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In the Apostles' Creed a Christian confesses, "I believe in God the Father Almighty." Many consider the idea of God to be a problem. This prompts them to ask various questions about God which may be considered simple by some. One day a writer-mother of a four-year-old girl stayed home to reach a deadline. The child was watching a cartoon on television. She asked, "Mommy, who made the cartoons?" Her mother happened to see the credit line, "Hanna-Barbera." "Who is Hanna-Barbera?" "Just some people," the mother explained. "Who made the people?" Yelling, the mother answered, "God made the people." "But, Mommy, who made God?" By this time her mother lost her patience and her temper and screamed, "Carrie, go play!" Shrugging her shoulders, the child sighed, "Gee whiz! Ask a simple question!"

We have some "simple" but profound questions to ask about God. Is there really a God? Where did God come from? What is God like? Can we know him? Where is God? If we go to philosophers, we get a variety of answers. Sartre speaks of the silence of God; Heidegger of the absence of God; Jaspers of the concealment of God; Bultmann of the hiddenness of God; Buber of the eclipse of God; Tillich of the nonbeing of God; Altizer of the death of God. In contrast, the creed speaks of the almighty fatherhood of God.

The Making Of A God
The first simple question is, "What makes a god?" If 98 percent of the American people believe in the existence of God, do all these people believe in the one, true, and only God? Many believe in a god of their own making, but not in the one true God. When Moses was on the top of Mount Sinai for forty days, the people thought he and God had deserted them. They came to Aaron, the high priest, and demanded, "Up, make us gods" (Exodus 32:1).

Martin Luther gives the best definition of a god:

A god is that on which one should rely for everything good, and with which one can take refuge in every need. Thus to have a god is nothing other than to trust and believe in him from the heart -- or, as I have often said, that only trust and faith in the heart make both God and a false god. If your faith and trust is right, then your God is right as well, and again where the belief is false and wrong, then the right God is absent, too. For the two belong together, faith and God. So that to which you give up and hand over your heart is truly your God.

In summary, then, Luther tells us what makes a god: "Whatever, then, your heart clings to or relies upon, that, I say, is properly your God." In other words, your God is whatever or whoever comes first in your life. Accordingly, God is the top priority, the first principle, the summum bonum, and the ultimate concern of your life. Who really is number one in your life? You may say, "I believe in God," but your true God may not be the God of the scriptures.

Whatever or whoever comes first in your life is your god. For many the self is god as it is expressed in pride, egotism, arrogance, and self-centeredness. One cold night Vince Lombardi and his wife went to bed. When he came to bed, she screamed, "God, your feet are cold!" Vince replied, "Honey, you can call me Vince!" Various sects appeal to some by claiming that their followers are gods. The New Age tells us that to find God, we need just look in ourselves. Mormons are assured that if believers are faithful, they will eventually become gods.

Money is another popular god in our time. Money is so important that people will do anything to get it. In a recent book, The Day America Told the Truth, we are informed what some are willing to do for a million dollars: 25 percent would abandon their families, 20 percent would become prostitutes, 16 percent would renounce their American citizenship; and 7 percent would be willing to kill a stranger for a million dollars. Love of money is the root of all evil such as gambling, lottery, bribes, and drugs.

Sex is the god of many. According to U.S. News and World Report 80 percent of American women and 90 percent of men engage in premarital sex. One of every four children is born to an unwed mother. One and a half million women are raped annually. Seven billion dollars a year is spent on pornography. Prostitution, incest, and child molestation are common. This god of sex is ruining the lives of millions.

So, choose your own god! It is what you consider to be the most valuable thing or person in your life. If your god is one other than the true God, you are an idolater. When you say in the creed, "I believe in God," are you referring to the Father of our Lord Jesus or a god of your own making?

Does God Exist?
Another "simple" question: Does God exist? Can anyone prove the existence of God? According to the Apostles' Creed, the existence of God depends entirely upon faith: "I believe in God."

