by Steven Gledhill for FREEdom from MEdom Project
Is God necessary to our life experience? Why do we need God?
Let’s start with matter of evil and pain. It’s a bit of a mystery to me why God would permit evil to have any place in his creation. How did evil originate? Might it be that evil is the by-product of free will—choice?
Instead of asking how a loving, sovereign God would allow for evil in the universe to affect harm and pain; perhaps it should be asked, why would a sovereign creator give choice to the created if it is to their undoing?
May I suggest that evil is partner to choice by anyone that isn’t pure and selfless. Assuming that God is pure and selfless without flaw, and that only God loves purely and fully, then anyone who is not God is impure, flawed, and selfish. Selfish as we are, and allowed by our creator to choose, our choices at their core are self-centered. Our love for one another is, at its core, selfish. Therefore, we are prone to hurt one another since we ultimately value ourselves above anyone else, including those we love most. We grow to resent and despise those who hurt us and cause us pain. The free will to choose as we wish from the beginning of mankind, and ‘animal-kind’ for that matter, has led to pain that builds upon itself, and has done so for at least thousands (if not millions) of years, to the point that evil exists and thrives.
So then, flawed by selfish desire and motivation, we are prone to selfish mistakes. We are entitled and corrupt. We then on some level contribute to the evil in the world. Because we contribute to the problem of evil in the world, we are all subject to its wrath as a logical consequence. Our lives are therefore vulnerable to infection. Evil is a malignant cancer that is always terminal. No one’s immune.
Imagine the oceans have been filled by wrongdoing, one bucket of water at a time, for at least thousands of years. Over the course of my life, perhaps I have dumped a large pond’s worth of water into the sea of evil. By comparison, someone like Hitler or Stalin may have dumped a large lake’s worth or an entire ocean into the sea of evil. In any case, I contributed something, and continue to through selfish behavior. My selfish behavior has the potential for harm to me, and harm against you. Your selfish behavior can cause you harm and be harmful to me.
The waters in the sea of evil by nature find their way back to us. When we see clouds, it’s safe to say that evil is lurking. Evil may come back, metaphorically speaking, in the form of rain. There is a storm rolling in. Evil can come on like a flood. It might rush on us like a hurricane or a tsunami. Evil doesn’t care who contributed what to it. Evil is not partial to anything or anyone. Evil doesn’t care who it hurts, or kills for that matter. When it comes it comes. When it rains it pours. Its floods can be devastating. Evil is a furor with not a drop of mercy.
We all contribute to the problem of evil. Yet, when evil crashes in on us, we tend to blame God. Where was God? How could God allow such destruction to occur? How does blaming God for the evil, that I in so many ways contribute to, justify rejecting God? Or is it perhaps a convenient excuse for denying God’s very existence?
In any case, how does blaming God for the evil in the world help in the face of its harm against me?
Why do we need God? Well, consider the alternative. If everyone who ever lived, loved their neighbors as themselves, perhaps we wouldn’t feel the need for God. We would find contentment in gladly taking care of each other. Instead, we are selfish. We don’t know how to love ourselves in ways that are healthy enough to love each other.
Our reality is that we need God. You know, “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.” We need to be loved by God to be truly capable of loving ourselves, and in turn, our neighbor. It’s what I need; it’s what you need; it’s what the world needs. It’s what we have always needed from the beginning of time.
Perhaps, the next most important question after, “Does God exist?” is…
“Is God good?”
YES!!!
Otherwise, What’s the Point?
If God exists, then God is good.
How can one know that?
If God is evil, then God is deceitful and dishonorable. If God is all of that then why would God tolerate any good in any of creation? Would good simply be a mean-spirited facet to this game God manufactures and manipulates? Can authentic love come from a sovereign source that is at its core evil?
Some would have you believe that humanity is inherently good and that God is responsible for the evil in the world, if God indeed exists. So then the attitude tends to be that if God exists, well then, I will not serve a God that allows bad things to happen to good people, and sends anyone to hell. I am angry with an unjust God who would do that. How could a God who is loving and good be alright with that? Therefore, I reject God.
Isn’t that really the justification for atheists to be so vehemently opposed to spiritually-inclined religious types, especially if they profess to be Christian?
