Lancaster First United Methodist Church
April 11, 2010
Acts 5:27-32 & John 20:19-31
Rev. Robert McDowell

“Big Questions – Is God Real?”

Today, we’re beginning a four-part sermon series called, “Big Questions.” We’re going to be exploring four of the age old questions that almost all people ask, regardless of the degree of faith that they may have.

Together, we’re going to explore the questions: “How Can I Forgive?,” “Is the Bible Reliable?,” and “Why Does God Allow Bad Things to Happen?” And, to kick off the series today, we’re exploring the question: “Is God Real?”

The story goes that a kindergartner was busy coloring a picture. His teacher walked up behind him and watched him drawing. She asked him, “Billy, what are you coloring a picture of?” Billy kept right on drawing as he said, “I’m coloring a picture of God.”

“But,” his teacher replied, “no one knows what God looks like.”

“Well, they will when I’m done with my picture!” Billy said.

Trying to prove or disprove the existence of God is an impossible task. Whether you believe in God, or don’t believe in God, our decision is based on faith. The decision of an atheist is as much a decision of faith, as the decision to be a theist. One cannot prove or disprove God.

Now lots of people have tried to prove the existence of God. And many others have tried to disprove the existence of God. We’ll talk about how people have gone about this.

I hope to share some of the arguments for and against the existence of God, and in the end, not prove or disprove God’s existence to you, but share why I find the existence of God to be compelling. Ultimately, as you know, each person must make the decision themselves.

Harry Emerson Fosdick, protestant pastor and theologian of the twentieth century once said, “When people say they don’t believe in God, what they often mean to say is that they don’t believe in a particular idea of God. We all use the word ‘God’, but we don’t all mean the same thing when we use the word.” Fosdick said, “Tell me about the God you don’t believe in; I may not believe in him either.”

Pastor and author, Adam Hamilton makes this point as well when he says, “If your idea of God is an angry old man that gives cancer to children, directs people to fly airplanes into buildings, and is threatened by modern science…I don’t believe in that God either.”

But, if your idea of God is the one who has revealed his immeasurable love for us in the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, then yes…that’s the God I believe in too.

We are going to look at three different ways that people use to either affirm their belief in God or not affirm their belief in the existence of God.

The first way is through nature or the creation around us.

Up until the modern, scientific age, this used to be self-evident to people, that the wonder of creation and the majesty of nature, just had to have been created by God. People looked up at the stars in the heavens and knew something greater than themselves had to put them there. Or they wondered and even feared the unknown of the oceans deep, and trembled at the idea of God who was bigger than all that we see.

The psalmist captures this idea in Psalm 8, “O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?”

But with the coming of the modern, scientific age, many people have used science to explain away the wonders of nature apart from God. We understand so much more about the universe and the world in which we live that we can more easily lose some of the mystery of the universe.

Great scientific minds have given rise to the Big Bang theory of creation. That is, that a small amount of super energized matter, exploded in a big bang billions of years ago, creating all of the stars, planets and galaxies that make up our universe today. The amount of energy that created the explosion was great enough to cause the matter to expand ever outward, instead of collapsing back in upon itself, but not so great that there wasn’t enough gravitational force to allow planets and stars to form.

It seems like a plausible theory to me. But, rather than explaining away God’s role in creation, it creates even more questions for me. Where did that super-energized matter
come from? If energy is neither created nor destroyed, but only transferred from one state to another, then that super-energized matter had to come from somewhere.

Another question I have is “Who started the chain reaction?” Scientists tell us that for every action there is a reaction. Well, if the explosion of the big bang is the reaction we are talking about, then who is responsible for the action that started it?

For me, the answer to all of these questions seems best explained by the presence of a creator, who was not created himself, but rather is eternal. It seems more plausible to me to believe in God who is responsible for creating, than for the entire universe to simply have appeared spontaneously. I am more willing to live with the ambiguity of God who I cannot see, than the ambiguity of matter and creation which I can see.

Other great scientific minds have given us the theory of evolution. In a nutshell this theory says that single celled organisms eventually came together, formed multi-celled organisms. These simple life forms evolved in different ways with different traits and characteristics. Those that had an advantage, and were best suited to the environment lived and reproduced more, causing the organisms less suited to die out. Eventually, all life as we know it, in its incredible variety evolved in this way.

There are some parts of evolution theory that I find valid: survival of the fittest seems to be played out in nature; the fossil record seems to indicate how species have changed over many years.

But just like with the big bang theory, the theory of evolution raises other questions for me. Where did the first simple cells come from? How did cells first come together? If multi-celled life forms gave rise to all life, including human beings, who gave human beings a conscience that distinguishes us from other life forms?

For me, the complexity of a theory like evolution actually draws me to believe in God more. I mean, I just can’t comprehend that the perfect conditions for life to develop on earth just happened by accident: exactly the right distance from the sun, exactly the correct tilt to the earth’s axis, all the needed elements.

Many scientists have also come to believe in God after they have studied the earth and the universe. Fred Holye, an astronomer from Cambridge University said that it was scientific evidence that led him to believe in God.

I like the discipline of science, but it doesn’t replace God. Science and theology don’t seek to answer the same questions. These two areas of study, I think, work best when seen as complementary disciplines.

The second way people affirm or not affirm the existence of God is by focusing on what makes human beings unique from the rest of creation.