Various proofs have been offered over the ages that God does exist. There is the cosmological argument which is based upon nature. In nature we see beauty, design, and order. The beauty and power of the physical world cause us to conclude that behind the universe is a universe-maker just as there is a watchmaker behind a watch. It is not reasonable to say the universe just happened this way or that creation was an accident.

Another argument for the existence of God is the teleological one. In the universe we see that everything has a purpose. We call it ecology, the proper balance of nature. Disturb one part of nature and another part suffers. The plants, for example, produce oxygen for animals and people, and animals and people discharge carbon dioxide for food for plants. Each and every thing has a purpose. Behind the purpose in creation, we see a purpose in a Creator.

A third argument is known as the ontological one. It is the argument of an idea. If, the argument goes, humanity did not universally have the idea of God, there would be no God. In every person, there is an idea, a feeling, a longing for God. Because of this innate idea of a Being, the Being must exist.

Then there is the moral argument. In every human being there is a moral faculty. Each person has a conscience. It is a moral faculty that distinguishes between right and wrong. People of all ages and of all stages of development have a code of ethics. Instinctively they have standards of right and wrong. Where does humanity get this moral faculty? The answer is God.

Perhaps the most effective argument for the existence of God is the experiential one. This says that God is a reality because of one's experience with a Supreme Being. From prehistoric times, human beings have sought and responded to a god. Religion has always been the hub of life's wheel. Paintings, sculpture, music, prayers, and sacred writings testify to a universal belief in a god. Humanity is incurably religious and every people from the dawn of time has had some form of a god. This is due to the fact that man, male and female, was made a soul clothed in a body but in the image of God. The human is a spiritual being, and as Saint Augustine wrote, "We are restless until our souls rest in God."

For many these proofs are convincing that God exists. But the truth is that God's existence cannot be proved. There really are no proofs of the existence of God, there are only witnesses to his existence. As we have seen, God's existence depends ultimately on faith. Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason put an end to human efforts to prove God's existence rationally. He pointed out that the natural cannot enter the supernatural area. The physical cannot prove the spiritual. As physical, rational beings we can go just as far as our minds and senses allow. The senses deal only with the world's phenomena. God and spirituality are in the world of the noumena, the spiritual arena.

(The below illustration is available in the printed book only.)

God -- Heaven

Supernatural -- Spiritual -- Noumena -- Faith Revelation

__________________________________________

Humanity -- Earth

Reason Natural -- Physical -- Phenomena -- Senses -- Reason

Because the natural with reason and senses must stop at the supernatural region of spirit, there is no way to prove God's existence. Only faith makes God a reality. There is no need then to try to argue religion or prove that God is a reality. For the unbeliever God will become a fact when the unbeliever accepts God by faith.

Can we know anything about God? As humans we can never find God, nor discover the truth of God by our reason, logic, observation, or experimentation. God is ultimately invisible and incomprehensible. What we know about God comes only by revelation. He reveals himself to us primarily in his Word. Through nature he reveals his power and majesty. In the mighty acts of history, he reveals himself as a divine deliverer of his people. His final and perfect disclosure is in his Son, Jesus. He shows us the Father, and all we need to know about God is in Jesus. He is God's final word of truth and grace. This revelation of God can be found in the scriptures. For evangelical Christians the Bible is the sole authority in matters of faith and life. No other book than the Bible can claim a greater knowledge of God, because the heart of the Bible is Christ who is the final revelation of God. Christians then are a people of one book.

You Are What You Believe
What you believe determines what you are and what you are NOT. You show your colors when you say, "I believe in God."

If you say that much of the creed, you are telling God, the church, and the world what you are NOT. You are not an atheist, one who denies the existence of God. At once we think of the famous atheist, Madalyn Murray O'Hair. The Bible responds, "The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God' " (Psalm 14:1).

