CONTENTS Foreword
6
INTRODUCTION: DOUBT 1. What if ... I have doubts? 2. Dealing with doubt
8 20
PART 1: GOD 3. What if ... God is real? 4. What if ... I can know what God is like? 5. What if ... science doesn’t get rid of God?
30 46 56
PART 2: JESUS 6. What if ... Jesus is real? 7. What if ... Jesus didn’t stay dead?
71 81
PART 3: THE BIBLE 8. What if ... truth exists? 9. What if ... I can trust the Bible? 10. What if ... Genesis is how the world began?
96 103 115
PART 4: ME 11. What if ... I don’t feel like a Christian? 12. What if ... I fail? 13. What if ... I can’t stop sinning?
129 143 153
PART 5: LIFE 14. What if ... bad stuff happens? 15. What if ... Christians do bad things?
164 179
Conclusion 192 Endnotes 193
CONTENTS Foreword
6
INTRODUCTION: DOUBT 1. What if ... I have doubts? 2. Dealing with doubt
8 20
PART 1: GOD 3. What if ... God is real? 4. What if ... I can know what God is like? 5. What if ... science doesn’t get rid of God?
30 46 56
PART 2: JESUS 6. What if ... Jesus is real? 7. What if ... Jesus didn’t stay dead?
71 81
PART 3: THE BIBLE 8. What if ... truth exists? 9. What if ... I can trust the Bible? 10. What if ... Genesis is how the world began?
96 103 115
PART 4: ME 11. What if ... I don’t feel like a Christian? 12. What if ... I fail? 13. What if ... I can’t stop sinning?
129 143 153
PART 5: LIFE 14. What if ... bad stuff happens? 15. What if ... Christians do bad things?
164 179
Conclusion Endnotes
192 193
GOD PART 1
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WHAT IF ...
3 WHAT IF ... GOD IS REAL? OMG!!! Sadly, that’s the most common mention of God we hear these days, isn’t it? I’m guessing that most people who use the phrase aren’t quite aware of what they’re actually saying. Is God real? Or is he just an exclamation we make when we are shocked or excited about something? There’s a lot of confusion these days when it comes to God and his existence. You might have heard people make comments about the universe as if it was God. Like, ‘Decide, and the universe will make it happen’, or ‘The universe is smiling on me today’, or even ‘I’m sending positive vibes to you so the universe makes you feel better’. It seems as if the atoms and particles that make up the stars and the planets and everything we see around us somehow have a mind of their own, and are in control of our destiny. And this is all nice.
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At the other extreme, the last few decades have seen the growth of a few popular and aggressive voices that have been called New Atheism. Men such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens have written popular books that have seemed to capture the imaginations of a lot of people. They speak confidently and loudly, and suggest that it’s not only wrong to believe in God, it’s stupid. In our secular society, questions about God can be difficult to address. There are huge parts of our lives where God is supposed to be absent, or silent, or ignored—like education, or politics, or public life. It’s no surprise that you sometimes wonder if God is real. You’re living in a world that gives every impression that it can get along just fine without him. To think about God sometimes takes a special effort. So let’s take that special effort.
WHY SHOULD WE LOOK FOR GOD? Back in Chapter 2, I talked about the stakes. What are the stakes in the question of whether God exists or not? Let’s look at both sides of the question. If God isn’t real, then nothing I do or say matters, really. I am free to do whatever I want because there is no higher authority that might make a demand on me. But then I also can’t be angry or upset if someone hurts me or steals my iPod, because they’re just being free to do whatever they want, too. No consequences. But also, no meaning. This is the thought process that brought Jean-Paul Sartre (an atheist) unstuck: Indeed, everything is permissible if God does not exist, and as a result man is forlorn, because neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling to.1
What are the stakes if there is no God? Nothing. We are just temporary accidents in the world with no reason to do anything good or bad. Even the words ‘good’ and ‘bad’ lose their meaning. There is just action. But that leaves us with … nothing.
