Do we need to have a feeling before we know God is there? Do we have to see strange things happening which are unexplainable in ordinary everyday terms? Does something mystical have to happen before we can believe that there’s a world just out of our sight? Is God hiding so that we need to hunt for Him? Does He live in Tibet, or the Vatican, or in outer space?
FAITH OR FEELINGS
I was interested to hear about someone who is seeking evidence for the existence of God, or simply of a spiritual side of life, in some sort of metaphysical or esoteric display, feeling or experience. Such seeking goes on not only out of the Church among those with a yearning for the mystical, but in it. It’s said in some churches that if unusual things are happening, such as people rolling on the floor or raising their voices in a language no-one knows or understands, something spiritual is happening, and God must be present and doing a mighty work. When such things are not going on, they will say, God did not “show up”. This, dear reader, is nonsense. It’s a case of not seeing the wood for the trees. It’s a case of mistaken identity. It can even be an example of idolatry, when faith is put into a feeling or an experience, rather than in the God who cannot be seen.
SEEING GOD
People are looking for God as though he’s hiding somewhere, perhaps behind the clouds or behind the rafters in the chapel, or behind the musical instruments on the stage. They long for Him to pop out and wave and say “Hi”. The first Russian cosmonaut on leaving earth’s atmosphere declared that he could not see God up there, as a way of mocking the idea of God’s existence. Why do we think that God is only present if we can see Him or if something weird is happening?
THE SOLID AND THE SPIRITUAL
The attempt to mingle evolution with the story of creation in some denominations gives more wieght to the conviction that the world around us is something separate to God. The world somehow got here on its own over billions of years, and once in a while God shows up to make sure everything is on a reasonably even keel and then disappears again. Where does He go? Is He in another part of the universe, or is He perhaps in some other dimension, out of our reach and unable to hear what we say or do?
Other people make the mistake of insisting that what we see around us – all of the natural world along with the unseen spiritual realm – is God. We’re just a part of “mother earth”. Earth is a living entity. Amazingly, this was the belief and profession of Adolph Hitler: you can read it in “Mein Kampf”. Hitler wanted to rid the world of what was polluting her, and the prime villain was the Jew.
NATURE IS NOT GOD BUT A CREATION OF GOD
The teaching of the Biblical God and of His prophets and apostles, and of Jesus Christ himself, is that while nature is not God it is a creation of God. He does, however, fill all things because He is infinite. If you can’t believe that, take a look at the size of the cosmos: it’s pretty darned big, and the one who made it has to be as near infinite in His nature and power as makes no difference anyway. He is everywhere. He’s behind the clouds but He’s in front of them also. He’s up there in space just as surely as the moon is, but He’s down here also: we just can’t see Him. We can’t see God because He is Spirit. We are made of inferior, temporary stuff; limited in our ability; limited in our senses; limited by the few dimensions we and our world are made of. The number of God’s dimensions are limitless.
Looking at this from another perspective, the Biblical God has made all things. To say that we’ve chased God out of science because we can’t see Him is like saying wood doesn’t exist because all we can see is trees. No, God isn’t made of the things we can see, but His handiwork is all around us, in all that we see and in all that we are. We would not exist had we not been created. We can’t see God hiding behind the cloud but we can see the cloud, designed and created by Him. Beyond that, Scripture tells us that He holds all things together (Colossians 1:17) Were God to “go away” the clouds above us and everything else would drift apart and cease to exist.
MR AND MRS PHOTOGRAPH
The analogy has been made of a photograph or a picture in a magazine. Imagine a photograph of two people. They consist of two dimensions. They were looking at the camera when the picture was taken. They’re alive but they can only see what is immediately in front of them, because they are two-dimensional. Their view of the world and of life is far more limited than ours. If we held the picture to the side of us or turned its face away they would not be able to see us, even if we were holding the photograph in our hand with love and great care. They might think we don’t exist or that we’ve gone a long way away, because they can’t see us. They might think we’re only around if we look them in the eyes and speak to them, but in truth we would be close to them and in direct contact with their world.
FAITH OR FAIL
Just because we can’t see God does not mean that He is not there, or rather, here. He has declared time and time again that He’s present in our world, whether we can detect Him or not, and He insists that we believe in His presence and in the goodness of His character:
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1 KJV).
Paul told us the importance of believing in our God even when we can’t detect Him with our five senses:
And 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).
We must believe that He’s present partly because the evidence of His existence is all around us, but also because He has told us He is present. His existence is obvious to anyone who wants to face the truth. We don’t need any sign gifts or displays of charismatic phenomena to be sure that God “showed up”, because Jesus said:
“For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them” (Matthew 18:20).
Notice that there are no preconditions here. It’s not necessary to pray in tongues or fall on the floor or have long periods of ambient music playing before God will “show up”. If we don’t believe He is already there, we are not living or worshipping in faith at all, and to expect visual or audible phenomena as evidence of His presence is bordering on superstition or even idolatry.
Atheists believe that they should be able to take a slice of God and put Him under the microscope. He isn’t in the sky waving and shouting, He isn’t running around fixing things, and He can’t be seen making babies, blowing the clouds and keeping the sun burning, therefore He does not exist. Such people pass judgment upon themselves. We may not be able to see our God, but the evidence of His existence and His character is all around us:
…what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse (Romans 1:19-20 ESV).
Those of us who live by faith have larger minds, and our spiritual eyes are open:
“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18).
Fuel for Faith, Food for Thought 