Tag: Knowing God

On the Proposition of Looking for God

In the context of searching for God, if I can’t “find God”, does that mean God doesn’t exist?

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If I can’t find something I am looking for, does that mean it doesn’t exist?

In the context of searching for God, if I can’t “find God”, does that mean God doesn’t exist?

My inability to find something I’m looking for is not proof that the thing I am looking for doesn’t exist. Ask my wife. She will often describe an object to me and asked me to go retrieve it for her. I am reluctant to say how many times I have come back without what she sent me to retrieve. I might even be embarrassed to admit how many times I’ve wanted to tell her that the object doesn’t exist (before she walks right up to it and grabs it herself).

How many times have we said to ourselves when looking for something, “It isn’t anywhere!”? Do we mean, literally, that the object isn’t anywhere? Not usually. Intellectually we know that it is somewhere, but we just can’t find it.

Maybe I am looking in the wrong place. If I’m looking for an object I’ve never seen before, maybe I have the wrong picture of the object in my mind and I am not looking for the right thing. Maybe the object isn’t where I thought it was. Maybe the object is hidden and needs to be uncovered.

These examples are allegorical when it comes to the idea of searching for God.

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Jumping from the Precipice

Without a heart that is willing, we cannot know God.

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depositphotos Image ID: 72688071 Copyright: nanka-photo

If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority. (John 7:17)

Jesus spoke these words after his own brothers expressed their skepticism about who Jesus appeared to be suggesting he was, the long awaited Messiah from God. (John 7:2-5) He spoke these words to a crowd that was also largely skeptical, wondering who he really was. Some were saying he was a good man, but others were claiming that he was leading people astray. (John 7:12)

I keep coming back to this verse (John 7:17) since I heard Dr. Rosaria Butterfield give her testimony of her journey from liberal, lesbian professor who was highly critical of Christians and Christianity to becoming a believer and later a pastor’s wife and having a ministry of her own.

In her world of academia, she was used to doing research and coming to conclusions before being willing to put her faith in a proposition. That is the academic process.

As she was listening to a sermon after having spent many months becoming friends with a pastor and his wife, reading the Bible, and considering the evidence for Christianity, she made a life changing realization. She was approaching Christianity academically. She was not willing to believe until all of the facts were lined up and could be reduced to a certain answer.

When she heard this sermon in which the preacher read John 7:17, she realized that she had it all backward. Continue reading “Jumping from the Precipice” →

Can Personal Experience be Proof of God?

For the writers of the books of the Bible, God was not an idea adopted by the mind, but an experienced reality which gave significance to their lives

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Dr. William Lane Craig is a Christian philosopher of the highest caliber.[i] He has multiple doctorate degrees and has taught at various colleges and universities. He is a prolific writer, and has debated most of the well known, outspoken t atheists, agnostics and skeptical thinkers of the world on philosophical, theological and other issues.

In the short clip below, which is a segment from a longer interview on the various arguments (proofs) for the existence of God, he discusses an additional basis for knowing that God. This basis, or claim for the existence of God, is personal experience.

This is not an argument for the existence of God based on logic, and it isn’t an objective, evidentiary proof. It is more like a personal proof or confirmation of the existence of God distinct from (not contrary to) reason.

A personal experience with God isn’t a substitute for reason, but neither is reason a substitute for the experience.

The main ways that Dr. Craig usually discusses the proof of the existence of God is logic, scientific evidence and philosophy, but he insists these aren’t the only proofs we have.

We might be apt in the western world to discount personal experience and to be suspicious of it, and for good reason. Charles Darwin was suspicious of his own intuition, being the product of evolution from lower life-forms.[ii] A good friend of his got lost in the morass of spiritualism, and that experience of seeing his friend chase down the rabbit holes of irrational, spiritualistic notions influenced Darwin to distrust his own intuitions.

Of course if Darwin was consistent, he shouldn’t have trusted his intellect any more than his intuition, as both human intuition and intellect are the product of evolution from lower life-forms. If human intuition is tainted by its development from lower life forms, so is the human intellect. It didn’t occur to Darwin, apparently. that his intellect suffers the same weakness according to his own reasoning.

As for personal experience, even though we have some warrant for being suspicious, we shouldn’t be completely dismissive. We shouldn’t trust our experience, alone, but how does it fit into the proof we have of God?

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Viewing God in the Mirror of Our Lives

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“Now we see as if in a mirror dimly… but then we will see face to face.”

Corinthians 13:12 (ESV)

The filter through which we see God is the physical, spiritual, emotional and conscious person we see staring back at us in the mirror. Our perspective of God comes filtered through our own selves.

Think about that for a moment….

If our sense of who we are is distorted, our view of God is distorted. If we don’t see ourselves accurately, we can’t see God accurately.  Having an accurate view of God requires us to have an accurate view of who we are.

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God Reminds Us Who He Is

Is it out of character for God to make unequivocal statements about Himself?

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2015-09-21 Sunrise by Heather Wagner Russell
By Heather Russell

Isaiah declared that the Lord says, “I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God…. Is there any God besides me?” (Is. 44:6, 8)

Is this arrogant for God to say? My son says so; he says, “I cannot respect a God like that.” He believes that statements like this in the Old Testament were written by men and do not accurately reflect the Creator of the Universe.

Certainly, if you or I made a similar statement, it would be the height of arrogance. Imagine how our siblings, parents or friends might respond if we made a statement like that?

No, actually, it would be delusional. Though we sometimes may act like the world begins and ends with us, we might be committed if we actually said something that like.

But, is it out of character for God to say something like that?

If there is a God, the world actually does begin and end with Him.

On the other hand, the “books” of the Bible were written by men, right?

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