Moreover, you are saying that you are NOT an agnostic, one who is not willing to deny or affirm the existence of God. The agnostic takes a middle path and will not say yes or no to God. The agnostic does not know whether God is or is not. The Bible says to the agnostic: "Because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth" (Revelation 3:16).

If you say you believe in God, you are NOT a polytheist who believes that many gods exist. In New Testament times it is reported that more than 30,000 gods existed. Hindus are supposed to have tens of thousands of gods. Anything or anyone can be made a god and worshiped, such as one's ancestors.

And you are NOT a henotheist. This is the view that there are many gods but one god is chief over the others. The Greeks had Zeus as chief god and the Romans had Jupiter. In Moses' day, according to the first commandment, Yahweh was the chief god for the Israelites. "You shall have no other gods before me."

And a pantheist you are NOT! "Pan" means "all." This view says that everything is God. The whole of nature -- trees, bugs, birds, fish, snakes, people -- is God. Creation and Creator are one and the same. Today we hear people say, "God is in nature." No, God is not in nature. God made nature. It is his handiwork. A shoe is the work of a shoemaker, but the shoe is not the shoemaker. In the same way, the physical world is not God. There is no sense in worshiping the sun, moon, or stars.

When you say, "I believe in God," you are saying you are NOT a deist. This view holds that though God exists, he is not concerned about the world and is not involved in it. Deists claim that God made the world, established the laws of nature, and then went back to heaven and let the world run itself according to the laws. He does not care what happens to the world, nor does he get involved with people. If the world runs by laws, there is no place for prayer or miracles. Some of our famous American statesmen in the colonial period were deists: Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

If we are not any of these, what are we when we say, "I believe in God"? By that statement you indicate that you are not only a theist but also a monotheist. A theist is one who believes in God and a monotheist believes in only one God. In the creed we say we believe in God the Father, not "a" Father. This is to say that there is no other real God in existence. All other gods are the product of human minds and imagination. These gods have no real or objective existence. They cannot because God created everything there is and he did not create other gods. This gives the church reason to send missionaries to lands where they do not know of the one and only God. Lay people in America need to hear this, too. In a poll of lay church people, 42 percent agreed with the statement, "Of many religions in the world, most lead to God." The Bible is clear about this: "The Lord our God is one Lord" (Deuteronomy 6:4). Paul witnesses: "One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all" (Ephesians 4:5-6).

What Is God Like?
"What is God like?" is our next "simple" question. The creed answers, "I believe in God the Father Almighty." Of the very many attributes we could give God, the creed gives us only two: "father" and "almighty." These are the two basic characteristics of the nature of God. They give us two understandings of God and two systems of thought about God. The following list may help us to understand; explanations will follow.

God
Subject

1. Nature of God
2. Domain of God
3. Being of God
4. Nature of the human
5. Method
6. Freedom
7. Ethics
8. Motivation
9. Result
10. Word of God

God the Father
1. Love
2. Immanence
3. Person (Willing to save)
4. Child of the Father
5. Free choice (of the human)
6. Foreknowledge
7. Conscience
8. Gratitude
9. Salvation
10. Gospel

God the Almighty King
1. Justice
2. Transcendence
3. Power (Able to save)
4. Subject of the Kingdom
5. Election (by God)
6. Predestination
7. Laws
8. Fear
9. Judgment
10. Law

An explanation may be helpful to understand this list:

1. Nature of God: Love and Justice
Jesus referred to God as Father 170 times. As a father, God loves his children. In fact, the Bible tells us that God is love (1 John 4:8). But God is more than love. He is justice. This implies the holiness of God dealing with righteousness. It involves the wrath of God against sin and ultimately judgment.

