Tom Magnuson - My Worldview
We live in a world difficult to understand. There is so much pain, so much suffering, so much evil. If He exists, a personal God seems to be ignoring us when we need him most. Why does God allow the world to go on like it does?
There are three main objections to the existence of a personal God given by men; especially the all-powerful, personal, caring God of the Christian Faith. Let's take a look at those objections to see how legitimate they are.
IF THERE IS A PERSONAL GOD WHO SAYS WE WILL LIVE ETERNALLY SEPARATED FROM HIM IF WE DON'T BELIEVE IN HIM...AND BELIEVE IN WHAT HE HAS DONE FOR US...THEN WHY ISN'T THE EVIDENCE FOR HIS EXISTENCE CLEARER
Many people searching for "the meaning of life" ask this question.
Just looking at this world, it seems that if there is a personal God, He is hiding from man. The late astrophysicist,
Carl Sagan, asked in his book "Contact"
why didn't God place a glowing cross in the sky as
irrefutable evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.Why would an all-powerful, perfectly good God permit so much evil in the world? Why do the "innocent" suffer, and the "evil" get away with so many things? The answer that God gives is,
"My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts." - Isaiah 55:8-9 While the above may not satisfy some, God says He reveals Himself to us in His own way.
God reveals Himself in two basic ways
general revelation (through the creation) AND
In the Bible (special revelation), He tells us that He reveals Himself through creation and nature (general revelation),
"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.
- Psalm 19:1-2Looking up at night and viewing the cosmos should be sufficient evidence for any man that there is an Intelligent "Someone" who created it all. In our modern day, the discipline of cosmology has brought compelling evidence that the cosmos was intelligently designed. For more information, click HERE to go to the Reasons to Believe web site.
The Christian Bible goes a step further by saying in Romans 1:19-20,
"men...suppress the truth by their wickedness, since 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." Not only does creation and nature tell us an Intelligent "Someone" created it all, but we can know something of His character. We can learn about His nature by the way in which the cosmos what created. We can tell that He is all-knowing, all-powerful, perfectly caring, perfectly good. The Intelligent Designer of the cosmos has the identical characteristics as the God of the Bible.
God is the Lawgiver. The reality of a built-in conscience in man testifies of a moral Lawgiver.
God is also a physical Lawgiver. When we study the cosmos, concepts like,
gravity, electromagnetic energy, centripetal and centrifugal forces, and the speed limit of light are taken for granted. They shouldn't be. The fact that energy from the Sun can travel through nearly empty space and strike your face to warm it on a summer's day is pretty remarkable. The fact that planet earth's mass curves space so that the Moon is actual traveling in a straight line in curved space when orbiting is mind-bending. The Bible claims not only that a personal God created the entire universe, but He maintains and sustains it,
"By Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things HOLD TOGETHER."
- Colossians 1:16-17So, the general revelation is sufficient in pointing a man in the direction of believing in an Intelligent Designer. The special revelation of the Bible tells the precise identity of the Intelligent Designer, Jesus Christ.
John 1:1, 2, 14 says,
"In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was with God, and the WORD was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made...In him was life, and that life was the light of men...The WORD became flesh and made his dwelling among us." A must read is a paper on the subject of the clarity of evidence. Click HERE to read. The paper is, I believe, a sufficient discussion to get you past the problems of "God's hiding" or "God's apparent inaction."
Here's one last thought on the clarity of the evidence for the existence of God. God made each man with free will. A man can either see where the given evidence leads and accept the existence of God, or a man can choose to suppress the evidence and reject the existence of God. I believe God maintains a delicate balance between:
- keeping his existence sufficiently evident so people will know he is there, AND
- hiding His presence enough to give people the choice to ignore Him if they wish to do so.
God's arrangement of reality in this way makes their choice of destiny TRULY free.
IF THERE IS A PERSONAL, ALL-POWERFUL, ALL-KNOWING, PERFECTLY GOOD, PERFECTLY LOVING GOD, WHY IS THERE EVIL IN THE WORLD
Usually a person who asks this question does NOT believe in the God of the Christian Bible. The way to begin answering this question is to pose another...
WHAT IS EVIL?
A Christian may be confronted by a non-believer with the "problem of evil". But, I would confront the non-believing moral relativist with the "problem of good".
For, you see, to a true moral relativist, neither good nor evil really exists. Things that happen to people in a world without an absolute moral code are neutral. For instance, if a person murders your best friend, in the moral relativist's world, it should just be "tough luck".
Now, of course people and societies really can't exist thinking like this, because, in truth, the knowledge of good and evil is written in our hearts. Man has a built-in conscience, provided by God. The Christian Bible speaks to this in Romans 2:14-15,
"(Men) do by nature things required by the law...the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness..." A moral relativist cannot be true to his world view because of the built-in conscience.
It's interesting to watch a moral relativist trying to live out his world view. To make his life meaningful he must take, what
the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer
called, an upper story leap. What he described in his book "Escape From Reason" is that in the realm of facts and history and science - in other words, all that is measurable - moral relativists come up with a conclusion that man is ultimately meaningless and ultimately insignificant. They are caught in a cause and effect naturalistic system; part of the cosmic machine. Because of the pointlessness of it all, and the emotional difficultly in handling that fact, they make a leap of faith and leap into the upper story of faith and significance. They make a theological statement of faith that they are valuable and worthwhile. It's a "blind" leap of faith to make them feel better about the "human condition" they see themselves in. It's a sham.So, to a true moral relativist, there are no such things as "good" and "evil". And, truthfully, a moral relativist cannot even complain about God and evil, because evil shouldn't exist in his world view.
