The young men of the ghettos in the major American cities find themselves with absent fathers, either dead, exiled or in jail. In past eras, towns without fathers represented people who lost wars against neighboring tribes. A community without men is a community under occupation.
Therefore the young men feel by intuition that they have lost a war; they seek violence, retribution, and vengeance. They do all of this reflexively and cannot do otherwise. They naturally hate their neighbors, the ones with fathers, whom they see as having won an assumed war.
There is something off kilter with existence. You can’t quite pin down reality.
It is something without a natural context, like a city made of air.
I think that is where belief in God starts, actually, in this intuition that something is amiss with existence, it doesn’t make sense logically, and it all seems like a miracle.
Jesus said that those who had ears to hear, let them hear. I think he was referring to this epiphany of the strangeness of existence. It is more than a feeling, but rather an intuitive appraisal; it is actually an experience of a personal revelation that cannot be shared with somebody else; you realize that existence is an absurdity, that lacks cohesive logic, or any sensible rationale.
You can actually experience this revelation, become confused and disoriented, as if you were just slugged in the face, because you stuck your nose too far into the noisy machinery of reality.
It is a sort of unveiling of a mystery presence. The mystery is that we exist, at all. It is a feeling that all things being equal, we should not exist, nothing should exist. And that only a series of small miracles could get us to where we are now.
But to the point, you come to believe in God through a personal revelation of the truth about existence. Even the Apostle Paul says, in the Bible, that it is better for people to be converted through “demonstrations of power” rather than persuasion, because if you can be convinced that God exists through persuasion, you can equally be convinced that He doesn’t exist, through persuasion, as well.
It is true that the scientist explores the same system of rabbit holes and underground tunnel networks. But he is hampered by his myopia, his materialism-assumption, and the plank in his eye. He is like the man who is ever seeking and never finding. Because he seeks explanations, and not truth.
You can’t find God through science, I think. They have confidence in science itself, instead of their own soul, their own thoughts, their own god-given intuitions and natural appreciations of the world. The method itself becomes a kind of prison.
What I’m talking about is the simple realization that existence is an open question, and probably always will be. Anything is possible, or likely. It starts with an open mind. Faith comes later.
It means to realize that existence is ridiculous, that this whole thing insane and unlikely. It means to realize that the great mystery is more authoritative than our small scoopful of knowledge about it. The mystery itself seems godlike, as big as we can imagine it to be.
The first step is realizing that there is more that we don’t know than what we do know. It is not “God of the Gaps,” however, that I am talking about, because the nature of existence just doesn’t propose a mystery, but an irreconcilable contradiction. It presents an unsolvable, unintelligible singularity of space and time. Those who believe in God cannot accept the contradiction that reality presents to us–to accept the contradiction is to accept a lie.
What I’m saying is that the mystery is impenetrable, and the lyrics to the song of existence untranslatable. Only faith can make sense of the noise and confront it directly. The naturalists are like ships lost at sea in the dark noise of the illimitable ocean of space. They, too, can only listen and wonder at it all.
It is the realization of the absurdity of life. It happens in a flash, comes with a rash of heat over the body, and the man is struck with great fear. It is as if you suddenly find yourself in an alien world, where the sun becomes a giant body of fire and you can actually feel the heat from this sky-fire warming your crush of flesh.
It is the lies of the mind exposed to the light of reality, if only for a second. It is a revelation of timelessness, as if you were lost to a single moment, standing forever there, on one foot, teetering with balancing arms atop a single frozen moment. You realize that you will never make sense of any of it.
I think the search for God starts with this search for the cosmic foundations. I mean, existence is so weird and strange that the idea that we are inside the creative sphere of God’s mind seems reasonable and fully explanatory. It is also exactly what it feels like.
The Bible states that the Spirit of Truth has been sent to convict the world of guilt and righteousness. That is exactly it. He came to convict everyone, not just us. His call is heard by every person. And that, I think, is this pull toward righteousness, toward faith, that I feel. I don’t think anybody is fully without it.
