Redeeming Theology Archives - Page 35 of 74

Have you ever wondered why God doesn’t make Himself more obvious?

Have you wondered why He doesn’t write His name in the clouds so they say, “I Am God and I Exist! Believe in Me!” or call out to us with a booming voice from heaven, or simply just show up in all His splendor and glory?

Even when He did come in the person of Jesus Christ, He came masked in human flesh, cloaking Himself in humility and frailty.

Why does God do this?

Why does God hide?

Why doesn’t God make Himself more … obvious?

I have been thinking about this off and on for … well, just about my whole life.

I remember in my teens reading Romans 1 where Paul says that God has revealed Himself in nature so that men are without excuse, and I remember thinking, “I don’t know about that … I see evidence of God in the beauty and complexity of creation, but I also see a whole lot of evil. God’s existence and management of the universe is not obvious. If God had wanted to make Himself obvious, He should have spelled out His name in the stars or something. God should show up every 50 years or so just to prove to each generation that He is still around.”

I know that many people think that this is what God IS doing through answer to prayer, and daily blessings, and so on, but in our more honest moments, I think all of us wish that God would make His existence more obvious.

(Of course, probably no matter what He did, we humans would still explain it away somehow… we have an amazing ability to ignore what is plainly set before us… but this is a tangent I won’t follow…. )

We all want God to just jump down out of heaven and show up in front of us, and shout, “I’m here! I know what you’re going through! I have heard your prayers! I am with you! I will help you!”

But He doesn’t.

I want God to hit me over the head with a two by four!

I remember as a pastor standing out side of my house with a man from the church who struggled with alcohol. He had just come off a drinking binge and was standing there in my yard repenting and confessing and wondering if God still loved Him and forgave Him even though he had failed God AGAIN!

I kept trying to reassure this man that God will always love him and forgive him, but he wasn’t taking my word for it, nor did he want Scripture verses. He wanted God Himself to show up. He kept saying, “You know what I need pastor? I need God to hit me over the head with a two by four. I just want God to cold-cock me. To lay me flat out on my back!”

He and I were talking next to our wood pile (we heated our home with fire wood) and there was a two by four sitting right on top … it was about four feet long … perfect for knocking someone over the head. He pointed to it and said, “See that two by four, God? Come on! Hit me over the head with it! Right now! If you exist and if you love you me, knock me out!”

God never did, of course …

But I almost reached out and picked up that two by four and hit this man over the head. I came so close. He would have gotten angry and asked why I did it, and I would have said, “God told me to.”

I didn’t do it, though.

One reason was because I was afraid I might kill him, and the other reason is because I was pretty sure he had a gun in his car. I was afraid that if I hit him over the head, he might shoot me …

The point is that I think that in our more honest moments, all of us feel like this man.

We desperately need God to show up, and He doesn’t.

God never seems to show up when we most need Him to.

At least, He doesn’t show up in any way we can discern.

We’re even willing to suffer violence at the hand of God if He would just stop hiding from us!

But instead, God always seems to be Missing in Action. Distant. Giving us the silent treatment.

It is so frustrating.

And many of us end up feeling like we have offended God. That He is angry with us and wants nothing to do with us any longer.

Why Does God Hide?

Anyway, I have recently realized why God hides … Why God does not make Himself more obvious … Why He doesn’t write His name in the clouds or knock us over the head with two by fours.

God hides Himself because God loves and respects us so much.

If God revealed Himself to all humanity in the way that we want, we would have no choice to believe in Him and follow Him.

If God showed up in all His power and glory — if we survived this appearance (which we probably wouldn’t) — we would be forced to submit to Him.

And God never forces Himself on anyone.

God does not want to force people into believing in Him.

He has no desire to make people follow Him against their will. God wants us to love Him, and He knows that love cannot be forced.

If He showed up in all His power and glory, it would akin to a man holding a gun at a woman’s head and screaming at her, “LOVE ME!” We call that rape.

And God is not like that. God does not rape.

He knows that forced love is not real love. And more than anything else, God desires real and genuine love from us.

God knows that if He were to reveal Himself to us the way most of us want, we would be forced into loving Him.