To a moral relativist, the Jewish holocaust should just be an unfortunate circumstance of human history; something that goes against his "personal moral tastes".
Do you see how truly horrible the moral relativist's world view is when you shine the light on it?
If you do believe in a personal God, though, there IS a "problem of evil". This "problem" goes away some when you dig into the topic. To get some more insight go to the Stand to Reason web site and the topic of answering the problem of evil. These articles should give you a starting point to partially understand the world we live in. Remember, we are looking through a "fogged-up window" of understanding because of our existence in this limiting universe.
THE CHRISTIAN BIBLE INDICATES THAT GOD HAS GIVEN MAN FREE WILL TO DO AS HE WISHES AND AT THE SAME TIME HAS PREDESTINED, OR CHOSEN, EACH PERSON WHO WOULD BELIEVE IN HIM AND SERVE HIM BEFORE THE UNIVERSE WAS CREATED. HOW CAN BOTH THESE IDEAS BE TRUE AT THE SAME TIME
If this one stumps you, you are in good company. This question went unanswered to the satisfaction of none other than the Man of the 20th Century, Albert Einstein.
The priests and rabbis he came in contact with said the answer to the question would only come in the next life. Einstein was convinced that their was an "intelligence" that designed the universe. The evidence was overwhelming to him. He was humbled by the "creator" and the creation.
"One thing I have learned in a long life—that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike." "The harmony of natural law . . . reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection."
"(I desire) to know how God created the universe."
The free will - predestination problem was unresolvable in his mind, though, and was the chief reason he did not come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Einstein probably died some sort of pantheist (god in everything), not a Christian.
Another man who struggled with free will and predestination:
Abraham Lincoln.
While he probably quoted the Bible more than any other President, he couldn't reconcile free will and predestination. He was a fatalist. He had frequent bouts with melancholy. He seemed to never grasp any joy in knowing the Almighty. God only knows if he ever became a born-again Christian.
There are 131 passages in the Jewish and Christian scriptures that address the subjects of free will and predestination.
Nearly 40 of them seem to indicate that free will and predestination are both true.
They seem to be contradictory teachings. No wonder this doctrine of simultaneous free will and predestination is one of the most difficult and divisive inside and outside the Christian faith.
An example of a puzzling passage is Acts 13:48,
"When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honored the word of the Lord, and all who were appointed for eternal life believed." Now which is it, did these people believe because they were chosen to do so, or were they appointed to eternal life because God knew ahead of time that they would choose to believe?
Joel 2:32 says,
"And everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved; for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be deliverance, as the LORD has said, among the survivors whom the Lord calls." II Corinthians 8:16-17 says,
"I thank God, who put into the heart of Titus the same concern I have for you. For Titus not only welcomed our appeal, but he is coming to you with much enthusiasm and on his own initiative." The key to partially understanding this "apparent" contradiction of free will and predestination lies in the knowledge that God exists in a totally different realm than the one we are stuck in. God obviously operates in many more dimensions of space and time and perhaps other incomprehensible realities. Looking at the problem from an extra-dimensional frame of reference, the "apparent" contradiction becomes a paradox.
In multiple time dimensions...
God could see a person's every action through his entire life as if He were holding
a long piece of motion picture film
in front of Him. He could see the events and conditions surrounding this person on each frame of the film. God could anticipate the direction of each movement and choice and how powerfully the person will express his will in any circumstance. God could exact the conditions to generate the response of his will at any given moment that accomplishes His total plan. That person could be in control of his will, while God would control the circumstances and conditions around him that impact his will.
I would argue that the existence of the many "apparent" contradictions in the Bible is strong circumstantial evidence of the transcendent nature of God and the fact that the Bible is His revelation. It makes sense that the many "apparent" contradictions (actually paradoxes) in adjacent phrases in the Bible do NOT show us that the Bible has contradictions, but rather show us that God is transcendent and impossible to truly comprehend.
Another incomprehensible doctrine is that of the Trinity: One God (essence), Three Persons. A true analogy to this doctrine is:
The analogy that is given by some Christians to "explain" the doctrine of the Trinity is
That's not the correct analogy to try to describe the doctrine of the Trinity. The first analogy is correct and incomprehensible. It's incomprehensible because God is SO MUCH higher than us: He is transcendent, extra-dimensional.
Bottom line is, we will NEVER be able to fully comprehend the many paradoxes in the Bible: our 3 1/2 space-time dimension frame of reference, at best, gives us a "fogged-up window" view of His existence. Just as astrophysicists will NEVER be able to see back to, or comprehend what happened at the moment of the "Big Bang" (there is an impenetrable wall called the Planck time, 10*-43 seconds, after the "Big Bang" which we cannot observe past).
There are other "problems" that humans have with belief in a personal God:
The best resource I have come across to help with these problems is the book "Beyond the Cosmos" by Dr. Hugh Ross. This scholarly piece can help you see through the fogged-up window of our 3 1/2 space-time dimension universe. He wipes some of the mist away so we can get a better glimpse of the beyond. Click HERE for reviews and comments on, and excerpts from "Beyond the Cosmos".
Another fine book on the subject of objections to the Christian faith by the award-winning author Lee Strobel. His book, "The Case for Faith" is a must read. Check it out HERE
I've given some basic material to help an inquiring mind address some of the stumblingblocks a person would have for doubting or not believing in God. If you are a non-believer, let's assume again, for the sake of discussion, that you mind has been open to the possibility that God exists.
Let's move on to the next section , and look at what God has done to get man in a right relation with Him.
