Why do you believe God exists?
Aren’t we all just here as a result of some evolutionary accident?
At some point in every person’s faith journey, we must confront these questions. So, for me, on those days when I’m tempted to question it all, whether God is real or not real, I always come back to this:
I believe in right and wrong.
I believe it’s wrong when someone takes something that doesn’t belong to them.
I believe it’s wrong to make a promise and not keep it.
I believe it’s wrong to lie and steal and covet and harbor hatred toward another person.
But why? Why am I so convinced that there is such a thing as right vs. wrong?
In science class at school, we’re told we come from some primordial soup. That we’re nothing more than an accumulation of chemical reactions, evolving into more sophisticated homo sapiens. Science textbooks show illustrations of apes growing taller and leaner until a man is standing on the right. It’s presented as a perfectly logical conclusion.
Then I read another Book…
I’ll never forget the first time I cracked open a Bible to read it for myself. I was 17 and thought I already knew what the Bible had to say. Years of Sunday school classes had covered all the stories several times over — or so I thought.
When I read the account of Jesus’ birth, I was shocked to discover that King Herod had all the baby boys under the age of two murdered in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:16-18). Somehow we always managed to skip that part whenever we had a children’s Christmas musical at church.
Why did Jesus’ arrival begin with pain? Why did those poor parents have to watch soldiers burst through their doors and kill their sons? Why must any parent lose a son or daughter?
The world tells us that evolution is based on the survival of the fittest. But if that were true, we’d be okay with soldiers barging into homes at night killing baby boys, because those soldiers were obviously “fitter” than infants.
But it’s not true. And common sense knows it.
If we’re nothing more than evolved beings, then we have no grounds for condemning the actions of murder and rape and theft and deception. In evolutionary terms, the strong have an inherent mandate to overpower the weak. But that’s nonsense.
When the mighty conquer the needy, nothing but chaos ensues. The basic fact that there’s a right and a wrong means something was placed inside us to know the difference. Some call it a conscience, but whatever we call it, it had to be placed there by something — or Someone — and it compels us to discern that which is good and true and beautiful.
It’s not wrong to wrestle with questions. Scripture commands believers to “always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have, but do this with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15).
So, this first question — Is there really a God? — is naturally followed by a next question: If there is a God, then what is this God’s name? Can we know this God? If so, how?
{ Click HERE to read the follow-up piece titled “How Can We Know That the God of the Bible Is the Right God to Believe In?”}
Shalom.
A portion of this article is an excerpt from Deeper Waters.
