Alright, we have established the fact that God is fact. However, does everyone recognize Him as such? Unfortunately, they don't. But someday, they will. Philippians 2:10-11 says, "that at the
name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the
earth, (11) and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of
God the Father."
What,
then, do we do with those who don't view God as fact? One option it to show them that the Bible is
true and then point them to verses that talk about God and His existence. We will cover this later in the series. If they reject that, then what? Believe it or not, we can offer evidence and,
in a sense, "prove" that God is alive and well. Just like we can offer scientific evidence
and show that there is a north and just like we can examine mathematics and
demonstrate that two plus two has to
be four, so we can look at the world and show (with a bit of thinking and
logic) that God does in fact exist.
I'm
going to use C.S. Lewis' method for proving God's existence as laid out in his
book, Mere Christianity. Step #1 is to prove that there is a Law of
Human Nature, a right and wrong, a Moral Law.
Step #2 is to prove that something or someone beyond us is behind this
Moral Law. Step #3 is to prove that the
Power behind the Moral Law is the perfect God that the Bible describes. Now if you read the book, it is not as simple
as I am making it out to be. In reality,
there are many sub-arguments you have to make, ideas you have to prove wrong,
and other details that you must sort through in order to get the conclusion
that God exists. I will try to make it
simple and cover the main material in order to give you a basic idea as to how
Lewis comes to his final verdict. Thus,
if it seems as though there are holes in my argument and seemingly unconnected
thinking, it is because I cannot paste Lewis' entire work into the blog. Instead, I would strongly encourage you to
read the book and see C.S. Lewis present his extraordinary, yet convincing
argument in full detail. For now, here
are the three general steps in summary form.
Step
#1: Prove that there is a Law of Human Nature - an ultimate right and wrong.
C.S.
Lewis begins his work by pointing his readers to times in their lives where
they have observed an argument. The book
says, "They say things [in the argument] like this: 'How'd you like it if
anyone did the same to you?' - 'That's my seat, I was there first' - 'Why
should you shove in first?' - 'Give me a bit of your orange, I gave you a bit
of mine' - 'Come on, you promised' (Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity. HarperCollins Publishing. 1952. p. 3)." The point Lewis tries to make is that for
some reason, everyone - young and old - tend to appeal to this "Law"
that they think everyone ought to follow.
They try to point out that it is wrong to steal, good to be respectful,
wrong to lie, and many other examples.
For some reason nearly everyone seems to recognize these standards and try
to abide by them as though they know them to be absolute.
People
may claim that they have different standards.
They may say that they have no problem with stealing from others. However, if you confront them and threaten to
steal their belongings, they will go on and on saying that, "It's not
right! You can't do that! That's my stuff! You have no right to take it!" In the end, they too recognize that there
must some Law of Human Behavior that must be right and must be obeyed. It is an interesting, but obvious phenomenon. If you think about it, it should be obvious
that there is a right and wrong that people know to obey. Now a complete discussion
of whether there is absolute right and wrong and absolute truth is a very
interesting topic that must be saved for another occasion. Thus, in order to move on, we'll stop
there.
Step
#2: Prove that there is someone - a power of some sort - behind this Moral Law.
Next,
Lewis asks a question. What is behind
the Moral Law and how did the universe come to be this way? He notes the two general views: "First,
there is what is called the materialist view.
People who take that view think that matter and space just happen to
exist, and always have existed, nobody knows why; and that the matter, behaving
in certain fixed ways, has just happened, by a sort of fluke, to produce
creatures like ourselves who are able to think... ...The other view is the religious view. According to it, what is behind the universe
is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know. That is to say, it is conscious, and has
purposes, and prefers one thing to another (p. 21-22)." Now since we are trying to prove that the God
of the Bible exists, we must prove that the second option is right (Do you see
how our everyday reasoning assumes that there is a right and wrong?).
C.S. Lewis begins a very detailed
discussion to prove that there is a something behind the Moral Law. Unfortunately, it is way too intricate and
long for me to explain. Thus, let's look
at part of the conclusion: he has figured out that there is, "Something
which is directing the universe, and which appears in me as a law urging me to
do right and making me feel responsible and uncomfortable when I do wrong. I think we have to assume it is more like a
mind than it is like anything else we know - because after all the only other
thing we know is matter and you can hardly imagine a bit of matter giving
instructions (p. 25)." If that
doesn't make much sense, he is simply observing that there is something causing
him to know right and wrong - someone who came up with it. Since we already know that everyone
recognizes this right and wrong, something or someone must be behind all of
it.
Step
#3: Prove that the Someone behind the Moral Law is the God that the Bible
describes.
That's
quite a jump, so it will take a bit longer to prove this step. Lewis addresses many of the different options
as to who this Someone is and what their role is in the universe. Of course, it would take forever to analyze
all of them. So, we will just look at
his comparison between the Christian view of God and another view called Dualism. "Dualism means the belief that there are
two equal and independent powers at the back of everything, one of them good
and the other bad, and that this universe is the battlefield in which they
fight out an endless war... ...The two
powers, or spirits, or gods - the good one and the bad one - are supposed to be
quite independent. They both existed
from all eternity. Neither of them made
the other, neither of them has any more right than the other to call itself
God. Each presumably thinks it is good
and thinks the other bad. One of them
likes hatred and cruelty, the other likes love and mercy, and each backs its
own view (p. 42)."
Hold on
to your hats as we look at the problems that Lewis finds in Dualism. "Now what do we mean when we call one of
them the Good Power and the other the Bad Power? Either we are merely saying that we happen to
prefer the one to the other... ... or
else we are saying that, whatever the two powers think about it, and whichever
we humans, at the moment, happen to like, one of them is actually wrong,
actually mistaken, it regarding itself as good.
Now if we mean merely that we happen to prefer the first, then we must
give up talking about good and evil at all.
For good means what you ought to prefer quite regardless of what you
happen to like at any given moment. If
'being good' meant simply joining the side you happened to fancy, for no real
reason, then good would not deserve to be called good. So we must mean that one of the two powers is
actually wrong and the other actually right."
Lewis
continues, "But the moment you say that, you are putting into the universe
a third thing in addition to the two Powers: some law or standard or rule of
good which one of the powers conforms to and the other fails to conform
to. But since the two powers are judged
by this standard, then this standard, or the Being who made this standard, is
farther back and higher up than either of them, and He will be the real God (p.
42-43)." Doesn't this sound more
like the God that we Christians acknowledge?
If all
of that was hard to follow, that's all right.
This is pretty deep stuff! The
slower you read it and the more times that you read it, the more sense it will
make. Of course, we do not have time to
look at how C.S. Lewis proves some of the specific attributes of God. I hope, though, that you can see how we must face
the fact that a God exists; and furthermore, that we have the choice to either
obey this Moral Law He has put within us or disobey it. Whether you are a Christian or not, you know
in your heart that you should obey
it.
Again,
don't think I am ignoring God's Word by using this Scripture-absent method. I just want you to see that our God is
obvious whether or not you acknowledge the Bible or not. Remember though, He is still fact!
Matthew
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