Aletheia

This is an extremely broad topic, so I will break it down a lot. First, I will address His existence. God exists because the Bible says so and you have to have faith. That's basically it. But you say, "where the heck is your reasoning behind that?" There isn't any. But there is reasoning behind what the Bible says and behind Christian faith.

There are many ways of proving the existence of God. There are many books out there and if you want to hear from a different perspective (i.e. logic, Biblical, etc.) feel free to read them. But my basis and the basis for many others for believing that God exists is that He does. There is no one who can better prove God's existence than Himself. God does this through many ways. Mostly by word of mouth or tradition, but there must be something else. I say this because anthropologists have never found a tribe of atheists. This is proof of my first point. God makes Himself evident in creation. The beauty and balance even of this planet is amazing. But let us take it to a smaller scale. Look at a watch. Imagine the person that came up with that idea. All the electronics (or gears) that are involved. Then think, how much greater is the Person who created the hand that the watch is on. I have never heard of a doctor who was an honest atheist. All one has to do to see that there is a God who created the universe is to look around. The intricacies of the balance that is somehow maintained are amazing. But let us get scientific for a moment here. The second law of thermodynamics is this: that all things go from a state of order to disorder. What happens if you lock something up for a few hundred years? It falls apart, right? This happens to all things. This is a simple way in which science yet again proves the existence of God and the falsity of the theory of evolution. Evolution claims that by random chance things came together from disorder to order. The second law of thermodynamics says that this does not happen. I will go into much greater depth in my evolution vs. creation essays. This, thereby, means that there must be a Creator, whatever that creator may be. A being so completely above and beyond all that we are in mental ability that we cannot comprehend it. I say this because nothing ever created has become equal or greater than its creator. This Creator must also be quite powerful to create. A man can take a gun and kill an animal in half a second, but can that man ever make that bird alive again? The power to create is astounding.

What have I just hopefully proven? That in a minor and simple way proved the existence of a Creator. Now, one thing that arises a lot is the question, "well, if God created us, then who created God?" The answer to this is complex and requires a bit of faith, but not much. The answer is, no one created God. Then the rebuttal comes, "well then God doesn't exist because something had to create Him." This argument goes around and around in circles and never really gets anywhere. This happens because we are looking at it from the wrong perspective. We as humans see time in a different way then God does. We see things in a linear perspective. Events go from future to present to past. It's the way we see them. God however does not. God sees all events as the present if in any time at all. For Him there is no future and no past and perhaps not even a present. You say, "so, what does this mean?" This means that God is outside of time and does not abide by its rules. He doesn't move in and out of it, but rather is completely separate from it. This is how He doesn't have a creator. Creation indicates a beginning. God has no beginning and no end. Therefore, He does not need a creator because He has no beginning. He has no beginning because He is outside of time. Again, I would like to remind you that this is a very lofty subject and if it gives you trouble, worry about it later for it is non-essential now. Just know that there is no one behind this Creator and that there is nothing more powerful or even of equal power.

What have I just hopefully proven? That this Creator is timeless; that He has no beginning and no end and therefore has no creator. Where does this leave us? It gives us a Being who created us and is without a creator, who has incredible power, and is outside of time. I believe that this Creator is now sufficiently worthy of the title of God. From this viewpoint, we will now pursue God's self-sufficiency. Basically put, "He doesn't need nothin from nobody." We as humans rely on many things for our existence. We rely on food, light, water, air, and heat to mention some of the basics. God does not need anything to exist. Not only so, but He is without need. First of all, God has no material needs. He doesn't need food or air etc. as we do. This is so because God is a purely spiritual being. Not only does God not need anything physically, but does not need anything emotionally. God is filled to the brim with everything that we as humans emotionally need. It is not to say that God does not have emotions and therefore doesn't lack anything emotionally, but rather it is to say that God doesn't need anything emotionally because He already has everything. Just as a man does not need food when he is full, so God does not need any love or comfort because He has them already to their fullest.

So now the question is asked, "if God doesn't need anything, then why did He create?" Interestingly enough, a good way to answer this is by way of a joke: one day, the head pastor at a church decided to take a Sunday off and go golfing. God and His angels are up there watching and one of them says, "Look at him, playing golf when he should be preaching Your Word. Aren't you going to punish him?" And God says, "yeah, I think I will." So the angel watches and the pastor gets a hole in one. Then he moves on to the next hole quite ecstatic, another hole in one. The pastor goes on to score a perfect game. The angel goes back to God and says, "I thought you were going to punish him." And God said, "Who's he going to tell?" Don't focus on God's role or anything in that joke, it's just a joke, but look at the point. What good does something magnificent do if there's no one around to admire it? None. God created us and everything else to glorify Him. That is the purpose for anything existing: to glorify God.