Terence Fretheim in his book, The Suffering of God, states this point brilliantly:

For God to be fully present would be coercive; faith would be turned into sight and humankind could not but believe. For God to be loved by people for God’s own sake, without being forced into it, requires a measure of human autonomy. Too direct a divine presence would annul human existence as a flame kills a butterfly. God must set people at a certain distance from God; whatever the intensification of presence, there must an element of ambiguity. God’s presence cannot be obvious.

Yes, this is why God hides. This is why He withdraws. This is why He retreats.

Because He loves us.

But even from afar, He is not silent.

Though He wants us to love Him, He first loved us, and love is not silent.

And then He woos.

He calls.

He sends “secret admirer” gifts.

He writes mysterious love notes.

He writes love songs and records them on our hearts.

Then He waits. And He hopes.

He waits for us to seek Him.

He hopes that we will search for Him.

And when we do, He begins to reveal Himself in new and exciting ways that He could not do before.

So do you want to see God? Look for Him. He is not obvious, but He is there.

And when you seek for Him, you will find Him, when you seek Him with all your heart.

God is not so hidden that He cannot be found.

5 Theology Mistakes I Made As a Pastor

By Jeremy Myers

34 Comments

All of us have major problems with our theology.

And the sooner we recognize that our theology is not perfect, the better off we’ll be.

Of course, the trick is knowing where you theology is wrong.

Though I am certain I have problems in my theology right now, I do not know what these problems might be. If I knew, I would change my views.

This is why it is important to always be talking with others, reading the ideas of others, and thinking about theology and how it relates to life.

As a result of my own theological study and research, a lot of my theology has changed over the past fifteen years. Below are five of the main mistakes I made in my theology when I was a pastor.

1. I expected everyone to study the Bible and read theology.

Since I love to study Scripture and read theology, I believed and taught that every Christian should do the same.

I saw how much spiritual benefit I received from reading and studying Scripture and theology, and I assumed that everyone else would get just as much benefit from these practices as I had.

I also believed that people could not really come to know God unless they diligently studied Scripture and read widely from theology.

Looking back now, I see how wrong I was.

I now see that God has made Himself known to little children and to those who may never crack open a book of theology or read a chapter from the Pentateuch. I have encountered people who know more about God and how He works than I have ever hoped to know of God, and they have never read the Bible all the way through, nor do they even know what the word “theology” means.

I have now come to see that I enjoy reading and studying theology because this is partly why God put me on planet earth. I have gifts, talents, and abilities in the realm of Bible study and theology. But not everyone has these same gifts, and therefore, not everyone has these same interests.

Therefore, not everyone needs to read the Bible or study theology. And even when they don’t many of them will have a better knowledge and understanding of God than I ever will.

2. I took theology and Bible knowledge way too seriously.

I used to think that theology was a serious subject, which required sound thinking, sober minds, and no laughter or joy. I have since found that this is a common disease among theologians.

We tend to think that since we are “talking about God,” we must do so with all seriousness.

Now, however, I sometimes think that God gets just as bored with our serious theological discussions as would anyone else (except theologians). Furthermore, God does not really care for how seriously we take the words that come out of our mouth.

I now believe that we all need to lighten up about our theology.

I sometimes imagine there is a “Comedy Hour” in heaven where God and the angels read through all the things we Christian theologians preach and teach and write about. As I wrote a while back, in talking about God, we are like an oyster on the bottom of the sea trying to philosophize about ballerina knees.

I am not saying that our theology needs to be full of hilarious jokes and creatively told insights and stories. No. Just because Jesus told stories, this does not mean we should as well.

Instead, what it means is that we need to take ourselves less seriously. I need to take myself less seriously.

I know that just as much of what I believed in the past turned out to be seriously wrong, so also, much of what I believe right now might turn out to be wrong as well.

So I do my best. I study hard. But I hold my conclusions lightly.

And when I get a chance, I laugh. I laugh at Christianity. I laugh at church. I laugh at myself. Why? Because theology needs more laughter.

3. I thought that truth trumped love

While I always tried to be loving in what I said and did, as I read back through some of my old sermons, I find that I often erred in being so focused on truth, that I was not very loving.