I posted a link to my article “Why I Believe in God” on Twitter and received some interesting feedback:
“A long list of invalid reasons. Nothing new there.” someone wrote.
I know. Very dismissive and curt.
But nonetheless, I took a look at his blog and read a few posts. This one stood out at me, being titled “An Interview with an Atheist Blogger.” There were a few points I wanted to respond to here.
1. “Recognize that if you were born in Saudi Arabia, you’d almost certainly be using the same logic to argue that Islam/Quran is true and Christianity is false.”
I’m always baffled when I see atheists bring up this point. Certainly, they are aware of the genetic fallacy.
“The Genetic fallacy is a fallacy of irrelevance in which someone accepts a claim as true or false solely on the basis of its origin..”
Truth is truth. It doesn’t matter where it comes from, or if nobody alive is aware of it. Truth is truth, and doesn’t care about our feelings, or our intuitions on it.
If I was born in Pakistan, and was trained in Islam from a young age, and surrounded by Islam and Muslim Imams, it would not alter the truth or falsity of any claim regarding Islam or Christianity.
2. “People who claim to know for certain that God exists are using as evidence things like personal revelation, visions and signs and such. We know that this type of evidence convinces some people that astrology, New Age beliefs, contradictory religions, etc. are true, so we know it isn’t reliable evidence.“
Yeah. Sure.
But all of the signs count as evidence to a Christian, whether it is an answered prayer or an unusually accurate astrological report. It is helpful not to forget that Christians don’t only believe in God and Jesus, but they believe in satan, as well. They believe in demons and possession and demonic manifestations. Therefore, all evidences of the supernatural can be encompassed within the evidential sphere of a Christian. I can’t disprove that the Quran is a miracle, but I believe that there will be false prophets showing signs and wonders, that will deceive even the very elect.
Evidence of the supernatural world is evidence of the supernatural world, no matter how you slice it.
3. “I think the character is pretty despicable as written, but no more so than other god myths. If I thought God existed, I would be trying pretty hard to hide my opinion that he’s a monster.”
This is no surprise.
It is one thing to own an opposition to God solely based on logic, and having an emotionally-detached approach to the question, but I hardly ever find this to be the case. Atheists, like all humans, are emotional creatures, with biases and such, as anyone. I often find that many of them are opposed to the actual heart of the bible, if you dig deeply and question them in this direction. IMO, it is the true root of their unbelief, despite what they might say. Let me explain…
I always tell people that if I no longer believed in God, I would still be a Christian.
Sounds like a weird statement to make, but I became a Christian before I became a theist.
What first had me take another look at the bible and God and Christ was the realization, over a few decades of hard living, that on moral issues, the bible was generally right on. I was not at first convinced by logic or persuasion or rhetoric, but by experience, you might say.
It was just one issue after another, I was slowly coming around. I was pro-choice before I got out there in the real world, but after dating a number of women, I began to question this belief, after seeing firsthand the deleterious psychological ramifications that abortions had on the women who had them. And there are many other examples such as this.
Therefore, we find a lot of atheists who have a dog in the fight, as there is sometimes a very real moral opposition to the doctrines and guidelines offered by the prophets. The emotionally-charged language they use keys us in on this, when they call God a “monster” or offer that certain beliefs are “despicable.”
9 out of 10 times, anyway, they are simply failing to examine the bible and scripture in its historical context. Christians and theologians know that there are many covenants detailed in the bible, each for a different time period and context. What kind of moral guidelines believers may need in one era may not be appropriate in another.
For example, in a time of constant warfare, when a small nation is surrounded by larger enemies, a kind of military law may be instituted in this small nation, in opposition to a time of general peace, where different guidelines, that bring more liberties, may be more appropriate for the nation.
A debate about racism is not a meaningful debate, and it will never be fruitful. One reason for this is that ‘all racists are right,’ in a way.
