Does God’s Existence Matter?
By Dan | May 28, 2007
“Does God exist?” It’s a question that virtually all people have asked. Some have dedicated large portions of their lives to studying the matter while others, perhaps most others, have asked the question and then moved on with their lives despite not coming to any real satisfactory conclusion.
But before we even begin to ask this question, we can legitimately ask another question: “Does it really matter that God exists?” For if the existence or non-existence of God does not affect our life in any meaningful way, we can make the case that being ignorant of the truth is fairly inconsequential. If God does exist, but He does not require our knowledge of Him or His existence, then we need not be concerned if we are ultimately wrong about our conclusions. In other words, the existence of God is one issue, but the other issue is, is God concerned that we discover Him, that we learn about Him, and that we heed His commandments?
First, let’s suppose that God does not exist. What then is the importance of finding out the truth of the matter? If we take a purely empiricalistic, naturalistic point of view, one that says that the things that exist in our universe are the be-all and end-all of existence, that there is no actual trancendent reality, then we can make the case that trying to discover the existence of God is futile. For if one believes in a God that does not exist, the consequences are ultimately the same as one who doesn’t believe in the existence of God. One man believes in God. Another man does not believe. Both men live different lives, but in the end, both go to the grave and suffer no additional consequences. In other words, if God does not exist, what penalty is there to a wrongly held belief? None.
Now if God does exist and is deistic, that is, God does not concern Himself with the affairs of man, the ultimate consequence is similar to an atheistic reality. One man may believe in God and another may not believe in God, but both men will go to the grave without any further consequences.
But what if God does exist and holds us responsible for acknowledging His existence and holds us accountable for our actions before Him? It is this scenario in which we must be most concerned with. For if the God of this scenario is the true God, the post-life consequences for us are enormous. And this brings us to the God of the Bible. He holds us accountable for acknowledging His existence and for obeying His Law. We read in 2 Cr 5:10:
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.
And if we are on the wrong side of this God’s judgement, what will be the end result? According to the book of Revelations, “…whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.” (Rev 20:14) And in Matthew 25:46, it states that “…these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.”
From these passages, we can discover a few things. First, hell is the result of God’s judgement. Second, we see that this punishment will last forever. And third, God separates those He marks as righteous from those who will suffer the eternal punishment.
We can see that if the God of the Bible is the true God, that we absolutely do not want to be wrong about what we believe and where we stand before this God. Because unlike the other scenarios, the consequences of the God of the Bible being real and being true to His Word is not simply a matter of knowledge or enlightenment, but ultimately a matter of everlasting life or everlasting judgement for each individual. There simply are no bigger consequences than that. If the two sides of the coin were heaven vs annihilation, we could make the case that while we certainly desire to be in heaven for eternity, we won’t fret too much about annihilation as a result of an unfavorable judgement by God. But the Bible doesn’t say that. It’s eternal life vs eternal punishment, “where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” (Isa 66:24) And so, if the God of this scenario is God, it answers the question, “Does God’s existence matter?” in a dramatic way. Not only does it matter, but it is the ultimate matter.
We haven’t delved much into the plausibility of the God of the Bible being the true and only God, but if you have any suspicion that this is God, would it not behove you to take a Bible and search out the matter given the potential consequences? For this is ultimately where the rubber meets the road. The Bible either is the true revelation of God or it is not. And what better way is there to test its claims, to see if there is any truth in the words written, than by reading it with a sincere purpose to try to understand its message and meaning?
Topics: Theology |
March 29th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
I hope that i won’t fall into a Dan’s fan too fast, which is difficult not to.
August 25th, 2008 at 9:32 am
Excelent. Your blog is really interesting. To have a good blog you should not only to post smth, but do it from the heart. You managed with it - thanks.