The problem with identifying God as mean, bad, power-hungry, control-mongering, or anything else remotely selfish, is the acknowledgment that this predatory kind of God exists at all. If that’s the case then we are all set up for a doomsday scenario, whether in this life or the next. There would be no heaven and we would all be damned to some sort of hell; to whatever degree of destruction, pain, and struggle that comes with it.
If God is not loving, then God is hateful. If God is hateful, then how could there be anything good for anyone anywhere? Anything else defies common sense.
Therefore, for God to exist in the first place, then God is loving and good with the best of anyone and everyone at the forefront of everything that God is about. It makes sense that God would want an eternal lifetime for all created life; specifically human life. That God would require the sacrifice for human sin in the person of Jesus Christ is a mystery indeed. But that is God’s call. The atonement for selfish, harmful human behavior is for our good; it must be, even if that part of it all doesn’t make sense to us.
God being good does not require humanity to be perfect, just so, or even religious. I believe, though, that God desires relationship with what God has made, just as parents want authentic relationship with their children.
Speaking of children, it appears that they typically embrace relationship with God on some level. Children don’t doubt the goodness of God, at least not until someone gets involved in casting aspersions and doubt about what they believe in, driving them away from God and apart from faith.
Children get caught up in the selfish ambition of societal expectations and perceived injustices of failed expectations. Kids grow up believing what they are told they deserve, and fooled into believing that if God loves them, then they ought get what they feel they’re owed. Entitlement can be the corrupter of the human spirit. Either God is responsible to deliver on the promise of a better life; or God is held responsible for their deliverance from evil, as the prayer goes. Admittedly, the latter is a reasonable emotional response to life’s travails.
It’s as though many are inclined to believe in God when it’s to their advantage, and then reject belief that God exists at all when it appears, or feels like, they’re being judged and held accountable for something. When it suits us, we’re all in. Otherwise, we may not have any use for God. Should something go wrong or bad, it’s not as though God did it to us, but God allowed bad to happen, so it’s God’s fault.
People who pray might pray with that kind of expectation as well. When I get what I want, God loves me, just like they told me in church growing up. When I don’t get what I want, well then, God isn’t paying attention anyway, so why try to connect with God at all… if he even exists?
The problem is that if God exists enough for blame when things go bad, then it is only logical to accept that God has sovereign stature to sway circumstances one way or the other. That being the case, then blaming God takes one further away from resolution to the matter at hand. Blaming God then doesn’t hold any favor for the one seeking favor of any kind. There is no cause then for optimism or hope.
What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you? You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure. James 4:1-3 (NLT)
Of course, there are those who have given up on God because they have been truly victimized in life. The behavioral choices of others have caused them harm; perhaps even sheer brutality against their hope for quality of life. Others have been victimized by natural afflictions and tragedy, because of disease and disaster. If God is good, how do these things happen at all? Why do they happen if God is sovereign?
Reasonable thinking tends to conclude that if God exists, then God is good. So when feeling let down or betrayed by God, then God must not exist at all. If God doesn’t exist then there is no reason to expect anything from God. Well, there has to be some kind of remedy for discomfort, pain, so struggling victims feel the need to put their trust in something or someone else that isn’t God. Loyalties shift from relationship with God to relationship with something or someone lacking sovereign influence and power.
If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do. James 1:5-8 (NLT)
Who expects to receive anything from God that does not believe that God exists? Anyone not believing that God exists has no reason to be offended by a passage from the Bible. What difference does it make?
So once caught up in the measure of entitlement as dictated by societal expectations, the prevailing mindset is to be prepared for whatever it takes to (at the very least) survive and (at the most) conquer to apprehend and obtain what one deserves and has come to expect. At that point, it becomes less likely, and perhaps less possible, to resist temptation in whatever form it comes in. We have seen the outcome of untamed ambition affecting civilization that has led its undoing.
Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death. James 1:14-15 (NLT)
For wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and evil of every kind. James 3:16 (NLT)
If you are reading this and you don’t believe that God exists, or don’t believe that God is good, or want to believe, but you see all of the disorder and injustice in the world and you’re wondering if God is on vacation, then I appeal to your deepest intellectual sensibilities concerning what you have read. You may have noticed that even the Scriptures referenced here have not been targeted for an emotional response, but are aimed at the heart of what makes the most sense to your intellect. It is therefore up to you to determine what is reasonable.
