Life without God
“Man is the Cosmic Orphan. He is the only creature in the universe who asks, “Why?” Other animals have instincts to guide them, but man has learned to ask questions” writes Loren Eiseley a distinguished scientist. Among all the questions man could ever ask probably the most complex and difficult questions are the questions of “why”? Today I am trying to address one of those “why” questions: “Why I personally believe in God?” Believing in God is sometimes very difficult, but disbelief in God almost always results into greater despair. Some times in my own spiritual journey when I struggled with doubts and unsettled controversies I was tempted to forsake my belief in God, but I have to honestly admit, the alternative (life without God) was even worse and darker than the shadows in my spiritual journey. Believing in God may not always make sense, but not believing in God will never make any sense out of this life.
I have come across many people in my life who said that they rejected God because of the problem of evil or suffering in the world and other logical inconsistencies. Rejecting God may not be a difficult thing to do in a secular society, but every other alternative man has come up or set up to replace God has even greater problems which are harder to believe or live with. It is not what you reject that is the problem, but it is what you assert in trying to reject God that becomes the real problem. Unfortunately we don’t have the luxury to just reject God and move on with our lives with nothing, we need a sensible worldview or convictions with which life should be lived.
It is not what you reject that is the problem, but it is what you assert in trying to reject God that becomes the real problem. Unfortunately we don’t have the luxury to just reject God and move on with our lives with nothing…
Gregory Koukl (Stand to Reason) says “In rejecting God, the atheist still has to face evil in the world and explain where it came from. Can he? I doubt it. But he’s got another problem. He’s got to explain where good comes from, too, because if there is no God, it’s hard to make any sense out of either of those concepts. If there is no God, then there is nothing that is evil, it seems. You have to have a standard of good and evil that stands outside of us to define what evil and good actually are….The atheist doesn’t solve problems by rejecting God. He creates a whole new set of problems, and most of them are much more pressing than the problems he thinks he’s escaping.”
If life ends at the grave, then it makes no difference whether one has lived as a Stalin or as a saint. Since one’s destiny is ultimately unrelated to one’s behavior, you may as well just live as you please…
William Lane Craig in his book “Reasonable faith” writes “If God does not exist, then both man and the universe are inevitably doomed to death. Man, like all biological organisms, must die. With no hope of immortality, man’s life leads only to the grave. His life is but a spark in the infinite blackness, a spark that appears, flickers, and dies forever…If life ends at the grave, then it makes no difference whether one has lived as a Stalin or as a saint. Since one’s destiny is ultimately unrelated to one’s behavior, you may as well just live as you please…In a world without a divine lawgiver, there can be no objective right and wrong, only our culturally and personally relative, subjective judgments…For in a universe without God, good and evil do not exist—there is only the bare valueless fact of existence, and there is no one to say you are right and I am wrong.”
Francis Collins is an author and one of America’s most visible scientists. He was once an obnoxious atheist but describing his own story he says “Frankly, I was at a point in my young life where it was convenient for me to not have to deal with a God. I kind of liked being in charge myself. But then I went to medical school, and I watched people who were suffering from terrible diseases. And one of my patients, after telling me about her faith and how it supported her through her terrible heart pain, turned to me and said, “What about you? What do you believe?” And I stuttered and stammered and felt the color rise in my face, and said, “Well, I don’t think I believe in anything.” But it suddenly seemed like a very thin answer. And that was unsettling.” It was G K Chesterton who said “When a Man stops believing in God he doesn¹t then believe in nothing, he believes anything.” Rejecting God is never a problem, it is what follows that is a serious problem for our existence here on earth; we are now forced to believe anything and everything.
It is not always easy for me to believe in God, but I have to admit that despite my occasional doubts and questions it is my belief in God that makes more sense of life than my despair without God. Belief in God demands faith, but that does not mean our belief is based on blind faith. I believe we have enough reason to believe in a personal God who created and controls this world (Rom 1:19-20, Acts 17:24-27). In a godless world, there is no ground for objective morality because everything becomes subjective, no basis for absolutes because everything is now relative, no hope beyond the grave because everything comes to an end sooner or later. When you don’t know why you are here and where you are going, what you do to yourself or others is left to pure instinct and subjective feelings, is it any wonder why our world is where it is today?
It was G K Chesterton who said “When a Man stops believing in God he doesn¹t then believe in nothing, he believes anything.” Rejecting God is never a problem, it is what follows that is a serious problem for our existence here on earth; we are now forced to believe anything and everything.
– – Author: Rev. Francis Burgula – –
