A friend of our congregation grew up as an agnostic, but he was always a seeker of truth. Never one much for religion, as a young adult one day he was sitting in a pizza restaurant reading a book by a philosopher when something occurred to him for the first time. The philosopher said there is no higher way of living than to figure out why you’re here and then live your life accordingly.
The young man looked over at his pizza, and it occurred to him that there was an actual truth about the pizza and where it came from. No matter if people gave thousands of explanations of how the pizza got there—space aliens brought it, it evolved off the tray, it only existed in his mind—there was actually a truth, with a capital T, of how it got there. The truth about the pizza was that it was on his table because the cook baked it in the kitchen and the server brought it to his table.
Once he realized there was a truth about his pizza, he realized there must be a truth about himself, no matter what different people might theorize. This discovery led him to search for his and humanity’s origin.
In the Bible, the first words say, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
It takes a lot of faith to believe that an eternal, infinite being created the universe. But consider this: wouldn’t it take even more faith to believe that we all came from nothing? Wouldn’t it take an astonishing amount of faith and infinite sadness to believe that the earth and humanity is one giant accident, that smiles and love and beauty are senseless, that your actions and service to others don’t matter because we’re only living out the pathetic joke of a cosmic coincidence without a loving creator?
We invite you to ponder your own and humanity’s origin and come to your own conclusion.
Sometimes when people consider the possibility that there is a God, they think, “then why would God allow bad things to happen?”
None of us has all the answers.
Job, a man in the Bible who had the most faith in God of anyone, didn’t have all the answers either. When he suffered more than anyone else, his friends tried to rationalize it. Job kept his faith in God, but he finally did ask God what was going on—what was behind his pain. I’ll summarize chapter 42 verse 7 of the book of Job: it essentially says that God tells Job’s friends to hush, and that God isn’t answering Job right now, but that Job was right for trusting God.
The response to pain and suffering that we’re right for trusting God may not be a satisfactory answer right now. Some day, we know we’re going to want to ask God some questions about the bad things we saw and experienced. Who knows, maybe we’ll be satisfied by God’s answers. Maybe we’ll learn about things that only God knew before time and the creation of the earth. Maybe, when we’re looking into his face, those questions may not matter so much anymore because we’ll be with him. For now, we each have to decide if we’re OK with God’s answer to Job and his friends.
Either way, there is a truth, with a capital T, about our origins. We believe there is a God, and we believe we’re right for trusting him. We’ve dedicated our lives to this premise. We invite you to consider whether there is a God, and if so, discover the plans he has for you.
Some people try to ignore the question of our origins. But no matter what different people might say, there is a truth with a capital T about how we got here. It’s up to you if you want to avoid the issue or seek an answer. If you continually seek an answer and continually come to a conclusion, we, like the philosopher, think you should live your life accordingly.
Happy searching.