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                       Do you ever find yourself questioning things that you have been taught all your life? Have you ever found yourself haunted by doubts, confusion and spiritual uncertainty? Have the experiences of life ever seemed to contradict the expressions of faith? Then welcome to the world of questions.  It is sometimes a difficult place to live.  Naïveté is a much nicer place.  In that world everything makes sense, fits together and creates little tension.  However, grief, disappointment, unanswered prayers, global crises, and philosophy can all begin to dismantle our well-shaped, comfortable faith systems and questions begin to emerge: Questions that Matter.  For the next five Sundays, we will look at some of these questions in the hope that together we will find answers with which we can not only live, but grow in our faith and our relationship with God.

The first question that seems to arise as we take a look at our faith and life is this: Is God real or relative?  That is, is there an absolute divine being or has the human race concocted multiple explanations of the inexplicable and called it God, Jehovah, Allah, Zeus, Brahma, Ahmucen-Cab or simply a Higher Power?  To some of you this may seem like silly speculation and ridiculous folly, but to others it may be a question that has kept you up during the night and kept you anxious during the day.  Is God real or relative? It may comfort you to know that this is not a new question. The prophets addressed it in the Old Testament and the apostles addressed it in the New Testament.  I realize to start with the Bible as an authoritative document is to have already tipped my hand a bit, but I have to start somewhere and this book seems to capture questions that matter with a certain integrity.  For instance, the apostle Paul was addressing an educated people that he had never met, the Romans.  These were people at the center of the empire, a sophisticated people, a cosmopolitan people, a learned people.  His task was to introduce the grace of Jesus Christ as a remedy for life, guilt and judgment.  His first step was to speak of the universal sin of neglecting the real God who is so gracious to all. Listen to his statement in Romans 1, verses 20-23, found on page __ of your New Testament.  Hear now the Word of the Lord:  

²⁰Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; ²¹for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. ²²Claiming to be wise, they became fools; ²³and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles. 

The Word of God for the people of God.  Thanks be to God.  In this passage Paul assured his Roman readers that God is real.  Let us pray.

On September 21, 1897 an editorial appeared in the New York Sun as a response to the following question: “Dear Editor-I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, ‘If you see it in The Sun, it's so.’ Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?” Virginia O'Hanlon. 

The editorial writer, Francis Pharcellus Church, wrote a 413 word response that included the now famous line, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” It was an article about kindness and generosity overcoming skepticism and empiricism (only believing what we can see or prove with our senses).  It was a beautiful editorial that has become planted in the hearts of millions, but when it comes to the question of whether God is real or relative, more is at stake than the spirit of Christmas.  What if Virginia O’Hanlon had asked the question that many college student ask, “Is God real or relative?”

Let us declare with confidence, “Yes, God is real!”

Of course, it is not easy for finite humans to try to comprehend an infinite God.  We will have to use our whole selves to address this matter. We must use our physical senses, our mental abilities of logic and our spiritual capacity of faith. But in the end let us declare with confidence, “Yes, God is real!”

 
Our physical senses recognize that God is real.

The apostle Paul encouraged his readers to look around them for ample evidence of the reality of God.  This has been evidenced from day one.  Look at the magnitude of the universe and the miniscule elements of the human body, a leaf or a ray of sunshine.  At every corner of observation you will see traces of the invisible God.  R.C.H. Lenski wrote in his commentary on Romans, “We see things made with our own eyes, but they convey more to us than their undeniable existence; having a mind, by mental perception and by means of the visible we fully see the invisible – God’s omnipotence and divineness.” 

The psalmist put it this way in the 19^th Psalm:

¹The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.

²Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge.

³There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard;

⁴yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. 

We must be careful not to get so caught up in the inconsistencies of life (and there are many) that we lose sight of the extraordinary evidence of a Creator God of eternal power and divine nature.  I have been privileged to experience autumn in New England and Ohio, both of which are amazing.  I have seen winter descend upon Lake Louise in Canada and was in awe.  I have seen summertime in Cozumel with its white sand beaches and clear water.  And of course, I have driven all over Texas in the Springtime. 

Last Tuesday evening I had the opportunity to join the Church Women United at a welcome dinner for incoming international students.  Over 200 students from all over the world attended this expression of hospitality.  Almost half of them were from India as is our newest church member, Katherine Priya.  When asked if I had ever been to India I confessed that I had not and they insisted that I visit there sometime during my life.  Katherine confirmed this invitation by saying, “It doesn’t matter how much you read about India or see it on the television.  It doesn’t matter how many people you meet from India.  Until you have been there, you cannot imagine its beauty.”  Creation declares that God is real. 

