Why I Am Glad God Is Not Real [Part 2]

I ended my previous post by asking how come I would claim to believe in God so steadfastly and yet live with the possibility that tomorrow I may begin to doubt. How can I be so sure about the existence of God, and that He is who He says He is, and at the same time admit so readily that I do not know whether I will doubt it next week?

My first answer to that question ought to be obvious enough: I am not God. I cannot tell the future. From an abstract point of view, I do not know if next week or next month I will wake up and decide to be an atheist. I do not know that because only God knows that.

My second answer is slightly more nuanced, yet I hope it will clarify rather than obfuscate my point. Here it is: I do not know that I will not doubt God’s existence tomorrow in the same way I do not know that I will not commit any other sin tomorrow. What guarantee do I have that I will not lie tomorrow? Or give a bribe? Or give into sinful lusts? None whatsoever! 

As long as my address is in this tattered tent of sin and until Christ returns, sin is a reality that I will have to contend with until the day I die.

And doubt, my friend, is just one more sin in my list. By the way, you should seriously doubt those who tell you that doubt is just an aspect of faith. In fact, all unbelief is sin (Romans 14:23) and the clearest expression of unbelief is doubt. We “doubt” when we look at the waves as more dangerous than Christ is powerful. We doubt when we would rather steal than trust Christ to provide our daily bread.

We sin when we doubt and we sin because we doubt.

Every time you act contrary to what you know to be the truth (the will of God), you are expressing unbelief through your actions. Faith begins with the comprehension of the mind, but it is infinitely more complex than that. Faith is to obedient acts what “doubt” (or faithlessness) is to disobedient acts.

So, yes, I probably will doubt God’s existence and God’s love tomorrow, even though the Bible clearly says that “without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” (Hebrews 11:6). In other words, that post six month ago was nothing me carelessly airing my dirty linen and displaying my doubt sin for all to see! #Facepalm

Where then is my confidence? How can I be so sure and so bold about my belief in the existence and love of God today and yet be so seemingly casual about the possibility of doubting tomorrow? Well, the answer to that question is actually not an argument, but an event. 

Something happened. 

If we were to go the way of arguments and rationalizations, we will come to the same conclusions that the best philosophers of the ages came to; that the only thing you can be certain about is uncertainty.

But there is another way, and it is the way through which I know that God is and He rewards those who earnestly seek Him. Remember when I said in my previous post that I wished God could speak “through the vocal chords and smelly breath of a human being” and that he would perform “a real, physical miracle… the kind where an amputated limb grows back”? Well, that actually happened!

But it didn’t happen when I wanted it to happen, or because I asked God to make it happen. It happened waaay back, like 20 centuries ago, and it was because God CHOSE to do it. Even before I was conceived in my mother’s womb, thousands of years before I was born, God answered the prayer that I made six months ago. The creator of the universe slipped into human skin and had eyebrows and fingernails and he sweated and burped and was as human as could be.

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” And guess what? I “have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth!” (John 1:14).

Reminds me of something C.S. Lewis said about how we know that God exists:

“If there is a God who created the world and created us, I could no more “meet” Him, than Hamlet could meet Shakespeare. If Hamlet wants to prove there is a Shakespeare, he’s not going to be able to do it in a lab, nor is he going to be able to find Shakespeare by going up into the top of the stage. The only way he will know something about Shakespeare is if Shakespeare writes something about himself into the play.”

God wrote and wrought Himself into the drama of life. But guess what, even God entering the world was not enough to convince the people to believe in Him. God becoming a man did not convince the people that the man was God. The man Jesus performing miracles did not persuade the people that the miracles were from God (Matt 12:24).

In fact, instead of believing in Him, they killed Him! And I dare say I am so glad they killed Him! Because that death was the only way I could ever have become so confident in the existence of God and in the love that God has for me!

“He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1:10-13)

I have so much more to say about this! There are infinite things to say about Him! About this God who became a man and was killed and then rose on the third day, not only so that I could “be convinced” about Him, but so that I could truly know Him and be reconciled to Him and live the life that He designed for me to live. Indeed, there’s so much to say about this God, and I have the rest of my life to say it and I will keep saying it even beyond that.

I pray you would join me in proclaiming all the wonderful things about this God. He is indeed glorious, and marvelous! I don’t just believe that He exists, I love Him! I am not just convinced, I am sold! I wonder if you know Him. He is the best thing that could ever happen to you, because, come to think of it, there wouldn’t even be a you without Him! 

And that, my friend, is the truth!

Cornell