To see how smart
it is to leave God out of our thinking, look at this:
Frog + Chance + Millions of years = Handsome Prince (many people call this science)
To claim you know there is no God is to claim you know everything. You would have had to have thoroughly searched every part of every world and dimension with a faultlessly accurate method of finding every non-physical thing that could possibly exist. The claim that God has chosen to show himself to some people is not nearly as unbelievable.
Do not be like a blind person trying to tell himself that because he has never seen, everyone else claiming to see must be wrong. In vast areas outside your present experience almost anything could exist – even a God ready to end your blindness to him.
Are you ready for the most daring adventure? Try saying this:
- God, I would like you to show me if you exist. If you
are God, you are so far above me that I cannot force you to do
anything. Whatever you choose to show me must be your choice –
your time and your way. I can understand you not showing yourself
to people who have little desire to know you. I will show my sincerity
by at least reading what is written here, looking for things that
might help me find you. And why should you bother showing yourself
to someone who would continue to ignore you anyway? If you show
me there is a powerful, caring God who made me and wants the best
for me, I will give you your rightful place as God of my life
by obeying and trusting your love and wisdom.
That prayer opens the most exciting possibilities in the universe.
Who made God?
Everyone is forced to agree something has always existed, whether it be gas, God or a full universe. Every physical thing we have ever studied eventually decays or runs down. There is even a scientific law – the second law of thermodynamics – that states this. So whatever has always existed must be very different from anything we have ever seen – like God, for instance.
God does not have feelings
In claiming to have a high view
of God, people sometimes end up imagining that they have a greater
range of abilities than God – that he is an impersonal force more
like a machine or gravity than the God who made us all. The secret
attraction of this belief is that it is easier to ignore a vague
force than a God who thinks and feels and judges. If we can feel
and love, our Maker can do all that – and more. If to some of
us God seems impersonal, it suggests not the shallowness of God’s
nature but the shallowness of our relationship with him. God is
warm. His standards are unbending. His heart is soft.
I hate God
You might have every reason to hate the person you think God to be, but is that ‘God’ real? Your anger feels right. We can understand unlimited wisdom, however, no more than a baby understands its mother. What if your anger at God is like that of a sick child who bites his doctor, imagining the caring doctor is the cause of his pain, rather than his only hope of getting well? None of us have the endless intelligence needed to understand everything. What a tragedy it would be if you let the simple fact that you have only human intelligence rob you of your greatest source of comfort.
God weeps. No one in a lifetime has been so rejected, so misunderstood, so much hated without cause as God is every moment of every day by millions of people, each of whom he loves more than we could imagine. No one is touched as deeply by people’s pain as the God who made them. No one is as aware of suffering people as God is, and no one loves as much as God loves. And your pain increases his pain.
Even when the cause seems beyond human influence, all heartache can be traced not to what God wants, but to going against God wants. Many things are unclear or unknown to us – the view from eternity, the spirit world, the complex chain of events set off from person to person and generation to generation whenever anything happens.
In a children’s story King Midas’s wish came true and everything he touched to turn to gold. It was wonderful – until everything he tried to eat turned to gold. Realizing that he would starve to death, he was sure things could get no worse. Then his child touched him and turned to gold. Compared to the all-knowing Lord, we are as short-sighted as King Midas. We have no idea of all that would happen if our wishes came true.
We try to match our tiny minds against the Infinite Mind, using brain cells he gave us to try to out-think him. If God’s ways don’t always make sense to us it merely proves that our combined brainpower could not so much as light a few stars in the sky. And too often we confuse a good life with a soft life. In our minds, right living too often slips in importance. Of necessity, God’s love must be like that of a wise parent, focusing on long-term good, even at the price of tearing his own heart by making angry the tiny minds of people he loves. His aim is the highest good for everyone, not some short-term gain that soon fades or ends up robbing others.
Although we can gain a little insight into God’s wisdom, if all our attempts were to fail utterly, we have the security of knowing that our sorrow stabs a knife into the heart of the all-powerful Lord. That is the surest proof that hidden within the gigantic intelligence of Almighty God is a brilliantly clever, love-filled reason for allowing it.
If God made us, our moral failings are God’s fault
In other words, if we disobey God, it is God’s fault.
If you object to God giving you the right to make him sad, then reject that right. Ask God to control you as a master controls a slave. Then let Jesus clean your heart and spiritually remake you. Everyone will benefit.
8. Science has crippled Christianity
9. Pleasant near-death experiences of non-Christians disprove Christianity
10. A God of love wouldn’t send me to hell
