In our time (to coin a phrase) there’s a philosophy around every corner. There’s one for every day of the week, for the rest of your life. There’s a god for every whim, wish and eventuality. Are they really all valid, or do we need to focus a little more? If there really is a God, what is that God really like? Is it, he, she, they like all that we imagine or wish for, or do we need to narrow our view?
THE CHOICES
If you subscribe to the theory of evolution, and that as Sagan said “the cosmos is all there is or ever will be”, your creator is nothing, so this post has no meaning to you. Good luck.
You may think that we evolved, but that somewhere out there is some spiritual force or entity, or some gods or beings of some kind, who occasionally poke their noses into our world, and attempt to guide us or help us. Of course, if we take a good look at the claims of some who have allegedly been abducted by aliens, or if we are guided in our thoughts by our experience of life which is sometimes terrible and painful, we have to wonder if those beings who we can’t quite put our finger on are at all benevolent. Shouldn’t they be trying a lot harder to guide us? In this case the unknown side of our cosmos is somewhat fearful and unknowable, not to mention conflicting and confusing. Good luck with that-this post is not for you either.
If you agree that the cosmos is clearly designed or at least that it its sometimes tinkered with, you must accept the idea that there is a designer, or some designers. A creator’s handiwork will always reveal some features of his character, his ability, his intentions, his power, so by looking at creation we can get some clear views about what that creator or those creators are like.
THE CLUES
When we look at creation, we see that it is vast beyond our comprehension. It is beautiful beyond words. It is complex beyond our ability to explain. We must also conclude, since no work can be greater than its cause, that the creator is even greater than what we can see and experience. It is clear that the creator must transcend his creation. The creator must be able to control time, space and matter in order to create them. It, or she or it or they, must have power over life and death.
The creator has to have an even greater aesthetic sense than is displayed within the creation, and the complexity of the make-up of the creator must also be greater. The creator’s intelligence must be far beyond anything we can imagine., as is his, her, their, its power. We could almost-we may as well say-that God, a title we can ascribe to this creator, is in all respects, infinite.
So then, when trying to decide which of the many gods among men is the “right” one, (if any of them are) or is closest to being the right one, we must look for the one or ones who are even greater than the cosmos and all in it, and who claims to be so.
ARE THERE MULTIPLE GODS?
Do all gods qualify for the position of God? Try gathering all the politicians in DC (some of whom like to play god) and make them all President of the United States at the same time. Obviously it would not work-they would be fighting and disagreeing, just as they in fact do in many pantheons, such as the ancient Greek pantheon, whose members argued and fought like spiteful children. Try aligning humanity’s gods and philosophies: they do not and cannot fit together. They differ in so many ways, and they are frequently at odds with each other. It is therefore impossible for them all to be God, at least in the sense of supremacy. There would inevitably be a constant struggle.
According to Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction which holds true today, no two contradictory statements can both be true, and since humanity’s gods have sometimes extremely different views and intentions and modes of operation and requirements, they cannot all be the creator of heaven and earth, or there would be no order in creation. Sir Isaac Newton, whose laws of gravitation and motion were good enough to be used to put man on the moon, also discussed the apparently obvious fact that the universe and its operations were finely tuned and set into motion by one great mind, not by several conflicting and inferior minds.
There is so much order in the universe and in nature that it had to be designed by a singleness of mind. That is, one being-one entity. The supreme being and the creator cannot have a multitude of conflicting characteristics as if he/she/it were some cosmic schizophrenic or someone with multiple personalities. His character must have unsurpassable integrity, unity and singleness of thought and purpose.
Of course, many philosophies and religions and gods claim to be the right one or the only one. It seems necessary, then, to make comparisons. I’ve done some of that, and I’ve seen, to my own personal satisfaction, that the God of the Bible fits the above description of our Creator: you may have come to a different conclusion.
Among all the claims of humanity’s religions and philosophies, the God of the Bible claims to be the eternal one, the creator and sustainer of all things, and the only one at that. He claims to be the source of all beauty, all love, and all life. He claims to also hold the future in his hands.
