God is Waiting for You

When scientists grew bold enough to declare that what they could observe and test was all that could exist, the supernatural was demoted to the level of superstition. The attitude was that those poor people back then didn’t know any better. But we now stand in a position to pass judgment on their beliefs. This attitude is not unique to our own age. Every age tends to think its own viewpoint is superior to those of the past.

While we agree that viewpoints do skew objectivity and admit that we all have them, the universe presents to us truths so monolithic that they tower above all viewpoints. Perhaps we can’t pull our feet completely out of the mire of modernism’s overconfidence in empiricism, but we can see truths looming above us much larger than reason can comprehend. The fog of postmodernism may blur our sight, but no fog can completely obscure the firm outlines of the ultimate absolute.

There it is. The ultimate absolute is also your personal absolute. Incredible as it may seem, the God of the universe loves you personally and desperately, and He wants to win you to Himself. He wants a relationship with you. That relationship will fulfill you completely and bring to your life certainty, meaning and joy beyond imagining. He is not only the absolute for the universe. He is also the absolute for your life and happiness. He is waiting for you to invite him in.

Don’t Wait

The claim that a supernatural God invaded nature, died and rose again is astounding, but we have more reasons for believing it than not. We must not make the mistake of waiting for all the pieces to fall into place before we allow belief to kick in. Our perspective is too limited to encompass the whole truth. We will always wrestle with troubling questions about God, such as the existence of pain, the concept of hell or apparent conflicts in the Bible.

These questions have excellent and helpful answers available to the person who seeks them. But often our objections to God assume that He should think just as we do and should have set up the world just as we think it ought to be. When we encounter a world that differs from our own ideal, we make the outlandish presumption that we have the right to banish the creator of such a world to nonexistence. The only rational stance is to allow perplexing peripheral questions to be absorbed by our rational faith in the larger truth. God is. He defines reality. He gave Christ to die for me. He loves me.

The Certainty of God’s Love

It is not surprising that minds steeped in rationalism want to reject the reality of God’s relentless, unconditional love. A supernatural creator of the galaxies who took on a human body and was raised from the dead tends to make twenty-first-century sophisticates squirm. To them it appears to be just another of many ancient myths and legends telling of dying gods and human sacrifices to woo or appease alienated deities.

This resemblance of the Christ story to ancient myths is actually a strong indication of its truth. People have always sensed the gravity of their alienation to whatever gods they worshiped and dimly realized that only the sacrifice of a god or an extraordinary human could bring about reconciliation. All such myths were prefiguring shadows that recognized the dilemma and anticipated the solution.

Why should the Christian story alone be true out of all the similar myths that precede it? The events occurred at a specific time and place and were corroborated as accurate by historians with no stake in the story’s veracity. Furthermore, the coming of Christ and hundreds of the events in His life were predicted in writing—even down to such details as the time and place—long before they occurred.

Beyond Intellect

Given the Fall (see blog #80) and its consequences, we can see why God is now harder to find. But we can also see that it is not God’s doing. We are too caught up in ourselves, but that relentless love of His does not leave us solely to our own feeble devices. He pursues us, silently nudging events and manipulating circumstances to prod us toward Him. He is at all times as near as our next breath, ready at our invitation to enter our lives and fill the emptiness in our hearts.

Reason helps us to find God intellectually and gives us a rational foundation for faith, but reason is not where we actually experience God. The rational mind affirms God’s existence and then passes the torch to the heart. The heart is where we experience life’s fullness and enjoy all that gives it meaning—beauty, joy, relationships and love. The human heart can find peace only when the God who loves us dearly returns to it and fills it with His love.

A searching agnostic once said to me that while his mind was in a muddle sifting through all the arguments for and against God, he was strongly drawn to the person of Jesus presented in the Bible. He said the possibility that there is someone out there who loves him unconditionally had such a strong appeal to him that he could not let go of the idea. Inherent in truth is a power that can reach beyond the intellect and touch the human heart directly.

Is God Lost?