Again I quote R.C.H. Lenski who wrote, “The one who would try to offer the excuse of God being hidden would at once be silenced by the overwhelming testimony of the whole world of created things.” Let us declare with confidence, “Yes, God is real!” Our physical senses recognize it. 

Our mental abilities, however, understand that God is not all that we imagine God to be.

The truth is that we have taken the evidence of God’s reality and overlaid it with some relative coloring.  I remember a scene in the 1977 movie about Muhammad Ali entitled, “The Greatest”, where he is sitting in church as a young Cassius Clay.  In the front of the church is a life-sized picture of Jesus who could not have been any whiter.  Now maybe that wasn’t an accurate display of what it really looked like in that Louisville, Kentucky church, but it was how he remembered it.  The apostle Paul said, “though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools.”  This kind of foolishness is not limited to the atheist.  It extends to each one of us who take what we know about God and overlay it with our own prejudices, our own desires, our own pride and call that God.  We do not honor God as God, but try to mold him into our concept of God rather than allowing God to mold us into his concept of humanity.

André Godin wrote a book in 1985 that never reached the Best Seller List.  Perhaps it was its title, The Psychological Dynamics of Religious Experience.  In this book, Godin, a Roman Catholic priest and Freudian Psychologist distinguished between the term “God” which he said has been so obscured by the overlays of cultural wishes and projections that an accurate portrayal of an objective reality is impossible to comprehend and what he calls the “Other” which is the divine presence that extends beyond our hopes, wishes, and projections and continues to act in a benevolent way toward creation.  Now that’s a lot of words, but let me assure you that they are an affirmation that regardless of our distortions of who God is, God continues to be real.  God may not be all that we imagine him to be, but God is real.

When I was reading this book back in 1985, I was going through my own faith crisis.  I was serving as a chaplain in the hospital and I had seen too much pain.  Women who had been sexually assaulted, babies who had died from seizures, grief and tragedies that struck so suddenly.  I prayed and was met with silence.  Then one day, Mary Lewis Webb, a fellow chaplain, saw me in one of my darker moments.  She looked at me with her kind eyes and said words I shall never forget, “We all have doubts, Kip.  Many of the things that we have believed about God will be challenged.  But there are two truths about God that I refuse to let go of – God is and God cares.”  From that day on I have seen so many evidences of these two truths.  I continue to be appalled by the distortions of God and exploitations of religion for political gains.  I am sure one day I will be appalled as I realize how much I have distorted the reality of God, but I am certain that I will never lose sight of these two truths and that they will be confirmed in eternity.  God is and God cares. Let us declare with confidence, “Yes, God is real!” Our physical senses recognize it, our mental abilities understand it. 

Our Spiritual capacity assures us that God is more than we imagine God to be.

We must never lose sight that we are trying to grasp an infinite being with finite minds.  There will always be more than we can grasp.  That frustrates humanity who longs to have it all within our grasp and perhaps within our control.  Too many times we settle for idols.  To many times we insist on them.  Paul wrote, “they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.”  What a sad exchange.  That’s like taking a Roger Clemens rookie card and trading it for an eight of clubs!   Isaiah put it even more graphically when he wrote in Isaiah 44:14-17, 20:

Man plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it. ¹⁵Then it can be used as fuel. Part of it he takes and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Then he makes a god and worships it, makes it a carved image and bows down before it. ¹⁶Half of it he burns in the fire; over this half he roasts meat, eats it and is satisfied. He also warms himself and says, “Ah, I am warm, I can feel the fire!” ¹⁷The rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, bows down to it and worships it; he prays to it and says, “Save me, for you are my god!” ²⁰He feeds on ashes; a deluded mind has led him astray, and he cannot save himself or say, “Is not this thing in my right hand a fraud?”

God is so much more than we can imagine.  Continue to be lured by the eternal power and divine nature that you can see so clearly in creation, continue to follow the sovereign example of love in Jesus Christ and discover anew the reality of God.

This past week I saw the movie, “Castaway” with Tom Hanks was on TV.  I watched with a certain sadness as he created his friend and companion, Wilson, from a volleyball.  I have seen too many people do that with God.  They have settled for a generic god, created by their own imagination rather than seeking the Creator God who surrounds them with evidence of his being and goodness.

  Paul declared in Athens, another cosmopolitan center of sophistication:

“God is not far from each one of us. ²⁸For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’ ²⁹Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals.”

 
Let us declare with confidence, “Yes, God is real!”

He is not far from each of us.  We see evidence of God in all of creation. We understand that even though we have for centuries distorted the concept of God that even still God is and God cares.  We believe that there will always be more to God than we can grasp and that we must, therefore, proceed with humility.  It takes all that we have: our physical senses, our mental abilities of logic and our spiritual capacity of faith, but I believe that we can declare with confidence, “Yes, God is real!” Amen.