Life is filled with questions. Our busy lives are mostly filled with the question How: How can we be more efficient, more relaxed, more happy, more….? But the key question, the one that tugs at our soul, is Why? Life should make sense; the pieces should fit. Philosopher Loren Eisley had it right: Mankind is the “cosmic orphan,” the only creature in the universe that asks “Why?”[1]
Two questions are especially constant, like background noise in our daily life. Sooner or later, we must look them in the eye–or realize they are staring at us. These are the two Big Questions we “cosmic orphans” must face sooner or later:
Is there a God?
What is he/she/it like?[2]
Usually, we make up our minds about the First Question because we’ve already answered the Second Question. Let me explain: Have you ever said, “if there is a God, how could he allow so much suffering and evil in the world?” “How could a God….?” What we think about the Second Question (What is God like?) often dictates how we answer the First (Is there a God?). The Second Question is the key question of life.
Life’s Key Question
The Second Question is the tricky one: What is God like? Our answer to the First Question doesn’t matter much unless there is some meaningful answer to the Second Question. If God is just some “Force” (or the “Universe”) that is indifferent to us, or some great “Thing” that started it all and then abandons us, then so what? The writer Frederick Buechner imagines that if God were to prove himself by writing a message in the stars that says, “I EXIST!” that would be exciting and thrilling and might prove to most people that God exists. But after a while, if there was nothing more, we would start to ask “So what? What difference does that make?” As Buechner writes,
For what we need to know, of course, is not just that God exists, not just that beyond the steely brightness of the stars there is a cosmic intelligence of some kind that keeps the whole show going, but there is a God right here in the thick of our day-by-day lives who may not be writing messages about himself in the stars but who in one way or another is trying to get messages through our blindness as we move around down here knee-deep in the fragrant muck and misery and marvel of the world. It is not objective proof of God’s existence that we want but, whether we use religious language for it or not, the experience of God’s presence.[3]
Clues of Someone Out There
Are there answers to our two haunting questions? One of my favorite thinkers is the late physicist, John Polkinghorne. Polkinghorne was a physicist for 25 years, teaching at Cambridge, Stanford, Berkeley, and the CERN. Then, at the age of 47, he entered seminary and became a reverend in the Church of England. He wrote extensively on the close connection between science and theology. Polkinghorne suggests that if there is a God, one might expect we would be given some clues to the fact of God’s existence.
These clues might come in two ways. The first would be moments of history in which God somehow revealed himself in some way. Then Polkinghorne suggests a second way that God might be glimpsed: “through the character of the world God’s claimed to have made. And here science can help.”[4] Polkinghorne cautions that we mustn’t confuse science with religion, “but some sort of nudge in a religious direction seems a reasonable thing to look for if there really is a God behind the scenes of the universe.”[5]
Polkinghorne is right: science does provide some clues. Many think science has somehow disproved God. Just the opposite has occurred over the last 100 years! Science provides endless clues pointing to a God beyond the universe. Renowned physicist Paul Davies goes so far as to say, “It may seem bizarre, but in my opinion, science offers a surer path to God than religion.”[6] The 20th century’s most famous atheist, Anthony Flew, actually changed his mind and became a believer in God on the basis of modern science. As he stated in his book There is A God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind:
I now believe the universe was brought into existence by an infinite Intelligence. I believe that this universe’s intricate laws manifest what scientists have called the Mind of God…Why do I believe this, given that I expounded and defended atheism for more than half a century? The short answer is this: this is the world picture, as I see it, that has emerged from modern science. Science spotlights three dimensions of nature that point to God. The first is the fact that nature obeys laws. The second is the dimension of life, of intelligently organized and purpose-driven beings, which arose from matter. The third is the very existence of nature.[7]
The universe does provide clues to the existence, and even to the nature, of this God, which serve as invitations to think deeper and draw closer. But there is one thing we must keep in mind about our universe, and this colors all our understanding of God: our universe is massively huge beyond comprehension. The universe contains over 200 billion galaxies! Galaxies! Each galaxy contains on average 200 billion stars each, and most of those stars are larger than our sun. That means the universe contains approximately 40 billion trillion stars! Can you imagine that?
