Is there a God?

In most cases, atheism is an emotional response to hurt or tragedy in life, the result of the age-old question, if there was a God, why does he allow bad things to happen.

They want to believe that there is no God and in the effort they do an intellectual suicide. In reality, if we are intellectually honest, it doesn't take much to come to a plausible conclusion that there is a creator. Things doesn't just pop out into existence merely by chance.

Newton's first law of thermodynamics still stands - matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed (we can only change one form of matter into another form and one form of energy into another form). So it is quiet safe to assume that someone who can violate the physical laws has to create the original matter and energy.

Genesis

It was a book which greatly influenced me in my childhood (even today) with it’s unique story of creation then the rude sounding story of expelling Adam and Eve from the garden.

I have listened an hour long sermon a pastor preached trying to prove that 6 days of creation weren’t really 24 hrs days instead 1000 years days. All because somewhere in Bible it said 1000 years is like one day to God. Some people find it so difficult to believe that God really created the dry land in 24 hours. Using my limited common sense I thought that was ludicrous to think that way. If God took 1000 years for creating light (for example), what does it mean? Did he create a little light such as a candle light and waited 1000 years to get it evolved to sun and moon and stars? Or did he do a lot of research in his heavenly laboratory to figure out how he can produce light which will cover the entire earth? Or was he raising fund for this experiment? I thought he just SPOKE and it came into existence.

The way he created man was amazing. It was a unique creation. He didn’t just utter ‘Let there be a man’, but he was really involved in his creation. I had a picture of an artist with a long grayish hair and long beard, who is specialized in creating sculptures, bending down near to the sculpture's face and breathing his breath in to it through the nostrils. All of a sudden the sculpture became alive and started moving. His heart started beating, his skin became glossy, he can now think, see, taste, hear and talk. It’s pretty amazing, if we think.

My Mom always wanted us to read Bible from cover to cover and there were some special days such as the week of Easter, which is considered holier than any other week, she would insist us to take up our reading.

Then I would pick the only bible we had then and start reading loudly from Genesis chapter 1. As far as I can remember I had read it may be up to the sixth chapter then I will yawn and feel tired. I even thought, 'why am I reading this fairy tale?' I will look around to see if my Mom is there, if she isn’t then I will slowly close the Bible sneak out to play.

I thought God was rude not to let Adam and Eve eat from that one tree. He sounded even ruder when he said ‘when you eat of it you will surely die’. That wasn’t fair, I thought. But until few years ago, I didn’t even know that Adam didn’t really 'die' on the day he ate that fruit. It came to me as a huge revelation where I almost jumped out of joy. I read he lived 930 years and produced few children. A dead man cannot produce children!

So, did God lie? Did He say that they will die if they eat that fruit just to scare them? Was it to show them that He is capable enough to take their lives if He wants? Did he have a superiority complex?

Then the revelation hit my brain, a light bulb went on. He died spiritually! He didn't die physically or even mentally. It is very difficult for a mentally dead person to produce children! The element of godliness in his being left Him. He lost his wholeness and was broken. The spirit of God indwelled Him is no more indwelling him. It left an emptiness in Him. It opened the eyes of his flesh and he found that he was naked. He didn't feel close to God and he tried to hide. He felt unfulfilled and restless. He gained his knowledge of good and evil, declared his independence from God and lost (spiritual) LIFE. Wow! Now it makes sense why Jesus came to give us LIFE and He is called the 'second Adam'. Now it makes sense what it means to be 'born-again', being born from God and indwelled by his spirit. Now it makes sense why we feel so unfulfilled and restless until we find that life in God. Now it makes sense why we feel so empty even after gaining all the money, fame, glamor and power.

When ever I get a revelation from Bible, I get so excited that I feel that I will die if I don’t share it with someone. I hadn’t started blogging then (about 5 years ago). I hadn't even heard about such a thing. So I preach to my wife and she would try to conjure up her entire energy to listen to my long, boring, theological ramblings. Then she will yawn. Then I will feel sad and discouraged. (Now a days my preaching to her is not about Adam and Eve but about the difference between law and grace) These days she has learned to yawn while keeping her mouth closed. I wouldn’t even know if she really yawned until I see tears in her eyes. Now I am practicing it as it is very helpful while attending some meetings at work. I wish I had known this technique earlier while I was in the "church".