I believed that the foundation for love was truth. And so while Paul instructed the Ephesians to find the balance between truth and love (Eph 4:15), I believed that the most important thing was truth. After all, I thought, it is never loving to withhold the truth.

I thought that it was preferable to speak the truth, even if it hurt, than to withhold the truth in the name of love.

I understand my logic, but I think that I often used such logic to say unloving things and treat people in unloving ways.

Today, while I do not condone falsehoods or lying, I try to err more on the side of love. I have discovered that some truth simply aren’t worth saying.

Besides, I have a view of truth which helps me see truth in almost everything.

I have noticed as well that Jesus wasn’t much of a stickler for orthodoxy. He was more than willing to contradict traditional theology to extend love. I try to follow His example and let my personal theology go out the window if doing so will help me love someone else.

4. I believed truly dedicated Christians regularly attended church

I still remember how I viewed the people in my church who only attended our Sunday morning service. I was grateful they came, but I knew, deep down in my heart, that if they were really devoted to following Jesus, they would also come to Sunday school, the Sunday evening service, the Wednesday evening Bible study, and the Saturday morning prayer meeting.

At least they came to the Sunday morning service though.

Which was more than could be said for the “so-called” Christians in town who didn’t attend any church at all!

There were several families I was aware of who said that they were following Jesus, but didn’t attend any church. I remember thinking how sad it was that they could be so deluded and deceived. After all, nobody could truly follow Jesus if they didn’t attend church!

I now realize how wrong I was.

Some of the greatest followers of Jesus I have met over the past fifteen years have not “attended church” in decades. I have now come to see that while church attendance is helpful and beneficial for a good many Christians, it is unhelpful and damaging for a good many more.

This does not mean that those who do not “attend church” are not part of the church; they are. In fact, it may be that many of those who do not attend church might be more active in the church than those who do attend.

Church, after all, is not the event that takes place in a brick building on Sunday morning, but is the people of God who follow Jesus into the world (See my book, Skeleton Church).

Following Jesus and being the church is not about sitting in a pew on Sunday morning (though for many it might include that), but is about being Jesus in the world.

5. I believed the goal of the Christian life was to get rid of sin.

To put it another way, I believed that God was in the sin management business. I believed that God was looking down on planet earth, wringing His hands in frustration (and even anger) at how bad we had messed things up.

I believed that the reason God gave us Scripture, and the reason God sent Jesus to this earth, was to tells us how to live “right.” I believed that God’s primary goal for our lives was to get us to stop sinning.

Today, I don’t believe God is nearly as concerned about sin as we are. I believe that sin is just not that big of an issue for God. If there is something God is concerned about, it is religion, which presents an ugly portrait of God to people and tells us to worship this ugly portrait “or else.”

And while sin is destructive and hurtful, I think that God would rather have us sin a little than live smug religious lives of self-righteous arrogance.

Bonus Item: 6. I believed that God was violent.

I used to teach that everything the Bible says God did is in fact what God actually did.

While I still hold to the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture, I now view things a little bit differently (I have a book coming out soon which explains more).

I no longer believe God is violent in any way, shape, or form. I do not believe God engages in violence or commands His people to do so. I believe that, if Jesus reveals God to us, then God is, by definition, non-violent.

This understanding, of course, has made me rethink a lot of other areas about theology, including how I read Scripture, but this entire topic is too huge to summarize in this post (which is already too long).

So those are some of the theological mistakes I made as a pastor. I imagine I am making more mistakes right now, but time will tell what those are.

How about you? What theological mistakes have you made in your past? What do you believe now instead and how did the change come about? Let us know in the comment section!

The Question is not, “Is the Bible True?” but rather, “How is the Bible True?”

By Jeremy Myers

26 Comments

Thinking about the nature of truth helps us understand how the Bible is (and is not) true.

And don’t get nervous … I believe all the Bible is true … but you need to read on to discover what I mean by this.

Beginning with Truth

There are different types of truth.

There is logical truth, scientific truth, historical truth, relational truth, poetic truth, and yes, even universal truth. There is a lot of overlap between some of these types of truth, but there are also some areas that might be true in one category, but not true in another.

