Dear Mike:

Thank you for the opportunity to talk to you a little about God. I like talking about him because of all the great things he has done for and me.

You mentioned to me in your email that you were an agnostic, that you weren’t really sure if there was a God or not. Let me begin by saying that God doesn’t need little old me to prove that he exists. He certainly doesn’t need me to make an argument for his living presence. He advances his own argument. "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands." (Psalm 19:1) That’s the way King David of Israel put it about 3000 years ago, and his reasoning still stands.

We don’t need to see God with our own eyes to believe that he exists. Shakespeare didn’t have to appear as a character in one of his plays in order for him to be real. Instead, you find Shakespeare everywhere in his plays – he’s in the words he’s written. That’s the way it is with God. You see God everywhere in his universe – in the atoms, DNA, bugs, storms, life, seasons, sun and stars. Everywhere and everything is shouting to us that our God exists.

I guess what I'm trying to say, Mike, is that what really needs proving is that God is not alive. If there is no God, then how come we have the universe? Why is there something instead of nothing? Whatever begins (and the universe had to begin at some time) must have a cause. Who is the cause of the universe? Unless you believe that nothing caused something, you will have to look beyond the realm of matter to explain this orderly universe. And when you look beyond the visible to explain how this solitary island of life we call earth developed in the vast universe, you keep coming back to the way Moses said it so long ago: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:1)

I’m not much of a science guy, but I do know from reading that just one living human cell is made up of about 200,000 amino acids. How many years would it take for just one of the amino acid chains necessary for life to come together by chance formation? Mathematicians have estimated that it would take a period of time 300 times longer than this earth has been around according to the evolutionary model. No step-by-step process of gradual, chance improvements can possibly account for the workings of life at the molecular level. We can't just wave the magic wand of "billions of years" over the wonder that is human life and explain it as a product of chance. When you look through your microscope at a cell, there is only one explanation for what you see. There is a living God who designed us. Back to King David: "I praise [God] because I am fearfully and wonderfully made." (Psalm 139:14)

There are other rational arguments to prove that God must exist. For instance, if the earth were spinning on an axis even one degree different from what it is, we would all burn up or freeze. Could the earth's placement on just the right axis, not to mention it's spinning at just the right speed, happen by some "Big Bang?" The wristwatch you wear is obviously the work of a watchmaker; it couldn't just happen by accident. Yet the hand and wrist on which you wear it is far more intricate in design. Could that be by accident? If there is even a chance that an all-powerful and all-wise God created us and placed us in this universe he created, shouldn't we at least listen to what he says about being in a right relationship with him?

If there were no Shakespeare, there would be no play. God is to this world like the author is to his play.

A Russian cosmonaut once traveled into space and scoffed, "I didn’t find God." Yes, you can search the entire cosmos and never find the face of God. And yet the tiniest seed – of a tree or, for that matter, of a man – is a deafening cry: "He Is."

It is at this point that we confront the real mystery at the center of Christianity. The Author did find a way somehow to step inside the tragic play. We needed him to. The Artist did his own masterpiece, though the masterpiece was defaced by sin. By a journey we cannot fathom – neither its distance nor its cost – God entered our world in the person of Jesus Christ. And that God-man, Jesus Christ, lived for you, died for you, rose from the dead for you, and now lives forever for you. He wants a relationship with you. He wants you to read what he has to say in the Bible. Read with an open mind. He wants you to know all that he has done for you by hearing his Word in the Bible. When you listen to his Word, I have no doubt that God will prove to you that he's alive, and that he loves you with an everlasting love. 

In Christ’s love,

Pastor Zarling