Reconciling Relationship & Religion
God this, Jesus that. Another component to rejecting God is by linking God to religion, and then rejecting religion and religious people. Maybe you are reading this and you’re struggling with it because you’ve been scorned by religion or burned by religious people whose rhetoric is not in line with their behavior. I get it, but this is bigger than that. This is less about what sounds or feels religious and far more about recognizing what makes the most sense.
Why does religious banter commonly emote such hostility and tension if it’s supposed to be a cerebral thing… you know… so-called intellectuals (scholars and scientist types) making their claims to truth about our existence while interjecting vigorous, and perhaps even venomous, attacks against faith, religion, God, and (especially) Jesus Christ? Why is faith and religion such a hotly contested topic that so many are uncomfortable with it? It’s not exactly a loaded weapon aimed right at their soul or anything, is it?
So again, why so intense? Why so angry? Why this need to be right… to prove we’re wrong… to convince us, “the enemy,” that believing in God is so ridiculous? Why care so much about us?
The conflict within themselves is the threat that cannot prevail. The conflict is determining truth. The simple fact is that truth is truth whether or not anyone believes it. So what is truth about God? And what is really at the heart of opposition against God, particularly if it turns out that God is loving? Is it the reality of having to surrender to truth that poses a threat to one’s self-indulgent motives and behavior?
What it’s really about then, is the emotional conflict from within that is the catalyst for such contentious debate. Those who take issue with faith, again, are very passionate about their “rational” arguments. They accuse “believers” of being dogmatic about their faith, yet it seems those opposing faith are just as fanatical in their need to persuade believers to stop believing in something they cannot see.
Rather than take on the intellectual sensibilities of faith, those who passionately oppose the ideals and principles of faith attack not faith, but religion as though it was the embodiment of the moral standards and causes they oppose. It’s their way to justify the pursuit of what they desire and covet that otherwise are morally suspect. Should God oppose their behavior in any way then it is beholden to them to oppose God.
Since what is desired and coveted doesn’t entirely satisfy, it becomes necessary to encroach the moral challenges waged by the assertion that such selfish pursuits are inherently vain. What matters ultimately are the pursuits that have the most certain and sustained benefit to best quality of life; the way of life that is most enjoyed with far more to gain while minimizing cost and the risk of loss.
Please, do not be persuaded by emotional arguments that are in actuality offensive to your deepest intellectual sensibilities; that which you already know to be truth. Allow the light of what you already know at your core to shine brightly on those deceptions lurking in the shadows so that when they are sprung will not catch you unaware.
God didn’t create religion, people did. A long, long time ago.
Even Jesus didn’t care much for religion; more specifically, the institution of religion. In his day the religious leaders used their position as a club to beat people down and break their spirit. Jesus called out those religious leaders as corrupt hypocrites who were dangerous. It was the institution of religion that killed him. Jesus (central to solving the puzzle) understood that it’s all about relationship with God and loving one another.
What God created is relationship, and relationship is what living is all about. The questions raised here should not be dismissed because of barriers erected by religion. Putting up walls doesn’t do anything but veil sensible truth. The answers to these questions will inevitably lead to choices about what to do about them.
The essence of faith is to be embraced and experienced… not feared and thereby thwarted.
“The significance and joy in my science comes in those occasional moments of discovering something new and saying to myself, ‘So that’s how God did it.’ My goal is to understand a little corner of God’s plan.” —Henry F. Schaefer III, quantum chemist
If interested to investigate more into this whole deal about this Genesis of life with God versus evolutionary theories of life’s origins without God, consider clicking on Reasons to Believe to continue to your own exhaustive search into what it’s all about and how it all began.
Resource for many of the quotes referenced in this article: God Evidence
According to 100 Years of Nobel Prize (2005), a review of Nobel prizes awarded between 1901 and 2000, 65.4% of Nobel Prize Laureates have identified Christianity as their religious preference (427 prizes). Overall, Christians have won a total of 78.3% of all the Nobel Prizes in Peace, 72.5% in Chemistry, 65.3% in Physics, 62% in Medicine.
