seem a cul-de-sac. I believe there is a road beyond.
Thanks to Greg Rakozy on Unsplash for the image.
Dear Friend, a most thoughtful and thought provoking piece.
This morning I was visiting one of the (very old) ladies of our church congregation, and during the course of our conversation, I declared that I had been “God smitten” since my adolescence. (My brother has not been God smitten, although we share identical upbringings). But why was I God smitten? I think, because despite myself (I do not and never have much loved myself) I felt constantly loved. Yes – I knew that my parents loved me; the love I felt went far beyond that. Today, the certainty that I am loved is a declaration of the existence of a loving God.
Like you, I have also noted many occasions when only Divine intervention, the working in fact of a miracle, could explain a particular circumstance or outcome in my life. There have been two or three great miracles in my life (that I am still alive, and sane, and free of an affliction that had made my life a Hell for fifteen years, is the greatest of all these miracles). These are miracles because, by all rational measures, they should never have happened.
I wrote in the opening chapter of a novel published last month that “the mountains taught (the protagonist) his first theology.” I witness the reality of God in His creation, particularly in the wild places, where Man is incidental, and I have done all my life.
And I return to love. My animals (for I lack Human babies to have loved and been loved by as they grew up) are a constant reiteration for me that God is love; that love, close kin to innocence, is proof for me of God’s reality.
In my seventh decade I remain God smitten, and like you, my Friend, sometimes intensely aware of the presence and reality of God. I am every once in a while lifted near to bliss by this sense of union with God – for that is what it feels like; that there are no barriers anymore. Of course, such an intense emotional experience cannot long be sustained (I am no saint given to mysticism, able to sustain his union with God for hours at a time) but I cherish above all things these moments of a profound awareness of God’s presence and reality.
Of course, the rationalist would say that I am insane, perhaps even a psychotic: poor rationalist. If being God smitten is some form of insanity, then I thank God for it, and would rather this wild insanity than the rationalist’s cold, bleak sanity.