Why I Believe In God

Why I Believe in God - Grant S. Sisson, MSCP, CI

A little old lady was amazed at how nice the young man was next door. Everyday he would help her gather things from her car or help her in her yard. One day the old lady finally asked the young man, "Son, how did you become such a fine young man?" The young man replied, "Well, when I was a boy, I had a drug problem". The old lady was shocked, "I can¡¦t believe that". The young man replied, "Its true, my parents drug me to church on Sunday morning, drug me to church on Sunday night and drug me to church on Wednesday night"

There comes a point in everyone’s life where we have to take what we’ve been taught and make it our own. Its one thing to be drug to church as a kid, but quite something else to say when one is grown up, "I am a Christian."

A fellow named Danny Ferguson wrote something entitled, "Why Do You Believe in God?" He suggested that there are three basic extra-Biblical arguments, cosmological, teleological, and moral, that argue for the existence of God. I think those arguments to be valid, and I will touch on them a little as we go along. But as of this morning, I wanted to respond to the question, "Why Do You Believe in God?" with a direct response. This morning I’ll speak on "Why I believe in God."

The creation itself

The specific revelation of God to mankind also speaks of a different kind of revelation, what some call general revelation. The Bible is specifically God’s revelation to mankind, but there are other ways that God reveals Himself to us. Listen to Rom 1:18-20 "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead." So the creation itself glorifies its Creator; creation demands a Creator. But...

All world views begin with a premise. Either there is a supreme being/creator, or nature itself is god, or there is no God. If there is no God, then all bets are off. This is the moral argument of Mr. Ferguson. Our world instantly devolves into survival of the fittest. Nothing has been created, it all came into existence by itself (which is a self-referential paradox, thus cannot be.) No behavior that we can think of is of any purpose except for the individual to survive and reproduce. Any behavior that suits me, that I choose to use for my own survival, is OK, in fact, there is no such thing as OK or not OK. Any value system that you choose is yours. In the end, only might makes right, because there is no one to say otherwise, and the powerful will use that power in whatever way they want to. Relationships, including marriage, are irrelevant, except if and when we want. If and when we decide we no longer want to, then we leave; there is nothing to say that we should not. There are no shoulds or should nots. This is moral relativism - atheism. Think of the end results of a world based upon this premise.

If we look at the argument that nature is itself God, we immediately see that there is an irresolvable paradox involved here. How can something which does not exist cause itself to come into being? Further, if nature is God, then we are what our basic instincts tell us we are. We do whatever we desire to at the time, because "its natural." We worship the environment, which becomes more important to us than humanity. This is how it can make sense to simultaneously defend abortion and then go to ungodly lengths to save the baby whales. This is why it is more important to keep the oil companies out of our oil fields to protect wildlife than to provide for human need for energy. (BTW, this is not an either/or problem. We can provide our energy needs while at the same time protecting nature.)

But if there IS a God in heaven, things are totally different. There is order to human life by design. We are born into families; it takes a man and a woman to have children, and to care for those children for the twenty years it takes us to grow into adulthood. There are certain ways of living, beliefs that guide our lives into wholeness, peace and contentedness, that lead us into harmony with ourselves, each other and our God.