Various Types of Truth Claims

For example, the statement “2+2=4” is mathematically true, while the statement “I love my wife” is relationally true. But I cannot use mathematics to defend the truth that I love my wife, so the statement “I love my wife” is not mathematically true.

Then there are statements which are true for some and not true for others. The statement, “Halloween is a day on which children get candy,” is true for children who go Trick-or-Treating on Halloween, but is not true for those who don’t.

Many historical truth claims are true when they are made, but are not true later. For example, “King George is the King of England” was true when he was king, but is no longer true today.

Then there are experiential truths and truths from a certain perspective. Consider these two statements: “The sun rises in the east. The sun rises in the west.” Which statement is true? Everybody would agree that first statement is true. Yet from a scientific perspective, the sun does not rise in the east. This is an illusion based on our experience of seeing the sun rise up out of the Eastern horizon. Scientifically, however, the sun is stationary and the earth rotates around the sun.

Of course, even that is not a scientifically true statement, since in reality, the sun is not even close to stationary. The sun it is moving through the Milky Way galaxy at a speed of 450,000 mph. And when you consider that the Milky Way galaxy is moving toward the Andromeda galaxy at a speed of about 150,000 mph, and the earth is moving around the sun at a speed of about 70,000 mph, what this means is that when you were a child and your mother told you to “Sit still” you were still moving at a rate of about 670,000 mph.

So as you sit there reading this text, are you sitting still or are you moving?

You might say, “Well, I’m sitting still relative to my chair, but not sitting still relative to the universe.” Fine. Except that even relative to your chair, you are not sitting still. For the word “still” means “absent of all movement.” Yet your blood is moving, your eyes are blinking, your cells are reproducing, and your molecules are vibrating around like crazy. You are not remotely “still.” So you see? The truth claim that you are sitting still relative to your chair requires even further clarification to be truly true.

This dilemma about truth becomes even more convoluted when we begin to discuss history, poetry, and literature.

The statement, “I ate porridge for breakfast this morning,” is a true statement (Relative, of course, to how I am using the words “porridge” and “morning.”) But if I say, “The porridge was good,” we now have a truth dilemma. What do I mean by “good”? I could mean that it tasted good, or that it was morally good, or that it was not rotten, or maybe that it manufactured and sold by a company named “Good.”

And what about the statement, “I will eat porridge next Monday morning?” It is my plan to eat porridge next Monday, but does this plan make the statement true today? In other words, can a statement about the future be true?

Then there is the language of poetry. Take this statement: “The color of love is red?” Is that true? Yes, it is true. But not from a scientific, or logical, or mathematical, or historical perspective. Love has no color. And in fact, what exactly is “red”? For that matter, what is “love”? (Baby, don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more!)

Or take fiction and literature as an example. Here is a True or False question for you to answer: Aesop’s Fables are true.

Well, of course they’re false! In fact, the word “fable” means “myth” or fictional story, which by definition, means they are not true.

And yet Aesop’s Fables contains some of the greatest truths in literature. Truths about greed, teamwork, hard work, and self-discipline. So in this sense, Aesop’s Fables are amazingly true.

Enough with all this though. I hope you see that the truthfulness of a statement depends almost entirely on the type of truth statement it is, the context in which it is said, and numerous other factors.

So what about the truthfulness of the Bible?

The discussion above is why it is so difficult for some people to answer the question, “Is the Bible true?” Is that question referring to scientific truth, historical truth, relational truth, mathematical truth, poetic truth, or some other type of truth?

Initially, the answer to all these questions seems to be “Yes.” Many would state that “No matter what type of proposition or claim the Bible is making, it is true.”

Okay, let’s consider a few examples.

Earlier in this post, we talked about mathematical and scientific truth claims in the Bible.

In my One Verse Podcast, we have been looking at some of the claims in Genesis 1 (which some people believe are scientific truth claims … but I don’t). In Genesis 1:6, we read that God placed a firmament in the sky to separate the waters above from the waters below.

As I pointed out in the podcast, the word “firmament” means a hard dome. So is it true that there is a hard dome up in the sky which holds back a heavenly ocean from falling upon us?