No matter which group you focus on, you are going to find evil, sin and immoral behavior. You are going to find gossip, adultery, lying and murder, whether you are white looking at black or black looking at white. It doesn’t matter your nationality or the nationality you are focused on–you are going to find ample justification for believing that group is evil.
It is useless to defend a race of people. They are still people! Full of sin, error, hatred, a bent toward warfare, and making mistakes enough to pour over.
This is why I believe a revelation of our own sin is critical to seeing and believing correctly; this is why a recognition of EVIL within oneself is the key to spiritual enlightenment, and a focus on a racial apologetic will fail and does fail.
This is the reason you can’t find a focus on this concept in the bible, because it will never lead anywhere positive.
In a way, all racists are right. Once you realize this, that the real human problem is a general, shared evil, you are well on your way to becoming born again, or born anew.
I believe in God because this world is an absurdity without God.
I believe in an omnipotent, imaginative creator
because this is a world that could only be imagined.
I believe in God because you can’t get something
from nothing, and if you could, you could only get something from
nothing by imagining it. I believe because there must be an unmoved
mover. I believe there must be an omnipotent imaginer.
I believe in God because we are
found so far outside the periphery of what is rationally coherent,
that God becomes an inevitable, necessary demand on logic. WE are the
logical necessity if God exists. If God is love, then we exist. God
is love. We exist. We exist because God is love. We exist, therefore
a loving God exists.
I believe because godless cultures
produce cold societies primed for tyrants, socialism, communism, and
all variety of deadly, utopian schemes. I believe in God because
existence itself is too much to ask of a godless universe; a godless
universe being no universe at all.
I believe because of a Christian
kindness that I know of among those of my faith. I believe because of
a pre-adolescent goodness that I once knew and still feel deep inside
of me; because of all of this, I believe that I was called, chosen,
sanctified— before the world began. I believe that.
I believe because I have the holy, inspired
scriptures, which are the proofs of revelation.
I believe because God is love, and
love is real, and therefore— God is real.
I believe in the validity and soundness of the
Teleological argument, the Kalam Cosmological Argument and The Moral
Argument. I believe in God because of the Transcendental argument and
the Ontological argument. I believe in God because of the
resurrection miracle, and the historical fact of the empty tomb. I
believe in God because the existence of a supernatural evil is
apparent.
I believe because of the gospel
message, which confirms itself in my heart as a message that a good
God would deliver to mankind. I believe because of received words of
wisdom, timely words of knowledge, and sometime prophetic warnings. I
believe that where there’s theological smoke, there’s a
metaphysical fire.
I believe that when the universe
called out for existence, only God could have answered. I believe in
God because of the hundreds of fulfilled prophecies: because Israel
was reassembled as a nation again in a day,
just as the ancient scripture predicted; because the scriptures
predicted that Israel would always be surrounded by enemies; because
the scriptures predict that Jerusalem would be the most important
religious site in the entire world, and it is; I believe because the
scriptures predict that the end of the world will begin and end in
Israel’s immediate vicinity (and this is extremely likely, even two
thousand years later.)
And in the 9th chapter of the book
of Daniel, the exact year of Christ’s coming is predicted, hundreds
of years before the fact.
I believe in God because this is a
world that looks like a world where a God must exist.
I believe because history has
time-and-again confirmed the accuracy of the Judeo-Christian
prophetic literature, because a grand macrocosmic stage demands a
grand macrocosmic actor; because the material universe is contingent
on God’s existence, and I believe because of the abundance of
evidence— that evidence being faith itself.
I believe that the gospel message
speaks to man as he is, according to his true psychological profile.
I believe because Christ fulfilled hundreds of Old Testament
prophecies. I believe because I have found that God’s ways are
better for me than man’s ways.
And I am a Christian because it
seems to me downright stupid to wager my eternal soul with
anti-Christian ideologies, against God, against Christ, chancing
eternal damnation. A stupid wager if there ever was one.
I believe in God because I desire perfect justice, I desire pure righteousness, and only God’s presence can fulfill that desire in me.