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WHAT IF ... At this point most of us think, ‘Hey, that’s not fair! That can’t be right!’ The idea that our lives might be meaningless or just blips in the universe that have no purpose makes us sad. Why? Tim Keller would suggest that we feel this way because deep down we know it’s not true. 2 Deep down, we know that we really do have a meaning, even if we can’t quite work out what that meaning is. But what of the stakes if God is real? This is where the stakes really ramp up. If God is real, then we have meaning, but also responsibility. The good news is that if humans are here on earth because a Someone is in charge and determined that we should be here, then you have meaning and a place in this world. You matter. You are not an accident. But there is another, more serious side. See, we get meaning with God, but we also get responsibility. Why? Because if I have been created by a Creator, then that Creator may actually have a claim on my life. If a Someone made us, then that Someone gets to be the boss. It suddenly becomes really, really important for me to know what this Someone is like. Humans may not be free to do whatever we want after all. Even worse, we face a disturbing question: What if that Someone is upset with me because I’m not living the way the Someone wants me to? If the Someone is really in charge and powerful, then I might be in quite a lot of trouble. Scary stuff. You can see why this question is argued over and over again, can’t you? If there is no God, then nothing matters, really. But if God is real, then we belong to a Creator, and he has a real claim on our lives. I can understand why a lot of people would like the answer to the question to be, ‘I get to do what I want, thanks’. But if we’re saying God doesn’t exist when there really is a God, then we’re kind of like a bunch of kids sitting on train tracks saying, ‘There is no train. There is no train’. We might be in for a nasty shock …
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IS GOD REAL? First of all, let’s look at the various ways people have tried to prove God’s existence. Over the centuries, philosophers and theologians have used lots of arguments to talk about God, and some are better than others. None of them are 100% conclusive, and as we’ll see, there are often arguments against them. But as Tim Keller has helpfully pointed out, these arguments can act as clues.3 They can lead us to see that it is reasonable to believe in God. Here are some of the arguments you might hear. DESIGN Basically, this argument says that the world is so delicately balanced that it must be designed by a bigger, more powerful Someone. Fractal geometry, chaos theory, higher mathematics—they all show that beneath what looks like chaos is a finely tuned, ordered mathematical reality. We are able to research and predict things about our world because it operates according to regular, predictable patterns. From the largest galaxy to the smallest sub-atomic particle, there is an order and a complexity to our universe that is more than accidental. For example, according to Sir Fred Hoyle the probability that blind chance might produce the proteins necessary to form one single cell is about 1 in 1040,000. That’s a 10 with 40,000 zeroes behind it!4 In other words, it is unbelievably improbable that the universe popped into being by accident. It is reasonable to suggest that the universe was designed by an intelligent mind. One astrophysicist says this: For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.5
The more science discovers about the origins of the universe, the more we see that it is compatible with the careful work of an intelligent Creator. But of course we know that lots of people see the finely tuned universe and see a happy accident, so it’s not a perfect argument. In fact, some atheist
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WHAT IF ... arguments agree that the universe looks like it was made by a Creator. They call it ‘apparent design’. That is, they understand that the complexity of the universe leads us to suspect a Mind behind it all, but their response is, ‘It’s all just a trick. It only looks designed’. They don’t disagree that the universe is finely tuned, intricate and amazing. But while one group of scientists can look at this fine-tuning and say, ‘it’s so complex it must have a Maker’, another group can look at it and say, ‘Cool. What a lucky accident all of this stuff is’. Or else they imagine that there must be an infinite number of alternative universes, and we happen to live in the lucky one that worked. Neat, huh? COSMOLOGY According to the cosmology argument, everything in our universe has a cause (for example, trees come from seeds, which come from other trees, which come from other seeds, and so on). Since the universe isn’t infinitely old, there must be a Someone who caused it to begin. The universe cannot have caused the universe. There must be something independent from the universe that caused it to happen in the first place. This ‘something’ or ‘ground of being’ we see as God. Some scientists like Stephen Hawking argue that the laws of the universe do away with God—they believe that it’s the laws of the universe that are the Cause, not a divine being.6 However, just because we know how something works doesn’t mean there is no cause behind it. Thomas Edison doesn’t get erased from the records as being a real person just because we know how a light bulb functions. Steve Wozniak doesn’t disappear in a puff of smoke just because we know how the Apple Macintosh works. The universe doesn’t stop having a Designer just because we can see that laws of physics exist. Besides, if the laws of the universe are the cause of the universe, then who made the laws to begin with? It only pushes back the issue one step further. The fact that science has found a point where our universe began (the big bang) gives a lot of support for God’s existence, to the point that several prominent