Why is God so hard to find? The answer lies in our freedom and God’s respect for it. He does not invade our space. We have chosen to push God out of our lives, and He will not violate that choice by pushing Himself back in. He has left abundant evidence of His existence in nature and dropped in telling clues of it from the supernatural realm. But He remains behind the veil, knowing that if He forces his presence on us, we will have no choice but to believe, and the freedom He has given us will be compromised. We must repudiate our choice of self and express our desire for a restored relationship with God before He will move in.

Our choice of self over God also explains the continuing presence of evil in the world. The disobedience of the first couple opened the gates to evil, and in the name of freedom, God had to let their choice stand. But just as humankind chose to bring evil into a world of good, God now offers us the option to bring good back into a world of evil. We can invite God back into our lives and restore the lost relationship, thus finding authentic love and meaning in spite of the ravages of a world infested with evil and death.

Restoring the Relationship

You might expect that God would have washed His hands of those who turned their backs on Him and directed his affection to a more grateful civilization somewhere on the far side of the galaxy. But amazingly, He did the opposite. Like the mythical Greek sculptor Pygmalion, God had fallen in love with His human creation and could not bear to lose them. When they chose self over God, they sentenced themselves to death. But then God set about to perform a daring rescue.

The second member of the Godhead, whom the world knows as Jesus Christ, came to earth, took the form of a man, died on a Roman cross, and was raised to life again. This act disarmed death and restored to lost humankind the right to reestablish a relationship with God. The emergence of the living Christ from His tomb was the guarantee that any person who chose to come back to God would be restored to a life of renewed relationship with Him.

“So why isn’t it working?” you may ask. If God came to earth to restore His loving relationship with us, why isn’t it restored? Why is He still so hard to find? Why do people still stumble around the planet ignorant of God, searching for something to fill the void in their hearts?

The Broken Relationship

If God intended us to have perfect relationships, why do they so often go wrong? Why are joy and fulfillment so elusive? Why is it such a struggle to find God? The answer is that God’s original intent has been thwarted in a tragic event that Christian theologians refer to as the Fall.

The Fall was a mortal, self-inflicted wound that occurred when the first created man and woman misused the freedom God gave them. Although God made humans for the very purpose of loving Him and bearing His essence, He did not force Himself on them. The man and woman were free to choose God and all the joy, love, fulfillment and ecstasy He brought to them. Or they could choose self and go their own way without Him on a path infested with all the pain, alienation, sorrow and death that would result from alienation from God.

Tragically, a day came when the couple listened to the voice of an adversary who deceived them into choosing to go out on their own. God honored their choice. He withdrew Himself from their lives and left them alone to find their own way. Without God, they were alienated from their purpose and lost their significance. It took humans only a few generations to lose virtually all awareness of God’s existence. Individual selves staked out their own territory and fiercely protected it, pushing themselves apart. Their focus on self fostered the pride, selfishness, alienation, anger and hatred that has infected the human family for the rest of its history.

The Relational God and Love

The metaphors the Bible uses to picture the relationship between God and His people give us an idea of just how warm and close He intended it to be. In some passages He portrays Himself as a Father, in others as a Brother, a Lover, or a Shepherd feeding and protecting His sheep. Many passages portray the relationship of God to His people as a marriage. The core idea within these various pictures is clear: God desires with His human creation a relationship that encompasses all the joy and warmth of our closest human connections.

God intended love to be the dominating characteristic and driving force of all creation. He created men and women to be relational creatures who desire to expand and share the love He lavishes on them. We were designed to live not only in an upward relationship with Him but also in outward relationships with others. These connections can be as diverse as the neighbor who borrows a cup of sugar, the friendly competitiveness of a foursome on the golf course, the best friend who lends a sympathetic ear, the deep and delightful bond with children, the intense commitment and intimacy of marriage. We thrive on such relationships because we were created for connection with each other.

This intertwining dance of love with God and others is what gives meaning to human life. As long as the first couple maintained their relationship with God, His love flowed through them and enabled them to remain in perfect relational harmony with each other and the rest of creation. Bearing the life of God within themselves, their life had ultimate meaning, and they were fulfilled. There was no missing piece.

