04. The Fact of God Is Inescapable
The Fact of God Is Inescapable The logical place to begin our inquiry after the truth about the nature of God is obviously at that point beyond and behind which no man can go in his thinking, for from that point we may be able to reason forward toward an understanding of the meaning of our existence, and the solution of the problem of life in such a universe as we are in. Is there a point beyond which it is impossible for thought to go? Without question, there is.
It is impossible to think past, behind or beyond the conception that God is. Some of the greatest intellects of all time have tried it and utterly failed. The Bible opens with the words: “In the beginning God”(Genesis 1:1). And every one who has tried to think his way back to that unbegun beginning beyond which it is impossible to go in thought, has always stood face to face with God as the final fact. The fact of God is thus a first truth, a self-evident truth, an axiomatic truth, and the question of the existence of God is never raised by any one who is capable of rational thinking, provided his heart is so utterly sincere that his thinking is truly honest. Stop for a moment and do a little honest thinking and see if this is not so. In the beginning it must be either God or nothing. Now suppose you set down the first three words of the Bible, “In the beginning,” and then put in what you think the next word has to be to satisfy reason.
If you say, “In the beginning, nothing,” as the atheist does, you reflect at once that out of nothing comes nothing, and that can never account for our own existence, or that of the material universe around us. So suppose you say, “In the beginning, protoplasm,”as the evolutionist does. At once reason compels you to go back of the protoplasm and demand, Who made the protoplasm? For it could not exist without being brought into existence, and to bring anything into existence is creation, and so there must be a Creator somewhere.
There is therefore only one word that a rational being can supply to end that sentence, and that is, “In the beginning, God.” For it is the fool only who says: “There is no God” (Psalms 14:1), and even he has to say it in his heart, for his mind will permit no such conclusion. Any one who uses his intellect is compelled to acknowledge his own self-conscious existence in a universe which, along with himself, must have had a beginning, and therefore a Beginner. Reason demands an intelligent First Cause, and is outraged by any one who tries to say that there can be thought without a Thinker, design without a Designer, or creation without a Creator. It is wholly impossible for any honest being to say “No God” with his head. It must be said in his heart, if at all. And the reason is not far to find. It is because of the fundamental wish of his sinful heart that there should be no God to whom he must answer. It is that wish alone which begets his atheism.
If the man who tries to be an atheist would only stop long enough to allow himself a little honest and sober thought, he would abandon all his attempts at atheism as utterly unworthy of any one who pretends to think at all clearly.
He would see that in order to say there is no God without making himself ridiculous, he would have to be omniscient and know every fact in the entire universe. He would also have to be omnipresent, because if he were incapable of being everywhere, he could not possibly prove there is no God. And if he had these two attributes, reason would be compelled to assign to him omnipotence and all the other attributes of infinity, and he would thus be God Himself, and so there would after all be a God in existence. The fact that God is, then, is that one great first truth behind which we cannot go, and from which no intelligent being in the universe can escape.