Well, no, this isn’t true.

Ah, so then the Bible has errors?

I do not believe so (as I explain the Podcast). While Genesis 1:6 may not be scientifically true, there are other ways that a statement can be true. The key is figuring out how Genesis 1:6 is true.

Take the truth claim of the Bible that “God is love.” Is that true? Well, of course it’s true. But it is not mathematically or scientifically true. It is relationally true. It is a statement about God’s character and nature.

Or what about the numerous statement in the Psalms about how God looks and acts? I just randomly opened to the Psalms and found the statement in Psalm 68:4 that God rides on the clouds. Is this true? If you look up at the clouds and see them moving across the sky, is God up there riding across the sky on the clouds like a person rides a horse? Or maybe God is into cloud surfing the way people surf waves?

No, of course not. Psalm 68:4 is poetically true, describing the glory and majesty and power of God.

Or how about the parables of Jesus? Are they true?

Well, of course they are true!

But was there really a landowner who went away and when he sent back servants to receive the income from the land, the tenants of the land killed all the servants? And so the landowner finally sent his son, thinking the tenants would listen to him, but instead, the tenants killed the son as well? Did that really happen? Maybe … but its highly unlikely, and the reason Jesus told this parable, was not to teach a historical truth, but to teach a theological and relational truth about his own mission and ministry.

Or take prophecy. Are prophetical statements about future events true? Well, they do reveal divine intent, and since God can bring about what He intends, we could say that prophetical statement are more true than the statements about any human intent, but again, are statement about future historical events actually true before they occur?

We could go on and on, but here’s the point:

The question is not “Is the Bible true?” but rather, “How is the Bible true?”

Asking that second question is key in properly studying and understanding the Bible.

This sort of approach to Scripture allows us to take a more nuanced view of the doctrine of inerrancy.

I Believe in Inerrancy

Biblical Inerrancy is loosely defined as the idea that the Bible is without error. That everything on which it speaks, it speaks truly.

I agree with this.

I believe the Bible is true. I believe every word of it is true.

And in fact, I am going to go further than most inerrantists I know. I believe the Bible is more true than most of them believe.

Most inerrantists qualify their belief in the truth of the Bible by saying that the Bible is without error in the original manuscripts. That is, most inerrantists only believe the original manuscripts of the Bible are inerrant. They freely admit that the manuscripts which we have now are full of errors.

But I do not qualify my belief in the truth of Scripture this way at all. Because of how I understand truth, I believe the Bible is true more than inerrantists do.

While I do believe that the original manuscripts were completely true, I also believe that the copies of these original manuscripts are completely true, and I believe that all translations and Bible versions are completely true, including not only the KJV, but also the NIV, the NASB, the Message, the Living Bible, and even translations into Swahili or Klingon. Yes, did you know there is a Klingon version of the Bible? There is. And I believe it is true.

I know these sorts of statement will make people mad, but here’s the thing: I believe that these debates about who truly believes the Bible and who doesn’t are just the smoke and mirrors of religion.

Debates About Inerrancy are Debates for Control

Debates about inerrancy are nothing more than ways for one particular group of religious leaders to manipulate and control their followers into submission and to keep them from listening to the ideas or teachings of another group of religious leaders — who, incidentally, use the same arguments to control and manipulate their followers to keep them from listening to the first group!

It is a powerful argument in the minds of many to be able to say, “I am right and those people over there are wrong because they don’t believe the Bible, and so you better listen to me.” But every time I hear this sort of language coming out of a teacher or a ministry, I run away faster than I would run from a roaring lion.

But if my understanding of what the Bible says is different than your understanding of what the Bible says, you cannot say that I don’t believe the Bible is true, for I do. I simply believe that the Bible is true in a different way than you believe it is true, and I believe that the truth claims it makes are different than the truth claims you believe it makes.

The claim, “You don’t believe the Bible is true” is nothing more than a smokescreen put up by manipulative religion to discredit or ignore a challenging teaching or idea about the Bible which disagrees or contradicts what that religion teaches. This accusation is played as a trump card, but it turns out to be nothing more than a joker.