Three in One God

It is in a loving, personal relationship with God that we find the answers to the deep questions about our identity, purpose and destiny. It is in knowing this God intimately that we actually experience the certainty that we can know intellectually. The Bible shows God to be completely different from the image many people have of an aloof being who exists somewhere out there in the remote distance. He is by nature both personal and relational. Indeed, His very mode of being is relational. God is a living unity of three distinct personalities who exist in an intimate relationship bonded by love. This bond forms a oneness so close that the three members of the Godhead are identified in the singular simply as God. Though He is one, His oneness is a relationship bonded by the very essence of love.

Just as married couples desire children, the three persons of the Godhead desired to expand and share the love that flows within their relationship. Therefore, God created man and woman—creatures bearing His own image, creatures whom He could love and who could love Him in return. We are told that He breathed his own Spirit into the first man and woman He created. He placed his own life at the center of their being, filling their lives with meaning and love. They fulfilled the purpose of their creation by bearing within themselves the life of God, which not only completed them but also gave them immense joy. As God intended, the life of this primeval couple was one of continual ecstasy and lavish delight.

The Missing Piece

If we could create our own truth and validate it merely by believing it, we should be able to fill the void in our soul with whatever we truly believe will fill it. But regardless of what we feed it, we cannot sate its voracious appetite. It swallows everything we throw into it yet remains as empty as ever. We cannot create our own personal reality because a true reality already exists. The void in the human heart derives its shape from this true reality. Like the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle, no substitute will fit. Unless we find the one piece that was designed to go there, the picture remains incomplete.

Seventeenth-century philosopher Blaise Pascal identified this emptiness in the human heart as a “God-shaped vacuum.” Pascal realized that mankind’s inner hunger can never be satisfied until it turns to God as the missing piece to fill the emptiness. God is the ultimate absolute who brings meaning directly into the life of every man and woman. God in the human life is the keystone to the arch, the one stone that fits at the apex, bringing solidity to the entire structure and holding all other stones firmly in place.

I Feel Empty

It seems that every human being comes into the world the same way and with three questions etched in his or her subconscious: Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? We are restless and adrift until we discover our identity, our purpose and our destiny.

The longing for meaning leads searchers to try many dead end paths. For example, we are often told that the answer lies inward instead of upward. We feel isolation and emptiness because we have not found our true selves. Then popular psychology tells us that our upbringing, societal expectations, religious strictures and personal neuroses conspire to hide the true self beneath layers of distorting masks. We are told that when we strip away the masks and find the authentic self beneath them, our alienation will disappear.

Another widespread approach to fulfillment tells us to look neither upward nor inward but outward. Fill the void in your life with toys, entertainment, prestige, pleasure and achievements. Focus on distractions. Move fast. Stay busy. Party hearty. Do anything, buy anything and try anything to keep from looking into that terrible abyss in the soul. But it doesn’t work.

None of them work long term. Self-assessment and self-realization do not fill the emptiness. While such exercises may have value as a starting point for understanding our needs, we are finite. Our hunger for meaning is greater than our ability to satisfy it. So where can we turn?

Embracing God

It is at least as reasonable to say that there must be a God to account for life as it is to say that matter is simply self-existent and life arose from dead matter. If all we were doing was guessing without evidence, one claim may be just as plausible as the other. Both alternatives must admit that the laws of nature as we know them can’t account for beginnings. Both alternatives must admit that beginnings are extra-natural and inexplicable. Having admitted that, the next step is to ascertain which claim best fits reality as we know it.

In previous blogs I have shown that reason, morality, conscience, the order of the universe, the concept of beauty and a sense of meaning all point confidently toward the existence of God. They show a consistent imprint on the nature of reality from which God may be credibly postulated. I have also shown that naturalism can’t explain or account for reason, morality, meaning and beauty. Evolution is inadequate to account for these realities since it is based on the three principles that run counter to scientific laws:

1. Order can emerge from chaos.
2. Life emerged from dead matter.
3. Human intelligence evolved from dead matter.

Faith in God is not only rational, it is necessary to make sense of all reality. As Christians, we have varying positions on issues in the Bible, but we can remain united in the core belief that God is God and Christ is His Son.