Recently when I got a chance to share some spiritual stuff with my Mom, the first thing I told was that Adam didn’t really physically die on that day and explained to her what it meant. It said, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image. If the Dad was dead, his son was also dead; and all of us, down to this century born dead spiritually into this world, helplessly fallen short of god's glory. No wonder why we don't have to teach people to sin, they will learn it by their own. The restoration, forgiveness and life Jesus offered makes much sense now.

There is sin, independence, deception, ungodliness, sacrifice, blood, covering, grace, law, punishment, death and pretty much everything scattered throughout Bible, are in the book of Genesis. Tear the book out and the entire Bible wouldn’t make any sense at all. Thank God, for using your servant Moses to write down this book for us!

Apologetics and me

I have had a great interest in Apologetics in the early days of my Christian life. At some point, I wanted to be an Apologist myself. Many great apologists attracted me such as Hank Hanegraaff, Ravi Zacharia, and Matt of carm.org. I think I have read pretty much everything on carm.org. It helped me to understand different cults, bad theologies etc. I have to admit that my primary intention of learning these stuff was to use my knowledge to bash others who belong to such groups and to win the argument with others who don't believe what I believe(Wrong motive!).

Later, I learned something the FBI does to identify counterfeit dollar currencies. They won’t spend time studying all the counterfeits in the world, but they study the real currency thoroughly so that the moment they see a counterfeit they can easily identify that it is a fake. There are always going to be new counterfeits, new cults, new theologies, new philosophies etc. The trick to identify the ‘the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming’ is knowing the real thing.

I gained a lot of knowledge and I think I was more of a student of religion than the follower of Jesus.

There is this verse in 2 Thimothy 3:

always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth.

Or in another translation it says,

always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth

That was me! I wouldn’t say the knowledge did not help at all. In fact it did help a great way but I did not come (arrive) to the knowledge of truth. I didn't come to a conclusion. I was still in the 'seeking' mode.

I Corinthians 2:9-10 says,

However, as it is written:
"No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him"

I have seen people stop that verse there and use it to make points such as ‘it is impossible to know the things of God’. But the verse continues as follows,

but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.

I think every ‘but’ in the scripture comes with some kind of surprise. BUT God has revealed it to us by His Spirit. From my life experience, I would be able to boldly say that UNLESS it is revealed to us by His Spirit, all our knowledge stays in our head. When the Spirit start to reveal the things of God, the ‘head’ slowly goes out of the picture and heart comes in to the picture.

One of the questions I always struggle with is, what is the point in sharing the Gospel to a person who doesn’t even believe Bible is the word of God and Jesus is God or even doubt the existence of God. I have tried to use Apologetics, Scientific evidences of creation such as Newton's first law of thermodynamics, etc to convince such people but so far I haven’t seen anybody who has really convinced just by the logical reasoning based on these facts. I still value the genuine work some people do in this regard. I would highly recommend books like ‘More than a Carpenter’ to any skeptics. But the point is, UNLESS and UNTIL the Spirit reveals the truth they wouldn’t come to a conclusion of the reality of Christ's love and His salvation. The only 'problem' I see in those who come to believe in Jesus through Apologetics is that they believe because of the compulsion of their intelligence. If we think, it is pretty easy to rule out any possibilities of evolution, Big Bang etc with a little intellect, logic, history and science.

I think apologetics can be a starting point of any skeptic's faith journey but the true faith is beyond the intellectual capabilities of our finite mind. True faith (not just belief) sees the 'unseen' and start walking in that reality. They not only knows that the chair can hold them (belief) but they go and sit in the chair (faith). It is not enough to believe that Jesus is the way but there requires a response of faith which lead to us to resting (sitting in the chair). This is possible only when it is supernaturally revealed to us by the Spirit of God. I think it was Joel once said, the love and grace of God cannot be taught but it has to be caught. When it is revealed to us by God, we will catch it and it usually is a big 'AHA' moment; then as we start the journey, there will be a lot more 'AHA' moments. And thats where the fun starts!