One of the more creative movies to come out in the last few years was the Peter Wier film The Truman Show. The Truman Show is about a man named Truman Burbank--played by Jim Carey--who was adopted as a newborn by the OmniCam Corporation. The OmniCam corporation then created an entire city on a movie set and placed Truman in this artificial city called Seahaven without Truman knowing any of it was fake. The enormous studio of Seahaven is filled with 5,000 hidden cameras, as people across the world watch every step of Truman’s life live on television. Of course Truman goes through life in Seahaven thinking that everything and everyone around him are real.
The creator and director of the Truman Show is a messianic figure named Christof, played by Ed Harris. For 30 years Truman is perfectly happy and content in Seahaven, with its perfect sky, computer monitored climate control, a wife and best friend who are really actors, and so forth. Truman’s reality is has been meticulously manufactured and manipulated by Christof, yet it’s the only reality Truman knows. At least until a series of accidents start Truman questioning this reality, until finally he figures it out and walks off the set into the real world.
Some people think that belief in God is like Truman in The Truman Show. People believe in God, these critics claim, because that’s the only reality that they’ve been presented with. Like the movie set of Seahaven, organized religion has meticulously manufactured and manipulated circumstances to cause people to live in the illusion of God. These critics point out that there’s no denying that people who believe in God are real are happy and content, even as Truman was happy and content in his world. However behind the set, critics claim, doesn’t lie God, but merely human directors like Christof, who pull the right strings and orchestrate the right circumstances to make belief in God appear real.
You see, even though Truman was happy in Seahaven, he was also tragic because his happiness is based on something that’s not real. And critics of religion claim that people who believe in God are in the same boat; we’re tragic, pathetic figures, because our sense of happiness and meaning in life is no more real than the movie set of Seahaven. True liberation comes for us the way it came for Truman, to turn out back on our make-believe world and courageously venture into the real world, a world without organized religion pulling the strings, a world where God is rejected as a relic from the unenlightened past.
It was the 19th century German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach who in the first claimed that belief in God was a kind of wish fulfillment (McGrath 131-35). According to Feuerbach, we project all our hopes and desires onto an ideal person thereby creating God in our image. Feuerbach originated this idea, but Sigmund Freud popularized the idea to the rest of the world. So influential was Freud in disseminating this idea, that by the 1960s Time magazine was proclaiming the death of God. To use the language of The Truman Show, people in the 1960s proclaimed that soon everyone would realize Seahaven was only a set, and in mass we’d walk into the real world.
Yet God’s obituary in Time magazine was a bit premature, because it seems that God has outlived his critics. Despite all the work of Freud and others, 95% of the American population still believe that God exists (Gallup and Lindsay 25). According to George Gallup’s 1999 poll, interest in God and spirituality is on the rise, not declining (10).
Yet as we begin to ask what kind of God is it that exists, suddenly people are less sure. Some people envision God as impersonal, like the force in Star Wars. Others view God as a kind of benevolent Santa Claus, a God who has no higher goal than our happiness and success. Still others think God bears some resemblance to George Burns, or more recently to pop singer Alanis Morriset.
Today we begin a new series. We’re calling this series SIMPLY GOD, as we try to get to the bottom line of what kind of God it is that the Bible reveals. For the next several weeks we’re going to explore different aspects of God character. We’re going to try to do this with a minimum of jargon, mumbo jumbo, and fifty cent theological words. Just straight talk that presents the Bible’s teaching about God.
Today we’re going to look at the reality of God. How can we know that God is for real? What assurance do we have that this isn’t just collective wish fulfillment like Feurbach and Freud claimed? How do we know that the Christian faith isn’t just an elaborate set like Seahaven, with pastors like me pulling the strings and orchestrating circumstances to make it seem like God is for real? Today we’re going to find three reasons we can know that God is for real, that he’s not our wish fulfillment or an elaborate scheme being propagated by devious people like myself.
