How can you know if there is only one true God?
Have you ever questioned the existence of God? Let me be honest. I have, especially when I was a new Christian.
I believe that wrestling with your faith is a part of working out your salvation (Philippians 2:12). I also believe that God is ok with us being real with Him. Just like I bet you prefer genuineness in your relationships, I bet God honors that in His children.
I’m also certain that by genuinely questioning the existence of God, not only will it not rattle His confidence, but it may also strengthen our faith.
Allow me one more confession: God has absolutely proven Himself over and over again every time I’ve sought Him out or questioned Him in my life.
And that is something that inspires me greatly to share how and why I know that there is only one true God.
How Can We Know That God Is Real?
Throughout the ages, mankind from every known civilization and culture has asked the same ancient question: “Does God exist?”
Many cultures have answered this question by creating for themselves countless gods to suit their own desires, purposes, and even to control others.
In some cases, people have just done that same thing with the living God, distorting His word to their own understanding or for their own gain.
Mankind has always looked to the Earth, to the heavens and to the things of creation like birds, plants and animals in pursuit of an easy explanation for all things. Life, death, seasons, weather, wealth, natural disasters, and fertility just to name a few.
The Apostle Paul wrote and acknowledged as much. Paul taught that clearly, mankind has always had an “inner sense” of the living God, the creator of all things. Paul writes that God has made himself known to all of mankind, and that humans are “without excuse” to not acknowledge God (Romans 1:20).
Paul continues in Romans 1:18-32 that it is the fallen, sinful nature of man that has led people to deny God’s existence, and to deny that inner sense of the living God, and that human beings have “exchanged the truth of God for a lie.” (verse 25).
In Defense of Unicorns
Of course, there are going to be people who will dispute everything I can possibly say or write about the existence of God. And some of them can and will do it with intelligence and vigor.
Have you ever wondered why someone who claims to not believe in God would work so hard at disproving something they say isn’t real?
In his book Godforsaken: Bad Things Happen. Is there a God Who Cares?, writer, scholar and public intellectual Dinesh D’Souza made the case against unicorns.
Yes, unicorns.
D’Souza’s illustrative point was that since unicorns don’t exist, he (and you, and I) haven’t spent any time, energy or resources making the case for or against unicorns.
He wrote that if you don’t believe in something because of there being no evidence for it, then you ignore it. You don’t attend seminars, write books, produce documentaries, or engage in debates for something that is not real.
I would add to that, unless you’re trying to lead people astray.
The fact that people spend all of that time, money and energy in disputing the existence of God tells me that what Paul wrote in Romans 1:19-20 simply must be true:
“What can be known about God is clear to them because he has made it clear to them. From the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly observed in what he made. As a result, people have no excuse.”
The Assumption that God Is
Do you know what the dictionary says about an assumption? I didn’t until I looked it up. Guess I just assumed I knew what it meant.
And no, contrary to the funny guys in the office, it has nothing to do with making asses out of anyone!
An assumption is accepting something as true or certain to happen, without proof.
That’s what theologian Wayne Grudem wrote in Systematic Theology on the subject of God’s existence. He said, “in addition to this inner awareness” that testifies to the living God, “clear evidence of his existence is to be seen in Scripture and in nature.”
Grudem adds to that saying that Scripture never really sets out to prove that God is, but that instead, the Bible “everywhere assumes that God exists.”
The account of creation serves as an excellent example of this assumption: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).
No questions asked, no explanations offered. Only that God did this.
Genesis starts the conversation with this assumption that God is, and the rest of the books of the Bible follow suit.
The Heavens Declare the Existence of God
Perhaps David gives us the most vivid and easy to relate to picture of God’s existence.
In the Book of Psalms, he proclaims that God is when he writes, “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims the work of his hands. Every day they pour forth speech, and every night they tell knowledge.” (Psalms 19:1-2).
King David only had to look at the vastness of the sky and realized, as we do when we really look up at night sky and take it all in, that there is an enormity that blows our concept of time and space away.
When we look at the Scriptural evidence, it becomes clear to see that God has left his fingerprints all over creation for the purpose of pointing us to Him.
Yet sadly, we are led astray by our own inherited sinful nature, where it’s far too easy to “exchange the truth for a lie.”
Finally, science itself presents evidence of the existence of God in the case of something called “the cosmological argument.“
The “cosmological argument” considers the fact that every known thing in the universe has a cause. Therefore, it stands to reason, the universe itself must also have a cause.
The problem is that mankind has an issue with the concept of everlasting, so we try to explain it in terms we can understand, or simply dismiss the idea of God.
And, we can continue to use the evidence for God found in Scripture and in nature itself, and even that found in science, but the truth is that only the Holy Spirit of God can intervene into an individual life, overcoming the sinful nature and empowering us to understand the knowledge of His existence.
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“Have you ever wondered why someone who claims to not believe in God would work so hard at disproving something they say isn’t real?”
You bring up a lot of good points in a vast and deep topic. Keep it up!
Thank you for the encouragement, Kathleen!
I was pondering that question and I thought it fit the subject pretty well 🙂