Reality Check 101

There are a few things that need to be said for the beginning of this chapter.

 Everyone starts out with things that they just believe to be true, things that to them don’t need to have any proof because they are so logical. Yes, we are going to talk about God, but the same thing is true when anyone begins to think about whether or not to take God seriously. For example, for an atheist, the idea of even talking about the possibility of God is nonsense because of what they already believe.

But because I admit that God has to be out there, we will start in a different way. Since that is the case, there are several things we need to get out of the way. For one thing, everyone, as we’ve talked about before, has built in beliefs about God. To prove it, just choose any random person and ask them.  100% of the time, there will be an answer.  Even the person says “I don’t know” or “There is no such thing” they are still believing something about God. There seems to be no way to avoid some kind of opinion.

As we go along, we will find out that there are a lot of clues God has left us about Himself and that those things should be easy to see all around us. Not only that, since God has to be so much above us, it means that we cannot scientifically or logically test for Him or prove Him because of the way our little brains work. In order to be God, He has to be more and above that. So, in this part of the discussion, we are not going to be talking about proofs, but about clues and witnesses.

10 Witnesses

Nature’s First Two Witnesses

• Nature is a great place to start looking at clues because it shows us some of the most basic things about how creation works. Nature shows us that things come from somewhere, not nowhere! This is important. Even life has to start somewhere and from something. If it were ever possible to prove that anything, no matter what, no matter how small, could suddenly appear all by itself from total nothingness, God would become totally unnecessary in the minds of men and women. But nature doesn’t let us do that.

• There is also nothing in this world or in this universe that does not have a blueprint to it like shape, structure, color, smell, and all kinds of other characteristics that make it a part of the physical world. Everything in existence depends on a design – from DNA to dwarf stars. The fact of the matter is that those kinds of designs never come out of emptiness or chaotic cloud of  “stuff”.

All of this means that there is thought and logic behind everything. Without God, nature would have to have a mind of its own and be able to make decisions about itself for itself. It would have to plan the way the world works and draw up its own designs. For most people who stop and think about it, the logical conclusion is that there is someone somewhere who is unbelievably powerful and solidly in control.

History’s Next Two Witnesses

History is also a great teacher if we listen to it. It will give us the next two big clues about God. One is that there has never been a time in all of the world’s history that mankind has not had beliefs about somebody divine and more powerful than life or death. A lot of folks will say that that doesn’t really count because those people were just being superstitious and got their ideas because of things that scare them and go bump in the night or because of their fear of dying.

• The reality is that there are a lot of other ways to deal with bumps in the night than to make unknown scary things out to be something like a god. There are also a lot of other ways to try to deal with grief and death as any secular psychologist will quickly explain . The truth is that it was actually much easier mankind to look at all the things that couldn’t be controlled by them and for them to realize that there had to be Someone in charge. The fact is, historically, there was always an awareness or feeling of someone bigger than them who can give them something more than meaningless disasters and death.

• Another thing: Whole nations and their laws have been built on what they understood about God. Israel has been and still is one of the best examples.  Think about how powerful a witness it is that whole governments and cultures would develop in world history based upon their understanding of what a divine Person expected of them – from the most powerful person in the country the weakest one. If God were not behind all of that, it has been an unthinkably powerful delusion.