2. Domain of God: Immanence and Transcendence
Where is God? Is he available and approachable or is he too distant for us to reach him? The concept of Father speaks of God's immanence. He is a God with us and for us. He is nearer than hands and closer than breathing. He is approachable and always ready-at-hand. In recent years immanence was symbolically portrayed by bringing the altar from the east wall down close to the pews. The altar became freestanding so that the minister at the altar would face the congregation during worship. "Almighty" gives the other side of God -- his transcendence. This means that God is the totally other from the human. He is hidden and unknowable. He is the God of glory, power, and majesty. This makes us stand in awe and adoration and we sing "How Great Thou Art."

The difference between immanence and transcendence can be seen in the story about the meeting of former President Reagan and former Israeli Prime Minister Begin in the White House. In Reagan's oval office there were three telephones: a white one for local calls, a red one for the hot line to Russia, and a gold one to God. He asked Begin if he wanted to speak to God. Begin did and after the call he asked about the long distance charge. It was ten dollars. Some time later Reagan visited Begin in his office where there were again three phones. Begin asked Reagan whether he wanted to speak to God. When Reagan finished, he asked about the charges. Begin said there were no charges because it was a local call! The difference between immanence and transcendence is the difference between a local and long distance call.

3. Being of God: Person and Power
The concept of "Father" means that God is a person or personality. He is not a person in the sense that he is manlike. This could lead to an anthropomorphic concept of God as a white-haired godfather in the skies. God was not made in the image of man but man was made in the image of God. Man is like God in that the human is essentially a spiritual being (a soul) clothed in a physical body. As a person God is one who knows, feels, and wills. As a person God is one who hates evil, loves the good, gets angry at disobedience, and remembers the plight of his children. As a person God is always willing to save and to help.

God as "Almighty" indicates he is power. The Bible asks, "Is there anything too hard for God?" and answers, "With God all things are possible." As Father God is willing to help us; as Almighty he is able to help us. God's power is seen in his ability to transform evil into good, to bring life out of death, and to create something out of nothing.

4. Nature of the human: Child of the Father and Subject of the Kingdom
Since God is our Father, then who are we? A father has children, and we are children of the heavenly Father by virtue of our baptism. As children we can cheerfully and confidently come into his presence. As Father, God gives only good things to his children. Jesus asked, "If a child asks for bread, will his father give him a stone?" As children, our relationship with God the Father is one of warmth and intimacy.

Our Almighty God has power like unto a king. No one has greater power than a king. In fact, God in Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords. He has all power and authority. This makes us subjects of the King and servants in his kingdom. As subjects, we are under his protection and care. In turn, we are expected to be loyal and obedient servants.

5. Method: Free choice and Election
How does one become a child or subject of God? Does a person have a choice? Or do we have nothing to do about it? In the Father relationship, we are children of God because we freely responded to God. When he said through his Son, "Come to me," we can choose to come or not to come. The Spirit draws us, seeks us, wants us, but by our wills we can reject the promptings of the Spirit. If we do that, Jesus said we commit the unpardonable sin.

On the other hand, God as sovereign King chooses us by election. He decides who will be in his Kingdom. We are called and elected to salvation or to judgment, to heaven or hell. The Bible tells us that God calls us to be his people. Paul writes that God destines us to be saved. We are a chosen people.

6. Freedom: Foreknowledge and Predestination
God the Father knows all things and knows what will happen before it happens. This is called foreknowledge. God knew humanity would fall into sin. Therefore, from the foundation of the world, he devised a plan to save it by sending a Savior. Predestination fits into the concept of God as "Almighty." Since he is the almighty king, he orders all things, and nothing occurs contrary to his will. In foreknowledge God knows what will happen but does not necessarily make it happen. In predestination there is no freedom of choice. It is as God wills it. This can lead to fatalism. Not all things happen because they are God's will.

The difference between foreknowledge and predestination is illustrated in the case of two ministers who decided to exchange pulpits one Sunday. On the way to the churches, they passed each other. The one said, "My good friend, is it not wonderful to contemplate that before the world was created, it was decided in the councils of heaven that, on this particular day, you would preach in my church and I in yours?" The other replied, "In that case, I won't do it!" He turned around and went back to his own church. God had the foreknowledge that the preacher was going to change his mind. The other preacher probably held that the change of mind was predestined.