You can’t! We simply can’t wrap our minds around that, and here is where science stops and can’t tell us much more. If there is a Creator behind this vast universe, he would of necessity have to be “bigger” than our universe. Can you imagine? We can’t! God is INCONCEIVABLE! Our minds simply cannot comprehend God.
How Can We Know What We Cannot Comprehend?
Our minds cannot comprehend God, and that is why science can only take us so far. Science can and does provide evidence for the existence of God. But science can only go so far in answering the real question we want to know: What is God like? How can we know what we cannot comprehend?
We can only know anything about God if he were the one to initiate the contact, if he were to disclose himself in some way. The invitation would have to come from him. We also can’t know this “bigger than the universe” God in any “immediate” sort of way, as if we were on the same level as God. So how in the world could God reveal himself in a way that we could possibly understand him?
God would somehow have to adapt himself to us if we were to have any chance of understanding him. God would have to make the first move, and he would have to limit himself, making knowledge of himself accessible in ways we could understand. As the ancients used to say, “Knowledge of God begins with God.” As an early Christian said, “No one can know God unless God himself is the Teacher, that is to say, without God, God is not to be known.”[8] So if God is the one who must initiate contact and make himself accessible, how in the world does he do that? Does he do that?
The answer is yes, but not by God writing messages in the stars saying, “I EXIST!” Curiously, the Bible never tries to prove God’s existence. The theologian Karl Barth said, “Note well: in the whole of the Bible of the Old and New Testaments not the slightest attempt is ever made to prove God.”[9] To attempt to do so is ridiculous because it would involve an imperfect creature (us) trying to prove a Perfect Being. God is INCONCEIVABLE, meaning our concepts, our frames of reference, and our minds cannot conceive of the greatness of God.
The Personal God Gets Personal
The Bible doesn’t try to prove the existence of God. Instead, the Bible is a story book of God encountering humans, of God “meeting” us. In the Bible, God shows up; God reveals himself; God comes to meet us. He doesn’t come to give us facts about himself. He comes to reveal himself so that we might “know” him in the same way a man and a woman “know” each other through intimate union. There is nothing impersonal about God; we are encountered by God in a personal way. He begins to know us, and we begin to “know” him. In the process, we begin to truly know ourselves too.
God Wants to Meet You
The Bible is a book of stories about God meeting men and women, old and young, of God initiating contact and making himself knowable through encounter. The Bible insists that this God is not an abstract concept, but the “living” God, pervasive and always acting in all humans throughout history—even today, even now as you read these words. This God is personal, seeking intimacy with us, desiring to reveal himself so that our growing relationship with him would bless us in innumerable ways. The Bible isn’t focused on the First Question (Does God exist?). It is all about the Second Question (What is God like?). That is life’s key question. And the answer to the Second Question also finally and beautifully answers the First Question. What we want to know is not just that God exists, but what we most want is an “encounter” with God, to experience his presence. The deep within our soul longs for a deep within the universe: “When can I go and meet with God?” (Ps. 42:2). As Buechner writes, “It is not objective proof of God we want, but the experience of God’s presence. That is the miracle that we are really after. And that is also, I think, the miracle that we really get.”[10]
In the next series of blogs, we will consider the God of this universe who is more pursuing, loving, powerful, and near than you can imagine. I hope you will join me.
[1] Loren Eisely, “The Cosmic Orphan,” The Encyclopaedia Britannica (15th ed. Propædia ed.), http://library.eb.co.uk/original?content_id=1325&pager.offset.
[2] According to the Bible, God is not an “It,” but “Personal,” interacting with others. God is neither male nor female. Rather, male and female both reflect God’s image. However, simply for convenience, I will refer to God in the masculine gender.
[3] Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons (New York: HarperOne, 2006), 18, 19.
[4] John Polkinghorne, Quarks, Chaos & Christianity (New York: Crossroads, 2005), 32.
[5] Id.
[6] Paul Davies, God and the New Physics (1992), quoted in Polkinghorne, Quarks, Chaos, 47.
[7] Anthony Flew, There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind (New York: HarperOne, 2007), 88-89.
[8] Irenaeus, Adv. haer., 4.8.1 & 11.3.
[9] Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline (New York: Harper, 1959), 37.
[10] Buechner, Secrets in the Dark, 19.