God Is
“In the beginning, God....” (Genesis 1:1)
A national pastime seems to be diagnosing the problems of the church. The most common answers which filter through my office range from LBGTQ+ to racial issues to a whole host of societal ills. However, may I be so bold as to say that these are but symptoms of a much graver illness? We act as swimmers focused on the fin, not fearing the shark lurking the water. What if I said to you that our greatest problem today is not social, but theological? What if I said that our greatest problem is a proper understanding of God? (For an added bonus, the second largest problem is our understanding of the Church – an issue I will broach in our “Summer in Systematics” sermon series.)
For the remainder of the year, your pastor-on-paper will be penning devotional pieces about the being of God, the attributes of God, the person and work of Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Will this be the magic bullet that cures all of our problems? That leads us to hold hands around the water tower and sing “Kumbaya”? Well, maybe. Our love of God is tied directly to our knowledge of God, and our love of neighbor rises no higher than our love of God. If we can build our lives more on this sure foundation, maybe (just maybe) lives will be changed.
With that said, let me make a simple statement: God is. There is no more foundational fact than that statement. We do not have to be, we do not have to exist, but God necessarily and essentially is. Nowhere in the Bible do the authors argue for God’s existence. Moses may write of creation’s existence because it came to be. Moses never writes of God because God is. God’s existence is more certain than the paper you hold in your hand. When this paper rots, when you are buried, when your memory does not continue any longer, when you become a “was”, God still is.
Now, we find ourselves with Pascal’s wager. If you put all your eggs in the basket that God is, you receive infinite gain. Yes, you may suffer for a moment, but what is momentary suffering compared to the eternal weight of glory? However, if you bet that God is not, the prize is infinite loss. The dice have been rolled, the coin has been tossed, and every human being must place a wager. Obviously, the world at large has made their wager. How will you?