1. God’s Calling Cards (Acts 14:15-17).
Acts 14 contains one of the apostle Paul’s sermons he gave in the city of Lystra. Lystra was basically the backwater of the Roman Empire. The people living there all illiterate, superstitious, and they were accustomed to a rural way of life. When Paul and his friend Barnabas arrive in Lystra, God enables Paul to perform a miracle where a disabled man is suddenly able to walk. The people are so amazed that their superstition takes over, and they try to worship Paul and Barnabas as the Greek gods Zeus and Hermes.Now look at what Paul says:
"Men, why are you doing this? We too are only men, human like you. We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them. In the past, he let all nations go their own way. Yet he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy" (Acts 14:15-17 NIV).
Paul pleads with the people to not worship him, that he’s just as human as they are. Paul and Barnabas are only messengers, ordinary guys with a message of good news from God. Now the people in Lystra weren’t Jewish, so they didn’t know the Old Testament story of God creating the heavens and earth, of God choosing Abraham and establishing the nation of Israel. Instead they were pagans, worshipping the traditional Greek and Roman gods.
Paul challenges them to turn from their "worthless" superstitions to the living God. The word "worthless" here means "empty," without substance, hollow. Their worship was empty because it was just words, Zeus and Hermes and the other gods of paganism didn’t exist in reality. But the living God is the God who is self-existent, the God who depends on no one or nothing for his life. Because he’s the living God, he’s created all life, whether it’s life in the air, life on the earth, or life in the sea.
Since God had been working through the nation of Israel up to this point, God had allowed the rest of the nations to go their own way. This means God was preparing the way for the birth of His Messiah, His Son, who would bring God’s blessings to the rest of the nations. But until that time came, God wasn’t directly reaching out to the other nations.
But God hadn’t abandoned the other nations; he’d left a witness of himself among all people everywhere. God had left the nations evidence, calling cards about his existence. God’s kindness was shown in his provision of rain and seasons. For farmers like the people in Lystra, their very lives depended on rain and the changing of the seasons. Paul points to this as a calling card, evidence of God’s existence. God also meets their needs and fills their lives with joy and gladness. These gifts of kindness are God’s calling cards, left among all nations everywhere to testify to God’s reality.
So how can we know God is for real? WE CAN KNOW GOD IS FOR REAL BECAUSE HE HAS LEFT HIS CALLING CARDS FOR US TO SEE.
God’s fingerprints are all over the world if we take the time to investigate. No one of these clues in conclusive in itself, but the cumulative effect of these clues builds a strong case for believing that God is for real. You see, if God made the evidence for his existence so conclusive that every rational person had to believe in God, that would be coercive, it would force people to believe (Evans 20-21). But God wants people to believe in him freely, out of love, so he leaves enough evidence for the seeker to know he’s there, but this evidence can be easily overlooked by those who don’t want to see it.
A young atheist in England had spent most of his life avoiding the fingerprints of God in the world (Lewis 115). As a young man C. S. Lewis figured that Feuerbach and Freud were right, that God was just a figment of ignorant people’s imagination. As a busy Oxford scholar, Lewis went through life oblivious to the fingerprints of God in the world, all except for one fingerprint. Lewis was puzzled by the phenomenon of joy, how certain things in life bring a mystical, awe-inspiring sense of inner joy that seems to point to something else (Lewis 73). Eventually Lewis’ quest for this joy led him back to God, and he committed his heart to Jesus Christ while riding on his brother’s motorcycle sidecar on the way to the zoo (224). Lewis later described his conversion as being Surprised By Joy.
You see, we can know that God is for real because God has left us calling cards as evidence.
2. God’s Revelation (Romans 1:19-20)
But that’s not all. Now let’s look at a portion of Paul’s letter to the Christians living in ancient Rome. In many ways the people in Rome were similar to the people in Lystra, except the people in Rome were educated, civilized pagans.Look what Paul says to them:
What may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse (Romans 1:19-20 NIV).