The plethora of religions and philosophies in our world-growing by the day-is a result of Pascal’s “God-shaped vacuum” inside us, and man’s hunger for meaning and for something greater. In some cases its the result of a desire to control other people and get their wealth-we see that within Christianity today.
NO DIVISION, NO CONFLICT
The Biblical God claims, over and over, that He is the only true and the only supreme God. All others, He says, are imposters and nothing more than empty shams:
“I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God” (Isaiah 44:6 NIV).
God, in both Old and New Testaments, claims to be the creator of the universe. The very first verse of the Bible describes what man outside of God’s guidance only decided in the twentieth century: that time, space and matter all came into being simultaneously:
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”.
Could this God actually be speaking the truth? Is the God of the Bible The one, as He claims to be? Say what you like about Him, there is no mistaking that He will have no part in a democracy of designers and rulers-
I am the Lord, that is My name;
And My glory I will not give to another,
Nor My praise to carved images (Isaiah 42:8).
ARE THERE MULTIPLE REPRESENTIVES SENT FROM GOD?
Imagine that I have a friend who you haven’t met yet. If one of you imagines he has blond hair, and another says he has black hair, and another believes he’s a read-head, and another that he has mouse-brown hair, can you all be right? If you are one of those who would answer “yes”, I have to tell you that you have abandoned logic. You will not find truth, and you probably don’t want to.
In our age of multiculturalism plenty of people have fallen to the idea that all or some of those claiming to be sent from God are from the same source-the creator-at different times and in different places. If this is so, why do they all say conflicting things? Do they have short memories and forget the message and get it muddled up? Does God keep changing His mind? Is God confused and so keeps giving different explanations of himself and what he wants? Can there be one God only and at the same time, millions of gods? Ladies and gentlemen (and all others) this is nonsense. A God who can lay out the cosmos and set it all in motion, and can design and make DNA and life itself, is not a God of confusion.
ONE MESSAGE, NOT MANY
It’s my conviction that God really is perfectly capable and willing to create and preserve a message to his ultimate creation, mankind, but confused and conflicting messages don’t seem to be becoming of an infinite mind. Beside the message everyone can see in nature, that message is more specifically recorded in the Bible. The Bible-a collection of books written by at least forty different authors over many hundreds of years, spells out very clearly over and over again that there is only one God, and that He has sent only one messenger-his son. At the centre of all sixty six books and the one story the Bible tells is the Messiah, Jesus Christ.
The Biblical God will not share or divide His glory. He has, however, shared his glory with His son. Only the principle of the trinity can explain this.
The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven (Hebrews 1:3).
Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.” (John 8:57-58 NKJV).
Jesus Christ was crucified, in part, because he claimed to be God’s son. Notice that at the end of our age, it will be Jesus Christ at the right hand of the Father, and not a committee:
The high priest said to him, “I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.”
“You have said so,” Jesus replied. “But I say to all of you: From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, “He has spoken blasphemy! Why do we need any more witnesses? Look, now you have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?”
“He is worthy of death,” they answered (Matthew 23:63-66).
If there are many messengers, Jesus Christ didn’t need to die on the cross.
WHAT GOD IS LIKE
The message contained in the Bible includes abundant description of what God is like, in character, in power and in mind. It describes what He has made, which is all things. It shows what He requires of us, and what His standards are. It describes what He loves, and what He hates. It tells us how He deals with his creation, including us.
According to the principle that no two contradictory statements can both be true, either you have to discount the Biblical God and His son Jesus Christ completely from your consideration of who or what God is, or you have to conclude that the Bible is telling it like it is: there is only one God, and that his sole representative in the history of the world is His son Jesus Christ. It’s all or nothing. Either Jesus is the Christ, the only Son of God, or he is not. It doesn’t matter how much you would like to mash multiple philosophies together, because there is no logic in that. And so, dear reader, the choice you must make, according to the free will our creator has given you, is to accept and love His son, or reject him.
Fuel for Faith 