Does God Exist?

There's no season like Christmas to stir the public debate about all things related to God. The role of religion in the public square. Whether or not the founding fathers were Christian and intended this country to be based on a Christian foundation. If God even exists. This season atheists in America have stepped up their efforts to speak their views to the broader public.

Sunday I heard a message that referenced this billboard in the New York City area. The pastor talked about the tag line, "This season celebrate reason." In my humble opinion he didn't do a very good job at all of presenting why belief in God becoming man and dwelling among us is actually reasonable. He also did something I absolutely hate. He spoke as if everyone in the room was a committed Christian who found that billboard just as ridiculous as he did. What a blown opportunity to intellectually challenge the people. The truth is compelling arguments can be made on both sides of this.

God doesn't exist. Look no further than the 24 hour news cycle that feeds on the depravity of mankind. War, poverty, starvation, bad water killing children, serial killers, despotic tyrants, a church fractured into a million shards that fights amongst itself, multiple religious beliefs all claiming to have a handle on the 'truth' of who God is. Anyone with a brain and five minutes to reflect on the human condition can clearly see that God doesn't exist. If there was truly an almighty, powerful, all knowing, loving, compassionate and kind God there's no way all the aforementioned things would be allowed for a day, much less for all of human history.

God does exist. Man is so obviously stained by sin. He separated himself from the nurturing, life giving relationship with God falling to the temptation that he could be equal with God. Since the severing of that relationship humanity has sunk further and further into depravity, selfishness and self-destruction. Left to our own devices it's so obvious we need salvation. Throughout human history man has demonstrated an inborn urge to seek a higher power and the basics of right and wrong cross all cultures. Those urges are an obvious sign we've been created by something bigger and higher than ourselves. Not to mention the order and beauty of creation, the delicate balance of where the planet floats in space, the exquisite engineering of our bodies that are perfectly built to survive here. Of course God exists. Apart from that truth there would be no hope for humanity since it's God's call to care for widows, orphans, poor, imprisoned, lost and hurting. Without God and his call to look outside ourselves there's no telling how much worse this life would be.

So it looks like I can be a reasonable person and stand firmly convicted there is no God. And I can be a reasonable person and stand firmly convicted there is a God. Evidence abounds on both sides of the argument if I want to look at it. So it comes down to how I interpret the evidence I choose to look at. What I tell myself, where I was born and raised, my life experience and one last and ultimate thing. Faith. And either conviction finally depends on that. Faith.