But if we can stop arguing about inerrancy, we can return instead to what has true value, which is actually discussing the biblical text itself. We can talk about how a passage is true, even if we know it is not scientifically or historically true.

Does this way of thinking help you know that you can trust Scripture as true? I hope so. Let me know your thoughts and questions in the comments below.

Was the death of Jesus a good thing or a bad thing?

By Jeremy Myers

31 Comments

Most Christians believe that the death of Jesus on the cross was a good thing. That it was a good event. That it was where our sins were taken care of and salvation was accomplished for our sakes.

But we Christians only say this because we have been blinded to the truth. We have become so familiar with the story that we do not see the crucifixion of Jesus for the evil thing it really was.

The Crucifixion of Jesus was Evil

Forget for a moment that it was Jesus who died on the cross. Let’s just say it was some random guy named Josh.

Josh was a great guy with some good friends. He never harmed anyone, but went about helping others in any way he could. He became somewhat popular among the crowds as a result, and certain religious leaders became nervous about some of the things he was saying, so they got the local government to arrest Josh. One of Josh’s friends even sold him out for money. Others, who didn’t even know Josh, brought false charges against him. He was eventually condemned to death as a traitor. But before the government killed Josh, they tortured him in front of a blood-thirsty mob.

Now…

What is good about Josh being betrayed by his best friends?

What is good about false accusations being raised by religious leaders against a man whom they see as a threat to their power?

What is good about corrupt politicians bowing to the whim of a violent mob?

What is good about soldiers “just doing their job” as they whip and beat a man within an inch of his life before gambling over his clothes?

What is good about sending an innocent man named Josh to a torturous death on a cross?

If anything remotely like this were to happen in our society today, there would be international shock and outrage. It is a terrible, evil thing.

But when we see this happening to a man named Jesus in our Bible, and because we know that Jesus is God, we Christians don’t even bat an eye at it. Instead, we sing songs and listen to sermons about it with smiles on our faces.

Worst of all, we thank God for doing it.

Many strands of Christianity believe that it was God’s plan to send His one and only Son to this earth to die a gruesome death as an innocent victim, and that it was not only God’s plan to do so, but that He orchestrated events to make it happen.

This sort of makes God like Freddy Krueger, except that He carves up His own Son.

God is not Freddy Krueger

It is past time to change this view of the crucifixion.

The crucifixion of Jesus was not a good event. It was an evil event.

And we will never, ever see the real truth of the crucifixion until we first recognize that it was not a good thing.

The crucifixion of Jesus was evil. It was horribly wrong.

And considering that Jesus was truly innocent, and was also God incarnate, the crucifixion is, without a doubt, by far the most evil event ever carried out in the history of all humanity.

God Has Redeemed the Crucifixion of Jesus

I know that you are probably shocked by what I have written so far in this post. You are so accustomed to hearing about the wonderful cross, the glorious cross, and how thankful we should be to God for sending His Son to die for our sins, that it is an affront to your theology to hear someone say that the crucifixion was evil.

But the only reason we say good things about the cross today is because God has redeemed the cross.

Through the resurrection of Jesus, God took something bad, and turned it around for good.

God has redeemed the crucifixion so that we now sing songs about it and listen to sermons about the horrible death of an innocent victim with smiles on our faces. But this doesn’t make the crucifixion “good.” It only reveals God’s ability to redeem anything and everything.

In a recent podcast on Genesis 1:4 I talk briefly about how God redeems the darkness. The crucifixion is the perfect example of this. God takes the most evil event in human history, and He redeems it in such a way so that most people today do not even think of it as evil, but as the most holy and righteous event in human history.

Isn’t that shocking?

This is the beginning place of theology. This is the starting block.

Our Theology Must Begin and End at the Cross

To understand God, Scripture, ourselves, other people, human history, and everything else, we must begin at the cross, and we must see it as evil.

But then, we must see what God does with the cross in Jesus Christ, and how God reveals Himself to us in the crucifixion of Jesus, and more importantly, how God reveals us to ourselves in the crucifixion of Jesus.