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scientists including Einstein didn’t like the theory because it was too close to the Bible!7 MORALITY The moral argument for God’s existence moves away from the big universe, and looks at how we operate. Humans have a sense of right and wrong, one that seems to exist from a very early stage. We know that things like murder, rape, violence and lying are wrong. While some of this might be explained by evolutionary psychology and education, there is more to it than that, says the moral argument. The moral argument for God says that the little voice in your head screaming at you when you’re about to steal someone’s lunch is actually evidence that God is real. Why? Because people across cultures and throughout history have had similar senses of what is right and wrong, so there must have been a something outside us that gave us those ideas. This is what CS Lewis says about it: If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe, no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase or fireplace in that house. The only way in which we could expect it to show itself would be inside ourselves as an influence or command trying to get us to behave in a certain way. And that is just what we do find inside ourselves. Surely this ought to arouse our suspicions?8
Basically, Lewis is telling us that we shouldn’t expect to see God inside our universe as if he was a staircase or a wall of an architect-designed house. But there should be some kind of idea or notion we get that seems to come from inside ourselves—that ‘influence or command’ that tells us right from wrong. Some argue against this, saying that people do bad things and argue their innocence even when they’ve done horrible things, or that cultures differ on what is right and wrong. Our ‘moral compass’ is inaccurate. But the
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WHAT IF ... Bible would tell us that our moral sense is hopelessly broken by sin, so we are able to make what is bad seem good (Genesis 3; Jeremiah 17:9). This is true, isn’t it? You know things that are right and wrong. There are times when you know you’re doing the wrong thing, and you feel guilty. According to the moral argument, that’s proof that God exists, because there is something ‘higher’ than yourself that initially determined right from wrong. We don’t always obey this ‘higher’ truth, but the fact that it exists allows for the possibility that a higher consciousness (God) gave us a moral compass in the first place. Now we can argue that our parents and our teachers and our society taught us right from wrong, not God. But this is only an incomplete response. A society built out of random evolutionary chance can’t provide a reason why we should preserve the life of one person over another, or why we should even know that we care about this. In recent years, Sam Harris (a well-known atheist writer) has argued that we can discover a pure sense of right and wrong based on science and reason, without any need for God. But as one reviewer reminds us: Just 100 years ago, Marxism and eugenics struck many reasonable people as brilliant, fact-based schemes for improving human well-being. These pseudo-scientific ideologies culminated in two of the most lethal regimes in history, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.9
If you take God out of the morality equation, history has shown us that we end up with a terrible mess. HG Wells, a famous writer who for many years believed that evolution was the answer to everything, said something similar towards the end of his life: ‘After all the present writer has no compelling argument to convince the reader that he should not be cruel or mean or cowardly.’10
In other words, without God, what we think of as good and evil becomes meaningless. If God is not real, then why should we care when Boko Haram terrorists kidnap several hundred girls from their high school in Nigeria?
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What would be wrong about going to your neighbour’s house to steal their television, if our personal identity and morality is an illusion or accident? The moral argument tells us that moral truth (that is, good/evil, right/ wrong) exists because God exists. Without that external authority (that is, God), everything eventually dissolves into totalitarianism or anarchy. ART This argument is along similar lines to the moral argument. According to this argument, art is something that has no real evolutionary purpose. We create things for the sake of creating—things that don’t have a survival function, like sculptures or paintings or music, for example. According to the ‘art’ argument, the joy and ecstasy we can feel with music is a sign that we are made in the image of a creative God. We are more than just animals. Art and music lead us to look for a Creator who we are imitating. As Alister McGrath says, ‘We have a homing instinct precisely because we have a home to return to’.11 Our creative impulse is part of our yearning for something greater than ourselves. Christians would say that the yearning is for God himself. These are some of the arguments people use to explain God’s existence. All of them try to show us that our world, our existence, our own sense of right and wrong, and even our desire to create are signs that there is a God out there who is greater than us. But none of them is 100% conclusive. It’s still possible to look at all these answers and say, ‘Yeah, I don’t get it’. The Bible says this: 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 people are without excuse. (Romans 1:20)
According to the Bible, we should be able to understand certain things about God from the universe around us. But this knowledge is limited. It isn’t enough to save us. It’s also open to misinterpretation. While
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WHAT IF ... there is lots of evidence in the world that God exists, people can reject it, or develop completely the wrong idea of God behind it (the Greeks, for example, thought there were lots of human-like gods). There is enough in the world to suggest that there is a God, but it is not enough to make everyone believe. Clearly, if the God of these clues is the real deal, then he’s not a God who wants to force everyone into robotic obedience. Those who don’t want to see God are able to continue not seeing God, even though the weight of evidence suggests that there is in fact a Someone out there. Ultimately, we need something outside our own human arguments to help us know with greater certainty whether God exists or not, and what he’s like. We need God to turn up and settle the question once and for all. So how does God do that? This is what we call ‘revelation’—God revealing himself and his character. The true meaning of revelation is what we see of God turning up in history and showing his power and presence. There’s more about revelation in the next chapter, so we’ll just look at it briefly here. If someone was talking to you about Jane Austen or George Washington, what sort of evidence would help you to understand that they were real figures in history, and what they were like? The most reliable evidence would include these elements: 1.
