Logic makes me question, but also leads me to the answer
I can’t see him. I can’t hear him. I can’t touch him. Is it surprising that I might have some difficulty believing he exists?
I’ve been a Christ follower for more than 37 years now but I still have moments when doubts slither in and threaten my faith. Being logically minded, looking at the sensory and experiential data sometimes leads me to question whether God is real. But it is logic that also leads me to answer with a confident Yes.
Maybe you’ve experienced this too. Say you’ve been praying for something for a long time and have not yet received or experienced that something. You start wondering if it’s all been a huge waste of time. You can’t see, hear, or touch God. Maybe what you’ve been believing about him is just not true.
If you’ve been there, or are there, do what I do:
- Look around you. Look above you. Look at your hand. Then ask yourself, what makes more sense – that the universe and all the beauty and complexity in it sprang into being from nothing, or that there is a Creator outside the universe? Obviously the latter.
- So who is this Creator? Many over the millennia have claimed to know, but the God of the Bible clearly and decisively best explains the evidence.
- If you are convinced of these two realities, simply review and remind yourself of them when doubts arise.
And ask yourself, what’s the alternative? If the Bible isn’t true – which is where we learn of God’s great love and mercy, his free gift of salvation, his promises to guide and provide – then either there is no God (but see #1) or there is some other god or force or panoply of gods, none of which has good evidence of their reality (see #2).
A solid, genuine faith is stabilized by the knowledge that the evidence for God is multi-faceted. His invisibility and silence may seem to be evidence against him, but if you disregard or ignore all the evidence for him you can’t, with any integrity, claim any knowledge of him at all.
So when doubts begin to bubble up because God is not accessible to your physical senses, call upon your non-physical, common sense and ask yourself if you can explain the existence of the physical apart from a non-physical, Spiritual, personal Creator. Then “entrust [your] souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.” – 1 Peter 4:19
