“If there is a God…”
The existence of God is questioned by some people based on all sorts of trials and suffering across the world. But these things are nothing else but what we philosophically call “life.” Something is wrong with the world. One don’t have to be a great Bible scholar or highly educated or a great thinker to understand that something is wrong with the world. Look around you, the answer may be nearer to you than you thought. The world is ravaged by problems and suffering of all sorts. These are not confined to mankind alone but even nature. Nature is indeed is beautiful but not free from the contamination of sin. The calm rivers can become devastating floods. A volcano can suddenly erupt and destroy whole towns with everyone living in them. Cyclones can ransack towns, farms, and kill both man and animals.
The big question “Why?”
The most common questions often asked to debunk the existence of God are…
“If there is a God, why is he not doing anything about all the human suffering in the world?”
“How can we say there is a loving God when he allows killing, murder, and let innocent little children die in wars or disease or hunger?”
The cause behind the effects
Our worldly problems, trials and difficulties do not mean there is no God. A person becomes ill because something is making him or her sick. Something is terribly wrong with the world. Think logically, there must be a cause behind the effects.
Action and reaction go hand in hand. Through the disobedience of Adam, sin entered man and our relation with God was severed. This is the original sin. Besides this we have a tendency to commit sins. This are personal sins, which is in fact the influence of the original sin.
We are sinners living in a fallen world. Hunger and poverty, personal and social problems, wars and strife, natural disasters and calamities, sickness and death, will always be there with us until the second coming of Christ.
Physical and spiritual death
Sin is our greatest problem. It has corrupted the entire universe. Physical death is inevitable. It will come sooner or later. From distance we were made and to dust we return. Worse than physical death is spiritual death, which is separation from God.
The assurance of faith
In conclusion, faith is the key. Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty of our sins. And by grace through faith in him we can have eternal life…. reconciled and united with God.
Hebrews 11:3 By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.
Hebrews 13:14 For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.
Romans 8:18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.
Faith gives us convictions about creation. Belief in the existence of the world is not faith, nor is it faith when people hold that the world was made out of some preexisting “stuff.” But when we understand that it was the Word of God that produced all things, that is faith.
The visible universe is not sufficient to account for itself. But it is faith, not something material, that assures us that it originated with God. This world is God’s world, and faith assures us that God originated it. Further, nothing is permanent in this troubled and chaotic world. Everything in this world is temporary. We don’t have an enduring home in this world. But it is faith that enables us to see a glimpse of heaven. By faith we are assured of our invisible, permanent, and eternal home. Therein lies our joy, our hope of living in the presence of God for eternity.