To what conclusion can we come to at this point? There is a God who created us for the purpose of glorifying Him, Who is without need, Who is outside of time, and who is incredibly powerful. This sounds like a pretty mighty God so far. A God who needs nothing and who creates the universe for the purpose of glorifying Himself. But it also sounds like a rather impersonal God to me. At this point, God is some big guy we can't see that spun up the universe and let it go. This is as far as many people have gotten. But one thing they missed is the part about glorifying Him. Now, God may seem a bit arrogant to some at this point. To these people I say, "is there anyone else who really deserves it?"
Continuing on with this part about glorifying this great Creator, I wish to raise the fact that God's greatest goal is His own glorification. He is the only one truly deserving of any glory for all things come from Him. God in His infinite wisdom found the best way for a person to glorify Him is for them to know Him, therefore, He made Himself known. But to know of God and believe that He exists is quite different from knowing God and believing in Him (by believing I use it in terms of "trusting ones life over to"). God made it known that He existed for the purpose of glorifying Himself, but also, He knew that the best way that His creation could glorify Him is by knowing Him.

There is just one problem with this. The creation of man rebelled against His will to glorify Himself. It no longer sought His glory, but its own. This is disobedience and God calls rebellion a three-letter word: sin. The thing with sin is that it separated humans from God. We could no longer talk with Him and know Him as we did before sin. Sin created a gap that was impossible for any man to cross. An illustration of this is in order to give you a better picture of a fraction of how great this gap is. Imagine 3 people dropped from a helicopter into the middle of the Pacific Ocean. One can't swim, the other is average, and the third is an Olympic swimmer. The Olympic swimmer says, "This is the way to South America, follow me." The first drowns right away. The second goes for about an hour or two. The Olympic swimmer is really great, he swims for 24 hours straight and travels 30 miles and then goes down. In order for that swimmer to reach South America, he would have to swim for about a thousand more days. That is how great the gap is between man and God at this point. Man still knew God existed because God makes Himself evident in all things, but there was no relationship that was possible.

The situation here is quite hopeless. The gap is so great that though many may try, none will succeed. There seems to be no hope of ever restoring the relationship of God and man. The question arises, "what is so important about this relationship anyway?" Well, the answer is rather harsh at first. The answer is that rebels cannot go unpunished because God is a just God. Also, only those who have a relationship with Him will be able to spend eternity with Him. This creates two extremes. One: spending eternity in punishment. Two: spending eternity having a relationship with God. The first is more commonly known as Hell and the second as Heaven.

At this point, I will ask the question, "what really is Heaven and Hell?" First we must
consider God's prime directive: that all things would bring Him the greatest glory they can. Because we were created to glorify God, He installed this prime directive into us to the point where we not only are most fulfilled when we glorify Him but also in a sense need to glorify Him. When we aren't glorifying God, we are not fulfilling out purpose for existence. Now, from here, it is possible to gain a clear view of what Heaven and Hell are. Heaven is fulfilling our purpose of glorifying God as best we can. All things in heaven give glory to God throughout eternity. In this we satisfy our need and also are in a sense rewarded in that our fulfillment is complete.

Hell is just the opposite. Hell is the absence of satisfaction of our need to glorify God and a lack of any fulfillment whatsoever. This absence and lacking comes from the fact that in Hell, one is separated from God completely. His protection is removed and more importantly His presence is removed. Without a God to glorify, one cannot satisfy the need to nor be fulfilled in any way. That is why Hell is many times portrayed as a place of eternal hunger and thirst.

Now that we have a clarified view of what Heaven and Hell are and why the relationship is important, we can move on to what God did to restore that lost relationship. This too is made much more understandable in the telling of a story.

There was once a farmer who was sitting in his house on the day of a blizzard. The temperatures were below zero so this farmer was sitting by the hearth warming himself. Over the breeze, he suddenly heard the faint honking of geese. The farmer being a kind man was worried about the geese thinking that they might freeze. So he bundled himself up and went outside and opened up the barn doors thinking that the geese would notice the warm inside and go in. They didn't. The farmer tried spreading breadcrumbs attempting to lead them to the barn. They didn't come. The Farmer then thought to himself, "If I could just get one of them in I'm sure they'd all follow. If only I could become one of them and show them the way."
This is exactly what God had to do in order to show us the way to heaven. God had standards first that He gave to man. The problem was, no one could meet them, and so God invented sacrifice. God made it so that only by the death of something can sins be erased. But that only showed the way to those who knew to sacrifice to Him. Because of the inadequacy of man, God had to become flesh in order that He could die for the sins of everyone.

This next part is my favorite because it is what my life is all about. If you ever want to read the story from someone who saw Jesus and ate with Him and talked with Him, read the gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But now, we shall go to the center of true Christianity; the very source even of the name, the Author and Perfector of the faith.

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