In the context Paul is describing why God’s wrath against sin is being revealed against all people everywhere, religious and irreligious alike. Here Paul tells us that certain things about God can be known conclusively. Although God’s totality might be unknowable because our human minds are limited and finite, there are certain things we can know about God. These things include God’s eternal power and the invisible characteristics that make God who he is.
Paul claims that God makes these things plain to all people everywhere. That word "plain" means obvious, evident, clear and well known. God’s power and attributes aren’t only for the clever and intelligent, but according to Paul here they’re evident to everyone. Notice the subtle word play in the thought: God is invisible and unknowable, yet God has made himself both visible and knowable through the created world (Stott 73).
Because of this, no one can say, "But I didn’t know." All people are without excuse, because all people everywhere can look at the universe and hear God making these things clear to them. So this passage is taking us a step further than the previous passage in Acts.
Here we find our second reason to believe God is real. WE CAN KNOW GOD IS FOR REAL BECAUSE HE REVEALS HIMSELF THROUGH THE UNIVERSE.
Paul’s not just saying the universe contains evidence, but he’s saying that God is actively speaking through the universe, making his invisible attributes visible and clear. The universe is God’s flashlight, bringing forth the light of God for all to see.
Imagine checking your email today, and you get an email from a friend. You open the email and find that your friend sent you a recent picture. You wait for your computer to process the graphic, and soon the image of your friend is smiling at you from your computer screen. Now is that really your friend looking at you from your computer screen? Of course not; it’s just pixels on a screen arranged in such a way that it resembles your friend. The one-dimensional graphic bears witness to your friend; it represents your friend. That’s what God’s creation does, it represents the multi-God to us in a one-dimensional way.
Let me give you a few ways the universe reveals God.
The BEGINNING OF THE UNIVERSE REVEALS GOD’S POWER. All physicists today believe in the big bang, that the universe spontaneously came into being through an enormous explosion. Beyond the big bang physicists are speechless, because that’s delving into an unknown world of mystery. Yet it makes perfect sense that the big bang was generated by a God of eternal power, the kind of God described in Romans 1.
THE COMPLEXITY OF THE UNIVERSE REVEALS GOD’S WISDOM. The more we learn about the physical world around us, the more complex we realize it is. One strand of DNA contains enough information to fill all the volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica. But this complexity is so finely tuned that it’s perfectly designed for life to exist. Without this fine tuning it would be impossible for earth to sustain life, yet dozens of finely tuned variables converge to enable life to exist. This reveals God’s immense wisdom, to so design such a complex world in such a way to enable life to flourish.
Finally, THE MORAL ORDER OF THE UNIVERSE REVEALS GOD’S JUSTICE. Our internal sense of right and wrong, that inner moral compass, reveals the fact that we live in a moral universe. This sense of right and wrong, what some people call natural law, reveals God’s justice. Since some things are morally right and some things are morally wrong, that points to a law giver, a morally just being who created right and wrong.
Now the question immediately arises that if God makes himself clear as the creator through the universe, why are there atheists and agnostics in the world? Aren’t the existence of people who don’t believe in God evidence that Romans 1:19-20 isn’t true? Let’s go back to our computer screen analogy for a minute: Imagine the email graphic is from someone you don’t want to see a picture of. All you have to do is turn the screen off, and you won’t see it anymore. The picture’s still there, but if you turn the screen off you’ll ensure that you don’t look at it.
You see, atheism is a form of denial. Just like an alcoholic who becomes more and more blind to his problem the more he drinks, we become more and more blind to God’s light the more times we sin against God. Eventually we reach the point where we truly believe that God’s not real, just like the alcoholic reaches the point where he truly believes that he doesn’t have a drinking problem.
So even though God reveals himself through creation, we turn away from that revelation every time we sin against God. But God has made himself known through the universe, and we can know that he’s for real by looking at the universe.
3. Being A Seeker (Acts 17:26-28)
Now let’s look at one more speech from the apostle Paul, this one given in a place called the Areopagus in Athens, Greece. Athens was the hub of western civilization in the ancient world, the place where the great Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle had all taught. The Athenians were snooty and snobbish because they were so philosophically sophisticated and intellectual. Their invitation to Paul to speak in the Areopagus would be like being invited to address the faculty at Harvard or Yale.
