Does God exist?

Back in the Sixties posters, billboards, and bumper stickers began appearing asking the question, Is God dead? This question presumed that there was a God who was at some point alive.

The reason the question was asked is that there seemed to be little evidence of God in the world. Today there seems to be even less. At least, by some standards.

The world today stands at the brink of its own self-destruction--ecologically, economically, politically, militarily, socially, and finally (or perhaps initially), spiritually.

As civilization's many systems continue breaking down, every person who believes in God has to ask, Why would God allow such a total disintegration of all He has created?

This question produces no answer that makes sense--and so the question leads to a larger question: Could we have been wrong about God all along? Could we have been wrong to think that there ever even WAS a God?

The genesis of this thinking lies in the ideas that we have about God in the first place. Our Cultural Story about God revolves around three major ideas:

1. God is the Creator (In other words, He made us, and everything that is.)
2. God loves His Creations and has an investment in their outcomes (In other words, He wants the best for us.)
3. God can and will use His power to protect and defend His Creations. (In other words, we can call upon God for help with our lives and He will not let us down.)

This is a wonderful mythology about a Divine Being, but the World As It Is sorely strains its credulity. In order to retain its credulity, many human beings have added a fourth precept to humanity's Cultural Story about its Deity:

4. God's Kingdom is not on the Earth, but in Heaven. (In other words, the Earth and all physical life is not especially protected, and God could, in fact, choose to destroy the Earth--or allow the Earth to destroy itself--if that's what it takes to implement God's Larger Plan. There is no guarantee of our physical survival as a species.

This has led to an even further extension of the God Story to include a final idea:

5. God does, in fact, intend for life as we know it to be destroyed as part of the process by which God asserts Himself in our world; the moments when this happens shall be called The End Times--and this end to everything IS what is guaranteed.

It is not clear when these End Times will come (they have been variously predicted for centuries and millennia). By adding this Uncertainty Principle to the God Story, humanity can explain the Always Present degradation of life as we know it, the constant and never-ending struggles that individuals experience as they move through their days and nights, and the seemingly inexorable movement toward ultimate self-annihilation.

Thus, we can have it all: a Life that is difficult and challenging at best, and that is leading, in any event, to its own destruction, and a God who promises us not to worry, that all things will be just fine for those who believe in Him and come to Him (in a certain and particular way).

So we have largely, as a species, set aside the question of whether a God exists (surveys show that the vast majority of people in virtually every culture believe in a Power Greater than themselves, called, variously, God, Allah, Jehovah, Brahmin, Yahweh, Lord, Krishna, and whatever else it pleases humans to refer to It by). We have focused, instead, on why God exists, on what God wants, and on how we can give it to Him in order that we might garner that not-on-earth reward which will cause our unrewarding earthly life to make sense--or at least render it bearable.

Yet while the majority of humans on the Earth believe in some sort of God, not everyone does. And many say they simply do not know one way or the other. And so we have atheists and agnostics, as well as believers.

It is not sufficient to be a Believer, however. One must be the right kind of Believer. If one is the wrong kind of Believer one is going to miss out on the not-on-earth reward anyway.

No, it is worse than that. If one is the wrong kind of Believer, one will be punished. Not only will one miss out on the after-life reward, one will be required to endure everlasting, unremitting, and indescribable torture, anguish, and suffering.

This, in admittedly simple terms, is humanity's Cultural Story about God.

Now along comes Conversations with God to upset the apple cart, to undo all of this and to offer humanity a new Cultural Story about the Power That Is.

This New Story about God turns out to be the oldest story there is, and is imbedded deep within the cellular memory of humankind--which is why millions upon millions of people, when they hear the story, immediately agree with it, often saying things like, "Of course." Or, "I knew this all along." Or, "This is exactly the way I always thought it was." Or, "Finally, someone has said it the way I experience it." Or, simply, "What's new?"

The New Story tells us that there is a "God", or, if you please, a Power Greater than us, but that we have not understood It completely, not grasped Its totality, not understood its Nature or its Purpose or its Function--and that we have incorrectly assessed what It wants.

A number of years ago I appeared on the Today show on NBC, and I was asked by Matt Lauer, "You claim to have spoken with God. Fair enough. What, then, in a quick paragraph, because we have about 30 seconds left, is God's message to the world?"

I told Matt that I could give it to him in five words. "Great," he said. "What is it?"

"You've got me all wrong."

There is a God, I can assure you. In this, most of humanity has it right. I think we understand intuitively that this must be so. Or maybe we just want to believe in a Power Greater. Either way, we have it right. God exists. And the existence of God becomes virtually undeniable (and imminently more useful) the moment we change our minds about Who God Is and What God Wants.

The most important theological issue of our time is not whether people believe IN God, but what they believe ABOUT God. More on this next Sunday, as Sunday School All Week continues.