Genesis 1:1-5: God, Creation, and Faith
Welcome to the beginning!
The simple statement here is quite overwhelming. God made the heavens and the earth. In the Hebrew mind, this meant God made all that is. Nothing exists without him. He is the source of life and all that entails. There is no debate or middle ground on this statement. Either God (a higher being, higher power, ultimate other--something greater that humanity) is personally responsible for the existence of all things, or you do not accept the foundational premise for the whole scripture: that God exists and manages his creation. If you do not believe that God is real, then it makes no sense to believe anything else in the Bible.
Now, you can ask, "Can you prove the existence of God?" I can respond, "Can you disprove it?" Ultimately, we can look at the same evidence and probably provide different rationales and proofs for own beliefs. The bottom line is this: we can neither prove nor disprove God. It takes faith to believe that God does or does not exist because we have neither see God nor seen everything without him. (By "seeing everything without him" I refer to the idea that we cannot scientifically observe every inch of existence and say that we have not seen God. Maybe he is playing hide and seek, or very far away. But you cannot objectively say "God has never been here." It is impossible to measure.) You can try to argue possibilities and probabilities, but either way, we all are people of faith when it comes to believing in the existence or non-existence of God.
The simple statement here is quite overwhelming. God made the heavens and the earth. In the Hebrew mind, this meant God made all that is. Nothing exists without him. He is the source of life and all that entails. There is no debate or middle ground on this statement. Either God (a higher being, higher power, ultimate other--something greater that humanity) is personally responsible for the existence of all things, or you do not accept the foundational premise for the whole scripture: that God exists and manages his creation. If you do not believe that God is real, then it makes no sense to believe anything else in the Bible.
Now, you can ask, "Can you prove the existence of God?" I can respond, "Can you disprove it?" Ultimately, we can look at the same evidence and probably provide different rationales and proofs for own beliefs. The bottom line is this: we can neither prove nor disprove God. It takes faith to believe that God does or does not exist because we have neither see God nor seen everything without him. (By "seeing everything without him" I refer to the idea that we cannot scientifically observe every inch of existence and say that we have not seen God. Maybe he is playing hide and seek, or very far away. But you cannot objectively say "God has never been here." It is impossible to measure.) You can try to argue possibilities and probabilities, but either way, we all are people of faith when it comes to believing in the existence or non-existence of God.
Labels: faith creation, Genesis, God
posted by Randy Rogers at
9:33 AM
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