March 8, 2007
-
Why do I think God exists? Because the universe exists. It takes a greater leap of faith to believe that everything is here because of a series of coincidences than it does to believe in a creator. Scroll down a ways to see the J. MacArthur discussion from the "Battle for the Beginning." It is obvious that God exists. Godisnowhere. There are two ways to read that. I choose where to put the spaces, and my choice determines how I live my life and whether I have an eternity. If I choose to insert the space as "no where," that is what I get, nothing. If I insert the space as "now here," and bow to the God whose name is tenseless, eternal "I AM," I receive His eternal life and His eternal presence. He is there no matter what choice I make. I am free to choose to believe, but I am not free to create an absurd alternate reality. I choose to believe what God has revealed about Himself in nature in the Bible or in Jesus Christ, or I choose to believe in some other god that I make in my own mind.
And why do I think the think that the Bible is the only way? Because it says that there is no other way. I wish that it did not say that, I truly do. CS Lewis also expressed a desire to take a scissors to those parts of the Bible, but could not. We are not free to pick and choose what parts of the Bible we want to believe. God is sovereign. He says that He is the holy, righteous, loving Creator, and that there are no other gods. God is also fair, and each individual is as precious to God as an entire universe. He gives everyone a chance to believe.
This is an old argument, and perhaps CSL came up with it. When considering the person of Jesus Christ, we must certainly admit that he clearly claimed to be God. There are three possibilities for a person who makes such claims. He is a liar, insane or telling the truth. Why would Jesus lie about such a thing? The only person who would carry such a lie through to the result of his own torturous execution must certainly have a few screws loose. But if one examines the life of Jesus, one does not see an evil liar or an insane babbler. This leaves us with the final possibility, that He is telling the truth. He is truly God, and as God, we are required to heed His words as truth. To refuse to accept truth presented is to choose to embrace a lie manufactured. When He says that He is "the way, the truth and the life," and that "no one can come to the Father but by Me," we had better take His words very seriously. He is the central figure in the Bible, and which means that we had also better take it all very seriously.