The Case for God

Nothing about the concept of God violates evidence, reason or any branch of science. Science tells us that no effect can be greater than its cause. Creation tells us that God is greater than the universe. Science tells us that nature runs down and dissipates. Creation tells us that God made everything originally perfect, but it incurred damage and began to degenerate. Science tells us that life comes only from life. Creation tells us that life resides eternally in the nature of God, and He imparted it to His creation.

The hard fact that forces us into belief is that life is here, and it is not rational to think it could have arisen out of dead matter. The only possible alternative, unthinkable as it seems, is that something alive is uncaused and self-existent. Nothing less than God fits all the requirements. The case for God is that simple. He is the only possible answer to life and existence that fits into place without jarring the order of the universe or insulting the rationality of science. Reason can rationally conclude that God is the ultimate absolute without need of empirical proof. And faith can step out on that certainty.

Embracing Reality

Accepting the rationality of God’s existence may not overcome all the obstacles to full belief in biblical Christianity. Many issues in the Bible defy understanding. Some can be explained, and some cannot. Must we understand and resolve all these difficulties before we allow full-blown faith to kick in? Of course not.

When we become Christians, must we agree with all other Christians on all doctrines of the Bible? Not at all. From the beginnings of Christianity, believers have held varying positions on such issues as revelation, miracles, prayer, providence, pain and worship. But they remain united on the core belief that God is God and Christ is His son. Because we know we are standing solidly on the ultimate absolute, we can put peripheral uncertainties aside without letting them undermine our certainty in the core truth of His existence.

It is a blind, unwarranted faith that defies reason and evidence. Faith in God is the opposite. With God as the ultimate absolute, all the pieces fall into place and fit together in a rational pattern that squares with the reality we experience.

A Supernatural Existence

While the human mind cannot comprehend God, reason applied to available data tells us that something like God must exist. This universe is filled with life, law, energy, meaning, delight, love, morality and beauty. Such things are beyond the capacity of mere nature to provide. But their existence indicates that there is something greater at work—they point to God. God is invisible, but we can infer His existence by His effects in the universe, effects that only something like a god could cause.

Why should we think it impossible that our universe may be contained within a larger realm that is beyond the capacity of our senses? As Plato postulated, the spirit world that seems to our eyes insubstantial and unstable could be a world even more substantial and stable than our own. This universe of ours could be a mere shadowy reflection of a greater reality beyond it. Our failure to comprehend the supernatural gives us no reason at all to deny its existence.

Faith and Expanding Our Horizons

The step beyond comprehension into belief is called faith. Understandably, the word faith grates on the ear of a rationalist like fingernails on a chalkboard, but that’s because of a popular misconception about what faith is. We should never exercise faith in spite of reason and evidence but always because of reason and evidence. When reason tallies the evidence and maps the course, it hands the keys to faith to start up the engine. Faith trusts what reason tells it must be true. Blind faith undirected by reason is neither credible nor admirable. It is a foolish leap into the dark with no assurance that it will land on the solid ground of truth.

So, the choice between God and naturalism is not a choice between faith and reason. Faith is essentially inoperable without reason, and reason is sterile and powerless without faith. When people choose God, they take a step of faith. When people choose naturalism, they take a step of faith. The choice between God and naturalism boils down to whether one’s faith is informed by reason or whether it is blinded by a skewed philosophy that throws reason off course.

Following Reason to Its Limits

Why is it more rational to assume God to be self-existent than to assume the same of matter? Isn’t it just as irrational to assume the self-existence of God as to assume the self-existence of matter? When you get right down to it, doesn’t the idea of God defy rational explanation just as much as any naturalistic theory of beginnings does?

Yes, both God and naturalistic accounts of origins are beyond the reach of rational explanation. Both believers and naturalists must admit that ultimate origins defy comprehension and either alternative proposed to explain them is impossible for the mind to grasp.

Reason cannot explain origins because, according to reason, everything that exists must be caused, which means that something had to exist prior to it. The mind cannot encompass the idea that anything could exist without a beginning, which is a necessity in both the naturalistic and the theistic alternatives. Yet one of these alternatives must be true because existence cannot be explained apart from self-existence.

