If we are to live out our purpose, having a relationship with God, we must first settle another foundational question.
Is God real?
Pretty scary question. Whether you believe……..or not. It is so scary that Christians generally avoid it. We generally begin with God as an assumption. I worry that I may not handle this well……. but I’m going to try.
It’s scary because of the consequences of being wrong.
If you are a Christian, and the answer is no……… you’ve been tricked into wasting your time and money. Even if you live a life of kindness and generosity………somebody has made a fool of you.
If you are a non-believer, and the answer is yes………. at best, you miss out on paradise…….. at worst, you face something unspeakably horrible.
Atheists begin with an assumption too. They assume that science is complete. Anything that can’t be seen and measured today cannot be “real”. They focus on the lack of hard measurable “scientific” evidence of God……even though the scientists concede that they have only detected 5% of the universe…….(Google “black matter” & “black energy”). Do you ever wonder about what…….or who…….. is in the 95% of the cosmos that state of the art science just can’t find? Beyond that, how do you categorically rule out the existence of anything or anyone when you are 95% blind? Is it intellectually honest to confidently deny the supernatural in this setting? In a way, isn’t this giant “blind spot” the current definition of “supernatural”?
Christians focus on more intangible things. Things that science does not measure well. Hope, love, faith.
There is knowledge that we are born with……..every last one of us…..though some of us suppress it. The love of a parent for her child. The idea of a family. Our need for relationship. Our desire to be connected.
The Darwinist will say that these ideas are “positively adaptive” and therefore are supported by blind evolution. But, there is also some inborn knowledge that Darwin doesn’t deal with well. The sense that time is infinite. The sense that there is something after physical death. The sense that there is a part of us that transcends our physical bodies. The sense that we have a soul. The sense that our soul is somehow connected to infinite time. The sense that something is missing…….that someone is missing. In a word……….we feel a void……..we are incomplete. We try to avoid this thought because it is uncomfortable.
If you deeply search your heart (not your smart phone…..and certainly not your TV), you will find these ideas, though they may be deeply buried. Our modern, “scientific” (95% blind) culture suppresses them. Late night comedians laugh at them. The really smart people ignore them. They laugh at me too. But, deep down…… if you search your heart…….you can find them. If you look at somebody who is running his life well (his life……not his possessions) you will find that he is in touch with these ideas.
If these ideas were outliers…….only found in a few people…….we could dismiss them (religious nut jobs). The fact that they are almost universal suggests that they are real…….. that they are true. I believe that these ideas, ideas that are at the very core of our being, are evidence of a supernatural world……..a world above and beyond the small slice of reality that current science can see and measure………evidence of God. I won’t dive into specifics today.
So………. is the supernatural real?
Is God real?
Yes.
Because ……if we honestly and deeply search our hearts…… we can sense these intangible ideas. We can sense God. We can sense that science……that Darwin……… hasn’t explained it all. We are born with this knowledge………..even if the scientists cannot find it.