Documented (written evidence)
2. Corroborated by multiple witnesses 3. Linked with actual events. When it comes to God, it makes sense to look for the same sorts of things, doesn’t it? A written record can be handed down across generations, and can be examined and verified. If the written record is corroborated by multiple witnesses and linked with historical events, it is even more reliable.
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With that in mind, we turn to the Bible—a written record set down over approximately 1600 years that includes a wide variety of writings: songs, history, biography, law, narrative and others documented by a wide variety of authors. For thousands of years, Christians have believed that this is no ordinary book, but God’s revelation of himself in human history. In other words, Christians believe that in the events recorded in the Bible, God has stepped into history to say, ‘I am here!’
THE BIBLE The Bible assumes God’s existence. Take the first four words of Genesis (the first book in the Bible): In the beginning, God ... (Genesis 1:1)
There are lots of other places where it reinforces this understanding: Psalm 53:1a - ‘The fool says in his heart, “There is no God”.’ Jeremiah 10:10 - ‘But the LORD is the true God; he is the living God, the eternal King.’
The Bible also claims that God demonstrated his existence and power many times in human history—human history that can be verified, human history that can be examined. Not just some waffly spiritual experience one bloke had in a cave. Historical events with real-life witnesses. That’s HUGE. It’s kind of like the Bible is stepping up to you and saying, ‘Don’t believe me? Then check this out ...’ The biggest historical event in the Bible that can be verified is Jesus.
JESUS—GOD WITH US The best way to know for sure whether God exists or not is to look at Jesus. The Bible calls Jesus ‘Immanuel’—God with us. But it does more than give Jesus cool names. It tells us about amazing events where Jesus did things that no normal person could do.
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WHAT IF ... Here are some of the things Jesus did in front of witnesses: •
calmed a storm by telling it to be quiet (Matthew chapter 8, Mark chapter 4, Luke chapter 8)
•
turned a little boy’s packed lunch into enough food to feed more than 5000 people (Matthew chapter 14, Mark chapter 6, Luke chapter 9)
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brought people back from the dead (not via CPR and not within minutes, but after a few days) (John chapter 11)
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healed people by speaking to them (Matthew chapters 8 and 9, Mark chapter 10, lots more)
•
turned water into wine (John chapter 2)
•
told people he had only just met all about their personal life history (John 4)
•
died, but rose to life again (Matthew chapter 28, Mark chapter 16, Luke chapter 24, John chapter 20).
We’re used to computer-generated magic these days. Our movies are full of amazing feats: people flying through the air, fighting aliens, making enormous tents appear out of small handbags. But the miracles Jesus performed were witnessed by thousands of people in real life. They were actual, real events that happened thousands of years before computers could animate anything. There were no megapixels—they were pure miracles. Yes, they were events that weren’t normal. Yes, they defied the laws of nature. But the events were reported by people who were saying, ‘Yeah, at the time we didn’t believe it either. But it really happened! We were there!’ The Bible goes further than just reporting the amazing things Jesus did. Here are a few other claims that the Bible makes about Jesus too: The Son [Jesus] is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. (Hebrews 1:3)
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Jesus answered: ‘Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father’. (John 14:9) ‘Very truly I tell you’, Jesus answered, ‘before Abraham was born, I am!’ At this, they picked up stones to stone him. (John 8:58–59)
Now if you don’t know much about the Bible, Abraham was a dude who lived around 1800 years before Jesus was born, and who was the father of all those who called themselves Israelites or Jews. So in these words Jesus is not just claiming to be really, really, really old; he’s also claiming to be more important than their most important ancestor. Even more than that, the words ‘I am’ are linked to the name God announced for himself in Exodus 3:14. Jesus’ audience knew that Jesus was actually claiming to be God, which is why they got so angry with him! These verses tell us a few things: 1.
Jesus shows us what God is like.