There is so much I want to say about this, and so much I will say in future blog posts, books, and podcasts, but for now I just want to invite you to begin seeing the cross of Jesus as something bad that happened, rather than something good. It is only here that you will begin to understand the true nature, meaning, and significance of the cross, not just for our understanding of God, but also for our understanding of Scripture, and most importantly, our understanding of ourselves.

Note: If you want to read more about this idea of the cross being a bad thing that has been redeemed by God for the good, I highly recommend Saved from Sacrifice by S. Mark Heim. This book is easily one of the best books I have read in the last decade.

If you believe in God, life makes more sense

By Jeremy Myers

9 Comments

Sometimes I get asked why I believe in God.

In the past, I used to say that I found it harder to not believe in the existence of God than to believe in His existence.

To put this another way, I found it easier to believe that everything came from God than to believe that everything came from nothing.

And yet … let’s be honest … saying that “everything came from God” only pushes the logical causality of everything further back one step. If I have trouble believing that everything came from nothing, and so say that everything came from God, the question is then, “Well then, where did God come from?” The Christian answer is that He didn’t come from anything; He just always was.

So really, the choice is between believing that everything came from nothing, or believing that God has always existed. Neither choice is easily understood or comprehended by the human mind. However, even with these two options, I still prefer to believe in the existence of God, for at least with God, there is the recognition of a mystery that cannot be understood by human finite minds, whereas without God, the idea that something came from nothing is just pure nonsense.

But recently I have come to realize something different.

I don’t necessarily believe in God because I can prove the existence of God.

No, I believe in God because through this belief, the world makes more sense.

Belief in the existence of God is the organizing principle of everything. Without a belief in the existence of God, everything is simply random meaninglessness. But with a belief in the existence of God, many of the dilemmas and confusing things of life suddenly make sense.

C. S. Lewis once said something like “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” I mentioned this in my recent podcast on Genesis 1:4.

As usual, C. S. Lewis is right on target.

Believing in God is like believing in light.

While light can be seen, you only really see light itself when it shines directly into your eye, like when someone shines a flashlight into your eye, or when you look at a light bulb or the sun. But you don’t need to have a light shown into your eye to know that a room has light. You know that a room has light because you can see the room. When you look at the walls of a room, and the items that are in the room, you are not seeing light, but are seeing things by the light. When light hits something, it allows you to see that thing. It diffuses, scatters, or reflects.

When we look at things and see them, we can know that the light is on them, not because we see the light, but because, by the light we can see.

As I have come to see the world through the light of Jesus Christ, the crucified God, this crucivision lens has helped me understand life, Scripture, and theology more clearly, and it has helped me grow in love for others more deeply.

So also with the existence of God. Believing in the existence of God helps us see ourselves, other people, this world, and our purpose more clearly.

Of course, you have to believe in God as He is revealed in Jesus Christ, or else you may end up believing in a god that acts like Hitler, and seeing the world through that lens will not be helpful for anybody. But that’s a subject for a future time.

Do you believe in the existence of God? Why? Do you think that this belief helps you understand life and live your life better than if you didn’t believe in God?

Why God Hides from You

Why does God hide?

I want God to hit me over the head with a two by four!

We desperately need God to show up, and He doesn’t.

Why Does God Hide?

5 Theology Mistakes I Made As a Pastor

1. I expected everyone to study the Bible and read theology.

2. I took theology and Bible knowledge way too seriously.

3. I thought that truth trumped love

4. I believed truly dedicated Christians regularly attended church

5. I believed the goal of the Christian life was to get rid of sin.

Bonus Item: 6. I believed that God was violent.

The Question is not, “Is the Bible True?” but rather, “How is the Bible True?”

Beginning with Truth

Various Types of Truth Claims

So what about the truthfulness of the Bible?

The question is not “Is the Bible true?” but rather, “How is the Bible true?”

I Believe in Inerrancy

Debates About Inerrancy are Debates for Control

Was the death of Jesus a good thing or a bad thing?

The Crucifixion of Jesus was Evil

God is not Freddy Krueger

God Has Redeemed the Crucifixion of Jesus

Our Theology Must Begin and End at the Cross

If you believe in God, life makes more sense

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