Why should I care if God exists?
This is a question that cuts to the very root of human existence, and these writers address it with remarkable directness.
The question of meaning
Without God, human life has no anchor. Mawson puts it starkly, writing on Titus 2:
Mawson"How glad we are that we ever heard it [the gospel]; without it we had lived without God, without Christ and without hope in the world; and what would such a life have been to us? And what should we have been? 'A walking shadow; a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more ... a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.'"
And then:
"So much for a life lived without the knowledge of God, but when such a life is done, what then? 'After this the judgment,' when account must be given to God for it all. But the gospel has brought light and substance into our lives; we have something to live for now, as we shall see, and we have a glorious hope for the future."
William Kelly, commenting on Ecclesiastes — the one book of the Bible that examines life "under the sun," apart from revelation — draws the same contrast:
William Kelly"What a contrast is this life of 'days' and 'vanity' and 'shadow' with life eternal, now given in Christ to the believer and the bright hope of being with Him Who is its source and fulness where He is, and we shall have its perfect unhindered expansion and display in its proper heavenly sphere! But all was veiled then. Now life and incorruption Christ has brought to light through the gospel."
The question of life and death
C. H. Mackintosh addresses the question at its root — to know God is not merely useful, it is the difference between life and death:
C. H. Mackintosh"To know God is life, to be ignorant of Him is death."
No substitute — not theology, not religious observance, not moral effort — can replace this:
"A man may be a profound theologian, an able divine, and yet live and die without God and perish eternally. Solemn, awful, overwhelming thought! A man may go down to hell, into the blackness and darkness of an eternal night, with all the dogmas of theology at his fingers' ends."
"So also as to mere religiousness. A man may be the greatest devotee in the world. He may most diligently discharge all the offices, and sedulously attend upon all the ordinances of systematic religion; he may fast and pray; hear sermons and say prayers; be most devout and exemplary; and all the while know nothing of God in Christ."
But for one who does know God:
"Such a one has life and an object. He has God Himself for his priceless portion. This is divine. It lies at the very foundation of personal Christianity and true religion. It is above and beyond everything. It is not mere theology, divinity, or religiousness; it is God Himself, known, trusted, and enjoyed."
The question of where you stand
J. N. Darby takes it deeper still. It is not only what a person has done that matters, but where they are in relation to God:
J. N. Darby"Not only, 'What hast thou done?' but as God said to Adam, 'Where art thou?' Where was he? Away from God and getting away from Him if he could! This is the dreadful thing. He had sinned, but it was far more to be away from God, 'without God in the world' — 'there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'"
And the most alarming part — people can be in this condition and never feel it:
"The first grand wickedness of Cain was that he did not know he was away from God. He was so utterly far from God that he never found it out! He had not the sense that he was totally away from God; he thought he could go and worship Him and offer the fruit of his toil as if nothing had happened."
The question of eternity
F. B. Hole warns against reducing the question of God to one of present comfort, as though this life were all there is:
F. B. Hole"We very much fear that at the present time, even when the Gospel is faithfully and happily preached, there is a tendency to over-stress its social implications, and throw into the background the eternal issues that hang upon its acceptance or its rejection."
"It is a great mistake to magnify the secondary into the prominence of the primary; to treat the by-product as though it were the main thing. It is even a mistake to stress what the Gospel does now for the believer in such a way as to omit reference to what it does for eternity."
He illustrates this with a telling incident: a Christian speaker once told an audience of foreign students only about the happiness and changed lives the gospel brings. An Indian student replied that Hinduism produces changed lives too — look at Gandhi. The meeting ended inconclusively. Hole's point: if the speaker had addressed sin, judgment, and eternity, he would have been on ground no rival philosophy could reach.
The question of God's heart
But the reason to care is not only because of danger — it is because of what God is. Darby draws out that God's power is visible in creation, but His heart is only revealed in Christ:
"We see God's power manifested in creation, but we see nothing of His heart there: but when God is manifest in the flesh, we get all His perfect grace and goodness."
"If He is only a man — well, I see blessed grace and beauty in Him, but I have only a Man who is so much better than myself that He could have nothing to say to me. If He is only God, a little bit of His glory terrifies me: but we have divine love serving, and the more we contemplate it the more blessed we shall be."
Mackintosh captures the positive side powerfully, writing on John 3:16:
"God is love; and, being so, it is not a question of the fitness or worthiness of the object of His love. It is what He is."
"When the sinner is brought to see his own total and absolute ruin, his hopeless wretchedness, his guilt and misery, the utter vanity and worthlessness of all within and around him ... then is he met by this grand substantial truth that 'God is love,' and that He so loved the world as to give His only-begotten Son."
The danger of the middle ground
Mackintosh also issues a chilling warning about those who neither reject God outright nor truly know Him — the "foolish virgins" of Matthew 25:
"There is something peculiarly awful in the thought of having just enough religion to deceive the heart, deaden the conscience, and ruin the soul — just enough religion to give a name to live while dead — enough to leave one without Christ, without God, and without hope in the world — enough to prop the soul up with a false confidence, and fill it with a false peace, until the Bridegroom come, and then the eyes are opened when it is too late."
Synthesis
Why should you care if God exists? Because everything turns on it. Life without God is a shadow without substance — "signifying nothing," as Mawson puts it. To know Him is life itself; to be ignorant of Him is death, not merely physical but eternal. The question is not abstract: it concerns where you personally stand — whether near to God through Christ, or far from Him without even sensing the distance, like Cain who "never found it out."
But the reason to care is not only the danger of being wrong. It is that God has a heart, and that heart has been fully displayed in Christ — "divine love serving." He is not a distant force to be acknowledged or ignored. He is love itself, and that love reaches to "whosoever" will receive it. The stakes are eternal, but the invitation is present and free: "God loves and gives; the sinner believes and has."