Why should I care if God exists?
Few questions sound as academic as this one, and few turn out to be as personal. The writers below argue that the answer decides three things at once: where you came from, who you answer to, and whether you can be loved by the One who made you.
The Question Is Never Neutral
Before you weigh any evidence, notice what you want the answer to be. One writer traces atheism not to the mind but to the will:
J Wilson SmithThe wish that there should be no God — nobody to hold full authority over us, or restrain our wills, or condemn our sins, or call us into judgment; nobody, in short, to whom we would be responsible — lies hidden in every human heart. Sin has produced that wish; and how easy it is to move from the idea to the belief, from the wish to the word, "No God"!
Another writer makes the same diagnosis about a universe he thinks is obviously full of design: "Bias is not a matter of the head, but of the heart" (A J Pollock). So the honest first step is not to demand proof but to ask why you would prefer the answer no.
Why Scripture Never Argues the Point
If you are waiting for the Bible to prove God, you will wait forever. It opens by assuming Him:
F. B. HoleThat God exists and that He originated all things is assumed and stated. Unbelieving men may demand that proofs of His existence be produced, but nowhere in Scripture does God stoop to supply such proofs... They are no more really needed than proofs that the sun exists and shines. That fact could only be doubted by a man who had neither sight nor feeling, and it is just because unbelieving men have neither sight nor feeling of a spiritual sort that they doubt, or even deny, the existence of God.
Proof Would Not Be Enough Anyway
Suppose the design argument works. It still leaves you outside, guessing:
J. N. DarbyThe very thing by which man proves there must be a God is a proof that he cannot know God... I cannot conceive of anything existing without finally a causing cause. But a cause uncaused is above me! The thing that proves He must be proves I cannot tell what He is... If I say "must be," that is a mere inference. The moment I get a testimony that it is, how different!
Which is why one writer says a silent God would be no God at all: "I am certain that if there is no revelation from God, there is no God." He argues that the One "without whom a sparrow cannot fall to the ground, could not leave His poor creature without some ray of light as to how he stands with respect to His holy and righteous will" (James Boyd).
A Belief That Changes Nothing Is Dead
Perhaps you already say you believe He exists. Scripture treats that answer as the beginning of the test, not the end of it:
F. B. HoleIn verse 19 the very basic point of faith in the existence of the one true God is raised. "Oh, yes," we each exclaim, "I believe in Him!" That is good; but such faith, if real, is bound to affect us. We shall at least tremble, for even demons, who know right well that He exists and hate Him, go as far as that. The multitudes who in a lazy way accept the idea of His existence and yet are utterly unmoved by it have a faith which is dead.
Your Opinion Does Not Cancel the Appointment
The practical answer to "why should I care" is that caring or not caring does not change what is coming. To a student who called death a leap in the dark, one writer replied simply:
W. T. P. WolstonYour not believing in Him will not help you to escape the certainty of having to meet Him. The Scripture says, "So then each of us will give an account of himself to God."
And the window is this life, not the next: "We believe in mercy with all our hearts, God is rich in mercy, He speaks of it in His blessed Book, and offers it to all, but not after death" (J T Mawson).
The Prize Is Not Information
The reason to care is not that you might lose an argument. It is that knowing God is itself the life He gives:
C. H. MackintoshA man may sit down to the study of these, as he would to study law or medicine, astronomy or geology, and all the while know nothing of God, and therefore be without divine life, and perish in the end.
One writer tells of a nobleman who wrote a pamphlet disproving God, then realised he had answered reason but not faith — so he knelt and asked God to reveal Himself. He burned the pamphlet, "and then the one work of his life was to tell of that Saviour-God whose existence he had once denied" (J Wilson Smith).
Summary
- Wish — The denial usually starts as a preference, not a conclusion: a wish for nobody with authority to restrain, condemn, or call us to account.
- Witness — Scripture never argues for God; it assumes Him, as it would assume the sun. What is missing in the doubter is spiritual sight, not evidence.
- Word — Design can prove that a Maker must be, but not who He is. Only if He speaks do you move from inference to certainty.
- Weight — Bare assent proves nothing. Demons believe and shudder; unmoved belief is a dead faith.
- When — You will meet Him whether you believe in Him or not, and mercy is offered now, not after death. Knowing Him is the life itself.