7. Ethics: Conscience and Laws
How are we to live our lives? What will motivate us to love and serve God? What are the standards? Are there any limits to our behavior? When we accept God as Father, we know we are his children by grace. Christ has freed us from the demands of the Law by fulfilling the Law for us. Are we then against the Law and free to break it? By no means! Instead of being slaves to the Law, God has given us a moral faculty called the conscience. This conscience is enlightened by the Holy Spirit. So in freedom we live by our consciences. With the concept of God as sovereign King, he rules by the laws of the Kingdom and he demands we obey his laws or else! This can lead to legalism for the average person. Life becomes a series of "Do this" or "Don't do that."

8. Motivation: Gratitude and Fear
Why should we be good people? Why be honest and kind and loving? What is the reason for it? As Father, God is love and loves us. His love was demonstrated in the death of his Son for our salvation on a cruel cross. When we think of God's innumerable blessings, his gift of being made right with God, and his assurance that we will live with him forever, we are overcome with a deep sense of gratitude. "God, you have done so much for me; what can I do for you?"

When we think of the Almighty God as sovereign King full of justice and holiness, we obey his commandments out of fear. We are afraid to offend him. We behave because we fear the punishment. In his explanation of each of the Ten Commandments, Luther said, "We should so fear and love God...."

9. Result: Salvation and Judgment
Salvation comes from a loving God the Father. If we respond to his love with repentance and faith, God accepts us and forgives us. He saves us from death and hell. On the other hand, God as the Almighty King will come to the world for a final judgment. Wrongs must be righted. Unrepentant sinners must be punished. The King will separate the sheep from the goats when he returns for judgment.

10. Word of God: Gospel and Law
The Word of God consists of Gospel and Law. The Gospel can be seen in the list under "God the Father." Here we find mercy and salvation. Under God as Almighty King we find the Law. The Gospel is the good news that God loves us enough to let his Son die for us. The Word of God recorded in the Bible is composed of both Gospel and Law. Both are equally important and we need both. Without the Gospel, we would die in our sins. Without the Law, we would need no Gospel. Our task is to keep the two in proper balance. If a balance is not possible, then 51 percent should be Gospel.



Study Guide

God The Father

What is your answer?
1. Is there really a God?

2. What constitutes a god?

3. Can God's existence be proved?

4. What is this God like?

5. Are we to fear or love him or both?

6. Is God a "she," "he," or "it"?

What makes a God:
Check your answers:
1. ___ Whoever or whatever comes first in your life.

2. ___ Whatever you consider to be the greatest good.

3. ___ Whoever or whatever dominates your life.

4. ___ Whatever your heart clings to or relies upon.

A self-made God
1. ___ Self: "I am number one."

2. ___ Money: Do you agree with Ecclesiastes 10:19?

3. ___ Power: a dictator

4. ___ Sex: pornography, fornication, rape, abuse

5. ___ Race: Jews and Arabs

6. ___ Pleasure: "Eat, drink, for tomorrow we die." Read 1 Corinthians 15:32.

What kind of believer are you?
1. ___ Atheism: "I believe there is no God."

2. ___ Agnosticism: "I do not know whether or not God exists."

3. ___ Polytheism: "I believe in many gods."

4. ___ Pantheism: "I believe everything and everyone is God."

5. ___ Henotheism: "I believe God is the chief of gods."

6. ___ Deism: "I believe God created the world and left it to be run by laws."

7. ___ Monotheism: "I believe there is only one true God and all other gods are nonexistent."

If God is the only true God --
1. Do all religions lead to God?

2. Is one religion as good as another?

3. Is there any value or truth in non-Christian religions?

4. Are believers in non-Christian religions lost?