The bible tells us that human beings were created in the image of God. And believers, as well as non-believers, know that humans are different than animals. For one thing, humans are particularly drawn toward feelings and emotions. Also, there seems to be a morality that is greater than us; in other words humans can distinguish right from wrong.

Richard Dawkins, a British scientist who studies animal behaviors, and a well known atheist, argues that feelings and emotions are nothing more than electrical impulses in our nerve endings, and waves of hormones that wash through our physical selves.

I’ve had times in my life when one of my kids was hurting, or my wife was suffering, and I have felt the pain more acutely than if I was the one suffering or hurting. It just doesn’t seem plausible to me that our deepest emotions or our greatest joys can boil down to nothing more than electrical impulses and chemicals.

Victor Frankle, who survived being held prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp, wrote the book, “Man’s Search for Meaning.” He discovered that when a person has something to live for, they can get through almost anything. He actually found his spirit and his soul in spite of being held in a Nazi prison camp. Human beings are born with a need for a purpose for our lives. He wrote that we feel that way, because the God who created us, created us for a purpose. And he believed that God moves us toward our purpose in life.

I mentioned a moment ago that humans have a conscience. Our human conscience runs counter to the laws of evolution. Evolution tells us that the strongest survive. Evolution tells us to procreate as much as we can because he who has the most offspring influences the gene pool the most. Evolution tells us to get as much as we can for ourselves so we will survive.

But I look around and see human beings living counter to this all the time. Just the strongest survive? Then why do we care for our sick and our dying? Why do people look beyond themselves to donate their blood so that someone else they don’t even know might get a second chance at life?

I see people all the time who live faithfully with their spouse, and thoughtfully plan the number of children they will produce together.

Why have volunteers taken their hard earned vacation and spent their own money to go help rebuild houses in New Orleans? Why have you given financially and materially to help people you don’t even know in Haiti?

We are created with a conscience. We are made to look beyond ourselves to others.

Finally, there is a third way that people either affirm God or not, and that is through our human experiences of God.

A belief in something bigger than ourselves is virtually a universal human experience. Every culture, and every people, have believed in a god or gods throughout time. Our conceptions of our gods have varied greatly, but the concept is everywhere.

The Hebrew and Christian bible is filled with human beings’ experiences with God. Adam and Eve experienced God walking through the Garden of Eden.

Abraham heard God talk to him, believed God, packed up his family and all his belongings and left his home for an undetermined country that God promised him, and a large family more numerous than the stars. You and I are heirs of that promise that Abraham experienced from God.

Moses experienced God in a burning bush while he was tending sheep. God told him to go to Egypt and tell Pharaoh to let the children of Israel free from their slavery. Moses was told that Pharaoh wouldn’t believe him, and would make it very difficult for him, but Moses followed God anyway.

David wrote about his experiences with God in the Psalms.

The prophets heard God call them, and followed God at great cost to themselves—sometimes imprisonment, always rejection, and sometimes even death. They heard God call, and couldn’t stop themselves from preaching against the injustices in their societies.

Jesus followed God, even though it meant being crucified on a cross.

Paul followed God even though he was persecuted, stoned, put on trial, thrown out of town after town---he couldn’t stop preaching about Jesus.

Many of you have also risked your friends or your family, your peer group, your position at your company, your possessions, your bank account, or even your vocation to follow God in Christ who has called you to follow.

One of the humbling privileges I have as a pastor is to spend time with people when they face the end of their life. I’ve seen people face their death with such hope, faith, assurance and peace that I know they have experienced God, and this has given me the opportunity to experience God through them.

People experience God when their acceptance of God changes their life completely; when they experience conversion. When the formerly selfish person becomes selfless. When the former addict comes clean. When a sinner repents and turns his or her life around.

On that first Easter evening, Thomas, one of Jesus’ twelve disciples was able to experience God in the Risen Christ. His doubts were turned into belief, because God met him right where he was—even in his doubts.

I’ve shared with you some of the reasons I believe that God is real, and some of the ways that people have felt certain of the existence of God throughout time.

Here is one more thing I want to leave you with. Most people will never come to have faith in God by making a better argument. You will never convince anyone of God’s existence by presenting more facts. In my own experience, this usually drives skeptics farther away from God.

Thomas didn’t believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead when his friends who had seen Jesus the first time tried to convince him. He had to see it for himself. He had to see the resurrected body of Christ for himself.

And so it is still today. A better argument will not convince anyone of the reality of God.

But other people will begin to see the reality of God when they see the message of God being lived out in you.

When you demonstrate God’s love to someone else, they cannot help but see the reality of God.

When we live out what it means to be the church by serving the needy of our world, people will see the reality of God.

When I left from our Second Saturday ministry outreach yesterday out at our Crossroads facility, I couldn’t stop thinking about just how many people in the city of Lancaster experienced the love of Jesus Christ through you in just that one morning. That’s how people can tell if God is real or not. It’s when they see that how we live throughout the week, matches what we say and sing about here on Sunday mornings.

As one of our hymns says, “Every day to us is Easter.”

Every day to us is Easter.

That’s how people will know that God is real.


Thoughts/Action Steps

1. Which of the three ways to help us know if God is real is most meaningful for you?
2. One of the best ways for the church to help people know that God is real is through our service to the poor and those who are in need in our community and world. There are many ways to serve others through First UMC.
3. The bible often refers to God’s good creation. Spend some time this week enjoying the beauty of nature and allow these moments to help you know that God is real.