We must find the courage to venture out past what we can fully understand. We cannot understand how uncaused existence is possible, but we can rationally accept the necessity of it. But when reason examines the evidence, it can accept the concept of God as a rational necessity because nothing less will account for the existence of matter, life and order. Based on this rational necessity, reason can rightly direct the mind to take the step beyond comprehension into belief.

The Explanation for Origins

The Bible opens with a sort of big bang of its own. In a concise, ten-word sentence, it gives us the one viable alternative to naturalistic evolution as an explanation for origins. It tells us that all that exists was created by the self-existent God: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). Of course, to unbelievers this biblical explanation of origins is not credible. They see divine creation as a myth devised to explain beginnings in a way that simple minds could grasp. Others regard it as an explanation that was accepted as true until science proved it false, just as the flat earth theory was accepted until we learned better. Those who continue to defend the biblical view are thought to be uneducated, close-minded, blinded by a religious agenda or unwilling to let go of the comfort they find in God despite overwhelming evidence that their belief has been discredited.

For other unbelievers, resistance to the biblical explanation of origins has nothing to do with whether it is true. They point to some judgmental, hypocritical churchgoers and morally bankrupt preachers and televangelists and say, “If that’s Christianity, I don’t want anything to do with it.” They are unwilling to consider that the Bible may be true in spite of some people who represent its teachings poorly.

Whatever unbelievers may think about the Bible, it does give us the one viable alternative to naturalism. Unbelievers who are serious about their search for certainty should overcome their conditioned aversion to the Bible and give the biblical explanation a hard look.

The Sacrifice of Reason

Evolution offers something many people want so badly that they are willing to sacrifice reason to get it. They want a universe without God hovering over it and evolution offers such a universe. Evolution is not a fact. It is a theoretical prop to the philosophy that nature is all that exists. Dr. Watson’s philosophy said that creation was unbelievable. His science would not support that conclusion, so he adopted the theory of evolution—not because it agreed with his science, but because it agreed with his philosophy. People do not reject God because of facts and logic. They reject Him because they choose to do so. They search for an alternative belief with no supernatural strings attached and they find it in evolution.


When scientists make pronouncements concerning metaphysics or the supernatural, they step outside their field and do not speak as experts. They prostitute the high pedestal that science has given them as a pulpit for their personal philosophy. We should give their claims no more credence than if they were made by accountants, football stars, artists, bricklayers or rock singers.

Evolution is showing earmarks of vulnerability as thinking scientists awaken to its irrationalities. By no means have all such scientists abandoned evolution or become believers in God. But it is dawning on some that the theory of evolution has insurmountable weaknesses. If the scientific community continues to produce such honest thinkers who have the courage to proclaim their findings, the world will soon learn that the weaknesses in evolution are insurmountable. The absolute for origins lies elsewhere.

Why Do People Believe in Evolution?

You may think we must have grossly overstated the case against evolution. Surely the theory can’t possibly be as unscientific and unreasonable as we have made it out to be. Isn’t it presumptuous for us laypeople to challenge the opinions of these influential experts? History shows us that prevailing opinion is often at odds with the truth. Prevailing opinion can be wrong regardless of how widely accepted it is. By supporting evolution and shutting out the voices of rational alternatives, scientists may save face with their peers and keep their reputations intact today. But when the theory collapses in the future, as it almost certainly will, history will lump evolutionists with those who believed in a flat earth, alchemy and bloodletting.

How did evolution become the prevailing theory of origins in our most influential institutions? It gained respectability when it caught the imagination of influential thinkers who found in it an intellectual prop for atheism. Evolution became the thing to believe for those who wanted to be known as daring and independent thinkers. Since new and daring ideas are newsworthy, the evolutionists with their new theory became the darlings of the media. When evolution became the politically correct thing to believe among the fashionable and educated, much of the general public began to fall in step without examining the basic rationality of the theory. It was enough for them that the right people already believed.

Science has accomplished so much in our time that many have come to think it can do almost anything. Therefore, when scientists promote a theory that seems to make the traditional God of Christianity unnecessary, many people do not feel a great loss. They don’t feel a need for a god as long as they have science to look after them.