It can feel hard to justify believing in God.  After all, we live in a rational, scientific age where our destinies are controlled by doctors, engineers, economists, computer scientists and, perhaps, politicians.  What, then, is the point of God?  Is God (“the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being”, to take the first definition Google provided) just an outdated superstition?  Alternatively, in the words of a meme I saw today, is God just an imaginary friend? Why bother with faith, when the world has so many certainties to offer?

On the face of it, the Bible isn’t much help with this problem.  Although written by many people in a wide variety of languages and styles across a vast swathe of time, a common thread is that it was written for peoples who generally believed in something (a god, or several gods):  not for people who felt they had outgrown belief.  Many of the arguments, therefore, are about which god you should worship, the nature of Israel’s God or how God has been revealed to us, rather than for the existence of any kind of deity.  If, with an incredibly broad brush, we see in the Old Testament a record of Israel struggling to maintain faithfulness to God, then when, on frequent occasions, they turn away from God they always turn to something else:  a golden calf, the gods of the Canaanite people or gods of their foreign spouses.  The revelation of Jesus in the New Testament does not come out of the blue to a godless people but is firmly rooted in the Old Testament – a continuation of the revelation to be found there – and comes first to a people steeped in that tradition.  As this fresh understanding of God radiates out beyond the Holy Land in the Acts of the Apostles and through the letters of Paul (and others), we see it increasingly packaged for gentiles, ignorant of the Old Testament message.  Even then (for example, Paul proclaiming the nature of the Unknown God in Athens), it is more a case of “Our God, not your gods” than “God, not no gods”.

It seems to me that the concept of God as “the supreme being” is a stumbling block in the journey towards faith that is very tricky to get around.  It may seem like this stumbling block can only be moved by having someone paint a fully detailed, rational, convincing picture of God.  Who better to do this than a believer?  Well, this believer doesn’t feel he can do that.  Even if we’ve studied all 66 books of the Bible in detail and however close we might feel our relationship with God to be, we know only in part.  As the writer of Job says, “There, these are the fringes of his ways, and what a whisper is the word that we hear of him, so who understands the thunder of his mighty acts?” (Job 26:14) or as Paul wrote, “We see now as through a darkened glass” (1 Corinthians 13:12).  The more I learn, the more I realise I don’t know and (whilst that motivates me to keep learning) the more at ease I feel about not knowing.

Perhaps it is easiest to approach this from a negative perspective:  what do I feel when I hear someone deny the existence of God?  Pity.  I feel pity because I believe they are missing something precious, life-giving and life-fulfilling.  I pity them because what I hear them denying is the existence of truth and love in their purest forms:  absolute truth, total love.  I couldn’t live my life according to a worldview where absolute truth and total love were absent or deniable.  Like God, these are things that we can only perceive in part in this world.  However, we can perceive enough to know that they exist in their purest forms and, knowing that, who would not seek to come closer to them each and every day of their lives?  As Maximillian Kolbe wrote, “No one in the world can change truth. What we can do and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it.”  Like God, these are things we should seek but not expect to find by our own efforts or on our own terms.  As Simone Weil wrote, “We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them.  Man cannot discover them by his own powers, and if he sets out to seek for them he will find in their place counterfeits of which he will be unable to discern the falsity.”  Seek and wait.  In what seems to me to be a classic pattern of Christian thought, we’ve ended up holding two seemingly contradictory ideas together in order to glimpse truth.

At this point I start to feel uncomfortable about my attempts to describe God because I see only in part and because words are such a limited tool for conveying ideas.  It is starting to sound like I am rationalising God away: that I’m saying we can dispense with the word God and dedicate ourselves to serving truth and love.  Although saying that gives a glimpse of what I mean, one that I hope may help some people, I don’t mean to dispense with God.  Having glimpsed absolute truth and total love, why would I not fall down and worship them?  Why would I not fall down and worship God?  Why would I not believe people were created to serve truth and love?  Why would I not believe people were created to serve God?  Why would I not repent bitterly and seek forgiveness when I, inevitably, fail to be absolutely truthful and totally loving?  Why would I not repent bitterly and seek forgiveness when I, inevitably, fail to be like God?

On the other hand, perhaps I am worrying too much.  Perhaps I am not being so heretical.  The Bible tells us, “…love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God” (1 John 4:7).  Simone Weil wrote, “Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth.  If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms.”  After all, who was it who said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6)?  That is the point of God: to show us the way, lead us to truth and give us life in all its fullness.

I started this piece casting doubt on whether the Bible could really speak to people who did not believe in any god and have ended up quoting it in support of God.  The problem wasn’t with the Bible but with the idea, which is commonly held, that there are people who have outgrown faith.  In the end, people always put their faith in something that they never fully understand.  It could be a political party, or a social campaign, or the financial markets, or a social media influencer.  They have fallen into the trap Simone Weil warned of, finding in the place of the precious gifts of truth and love counterfeits of which they are unable to discern the falsity.  Rather than starting, as the Google definition did, with thinking of God as a supreme being, I would start by thinking of a god as something in which people put their faith.  Looked at that way, I would suggest that everyone believes in some god.  Tom Wright illustrates this nicely it in his ‘God and the Pandemic’, “As today’s secularism is more and more revealing its pagan subtexts, it is fascinating to imagine our present dilemma as a clash between Asclepius, the god of healing, and Mammon, the money-god.”  The question then, to which the Bible speaks loudly is: “Which god are you going to believe in?”