Let’s look at part of Paul’s speech:
From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. "For in him we live and move and have our being." As some of your own poets have said, "We are his offspring" (Acts 17:26-28 NIV).
Now as soon as Paul says all people came from a common ancestor the Athenians are going to be defensive. You see, the Athenians believed that their race was superior, that they’d come into existence as a race differently from the rest of the world. They viewed all other races as barbarians, but they were the elite, the privileged few, the aristocracy. But Paul claims we all share a common ancestry, and that God himself was responsible for arranging the basic circumstances of our lives.
God did this so we would seek him. God’s purpose in placing you in this time, and this place, and this part of the world was for you to seek him. If you’re here today as a seeker--someone investigating the Christian faith but not yet fully convinced--you’re doing what God created you to do. God is pleased that you’re seeking him.
God designed us to not only seek, but to reach for God. Now the word "reach" here describes the groping and fumbling of a blind person (Stott 286). In other words, left to our own resources we’re not equipped to actually find God, but we’re like blind people trying to hike the Appalachian trail: Without a guide we’re sure to get lost. So we may seek, but without a guide we’re unable to find God.
Yet this doesn’t mean God is distant, that he’s some absentee landlord in the sky. God is near to us, very close in fact. Here Paul quotes two pagan religious writers in v. 28 to illustrate his point that God is near to us. First he quotes the writings of a 6th century pagan Greek poet named Epimenides, who wrote, "In him we live and move and have our being" (Stott 286). Then he quotes the writings of a third century pagan Greek philosopher named Aratus, who wrote, "We are his offspring" (Stott 286).
Here we find our final reason. WE KNOW GOD IS FOR REAL BECAUSE WE WERE MADE TO SEEK HIM.
God designed us to be seekers, to look until we find God. The Christian theologian Augustine understood this when he wrote, "You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in You, Oh God" (Confessions, book 1, chapter 1). There’s a god-shaped vacuum in the heart of every person, and just as popular Athenian culture was aware of this vacuum, our popular culture is aware of it as well. If Paul were to speak to American culture today perhaps he’d quote Jerry Seinfeld or Melissa Etheridge. Perhaps he’d quote Bruce Springstein’s song "Everybody has a hungry heart.
God designed us to seek him.
Conclusion
So we can know for sure that God is for real. We can know because God has left us evidence, because God reveals himself through the universe, and because we were made to seek God. These realities make knowledge of God a genuine possibility.
Now in many ways the various philosophical arguments for God’s existence seem like a rather tedious game of chess (McGrath 130). You see, the reality is that the mission of the Christian church is not to persuade people that God exists. Instead, God has called us to introduce people to a relationship with God, so they can know him as a person rather than believe in him as an abstract concept.
If God is real, then the parallel with The Truman Show is correct, except its those who reject God’s existence who are living in a manufactured world like Seahaven. It is those who are in rebellion against God, who are avoiding him because they want to live their lives their own way, who are hiding in a make believe world of denial. As C. S. Lewis said about his younger years as an atheist, "A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading" (Lewis 191).
Our calling as a church isn’t to defend God--he’s perfectly able to do that himself--but to introduce people to a relationship with God, so they like Truman Burbank will walk off their Seahaven set and venture into the real world, the world God created and designed them to live in.
Sources
Evans, C. Stephen. 1986. The Quest For Faith: Reason and Mystery as Pointers to God. InterVarsity Press.
Gallup, Jr., George and Michael Lindsay. 1999. Surveying the Religious Landscape: Trends in U. S. Belief. Moorehouse Publishing.
Lewis, C. S. 1955. Surprised By Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
McGrath, Alister. 1997. Studies In Doctrine. Zondervan Publishing.
Stott, John. 1994. Romans: God’s Good News For the World. InterVarsity Press.