2. Jesus has God’s power. 3. If we know Jesus, we know God. 4. Jesus existed long before Abraham was born—only God could do that! 5. Jesus’ claims were enough to convince the religious leaders of the time that he should be killed with rocks. He was claiming to be God, after all, and that was a big NO for anyone. Jesus did things that only God could do. Jesus claimed to have God’s power, and to show us what God is like. But the biggest demonstration of Jesus’ deity (that is, him being God), is when he rose from the dead. This event changes everything for us (and you can investigate more about this in the chapter ‘What if … Jesus didn’t stay dead?’). In this historical event, God stepped into history not just to show that he is real, but also to show us what sort of God he actually is: powerful, loving, righteous, generous, merciful and forgiving. We don’t have to sit in the dark guessing. God has
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WHAT IF ... given us evidence of his presence in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. You might think that Jesus’ resurrection is hard to believe. You wouldn’t be alone. One of his closest followers—Thomas—also struggled to believe it. Here is what John records: Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord!’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe’. (John 20:24–25)
Thomas had the same sort of response many of us would have: ‘Unless I see it for myself, I’m not going to believe it!’ It’s understandable, really. His mates were telling him that Jesus had risen from death, and that’s not something you see every day. I can kind of understand why Thomas would be a little bit doubtful about what his friends were saying. But here’s what happened next: A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you!’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe’. Thomas said to him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Then Jesus told him, ‘Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed’. (John 20:26–29)
Thomas wouldn’t believe unless he saw Jesus for himself. What was his response when he finally did see Jesus? Did he continue doubting and arguing? No. He realised—finally—who Jesus really was. ‘My Lord and my God!’ he cried. Jesus said, ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed’. That’s us—those of us who weren’t privileged enough to be in that room on
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that day. We weren’t there, but if we were able to travel through time we would see what Thomas saw. Today, we can read the eyewitness testimony. Those witnesses have told us what they saw, and how they reacted when they saw it. We don’t need to take a blind leap of faith in the dark about whether God is real, but we do need to trust the eyewitness testimony handed down to us. Sometimes people say, ‘If God is real, why doesn’t he just show himself to me right here and now?’ When I hear that, I can totally understand why they’re asking the question. We want things to be obvious, black and white, tangible and touchable, like the answer to the question ‘Is my coffee too hot?’ We want God to be a bit like a vending machine: insert ‘Are you there, God?’ question, get instant miraculous vision of heaven and God on his throne. But when we say, ‘God, show yourself to me NOW’, God’s response is, ‘I already have. Look at Jesus’.
SO … WHAT? Even though they’re not perfect, the philosophical arguments for God’s existence can help us to see that it’s reasonable to believe that God exists. We can feel even more confident that God is there when we look at Jesus. So we know God is real—but what now? The fact that God is real makes us either really happy or really nervous. As the moral argument says, our conscience is evidence that there is a higher power that has determined right from wrong. So if we do the wrong thing, then potentially we are on the wrong side of God’s favour. Given God is real, and God has determined what is right and wrong, what if I’m on the ‘wrong’ side? The Bible again tells us a few things: •
We can choose to spend our entire lives ‘without’ God—even though we depend on him for our existence. God ‘causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the
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WHAT IF ... unrighteous’. He doesn’t crush us into powder the minute we decide to live without him. It is possible to shut our ears and crowd our lives with distractions and say, ‘NOTLISTENINGNOTLISTENING!’ But that doesn’t stop God from being God. ‘Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account’ (Hebrews 4:13). In the end, we will need to explain ourselves to the God we chose to ignore. •
Our lives are completely dependent upon God. We breathe because he lets us. We are born when he decides we can be born. God not only made the world, he sustains it. The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. (Acts 17:24–25)
Jesus is integral to this work: The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:15–17)
Everything hangs together in Jesus. We exist because God wants us to exist. Our world keeps on turning not just because of the laws of physics, but because God allows those laws to exist. This can be scary or comforting, or both all at once! 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 sustains everything, but he also ‘provided purification for sins’ (Hebrews 1:3). In this, we see that God not only makes us and sustains us,
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he also saves us. Ignoring God leaves us in a place where we deserve to be rejected by God (and that’s something we’ve all done). But God graciously sent Jesus so that we could be made clean and whole and forgiven. We all start out on the wrong side of God’s favour, but through Jesus we can be made right. That is awesome news! God is God, and he will always be there no matter what we say about him. God doesn’t vanish in a puff of smoke just because people say he isn’t there. He sees everything we do, and the promise in the Bible is that one day we will need to give an account of ourselves. So if you are searching for God, my suggestion to you is to go back to the original source. Get your hands on a copy of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John and read it. Read what Jesus did. Read what he said. Read it knowing ‘This is God stepping into history and saying, “Here I am!”’ You can also find more information about the reliability of Jesus in the chapter ‘What if ... Jesus is real?’ If God our Creator is real, then he has a real claim on our lives. The question is: are you willing to accept it?
FURTHER READING Kostenberger, A, Bock, D & Chatraw, J 2014, Truth Matters: Confident Faith in a Confusing World, B&H, Nashville. Strobel, L with Vogel, J 2004, The Case for a Creator, Youth Edition, Zondervan, Grand Rapids. McGrath, A 2011, Why God Won’t Go Away, SPCK, London. Lennox, JC 2011 Gunning for God: Why the New Atheists are Missing the Target, Lion Hudson, Oxford. Keller, T 2008, The Reason for God, Hodder & Stoughton, London.