What if There Was No God?
Many people ask the question, “How do we know there is a God?” But, why not ask the opposite question, “How do we know there isn’t a God?” To discover the answer to this question, consider what the world would be like if God didn’t exist.
God does exist because there is good
God’s nature is good. He does everything for the wellbeing of His creation. On a very basic level, if there wasn’t a God, there wouldn’t be any good in the world. It’s hard to believe that, but the Bible says we’re sinners from birth. Our natural instinct is to be concerned with our own welfare, pleasure and selfish ambitions.
A young child’s natural approach to life is to have everything centered around her. She wants everything for herself and seeks total independence. If she’s asked to do something, she says “No.” If she’s asked to share, she says, “Mine.” If she’s offered help, she says, “I can do it.” This isn’t the nature of someone who lives an open life drawn to God’s goodness. Unfortunately, many people in our society still live in this selfish bubble because they’ve never accepted the reality that there is a God.
If there were no God, we wouldn’t care how our actions, words, etc. impact other people – unless we selfishly needed something from them. We’d only be concerned about our personal success. It takes the goodness of God within the world for us to consider the thoughts, feelings and life of another person. Once we know Christ, this characteristic becomes more natural.
God does exist because there would be more evil if He didn’t
If there were no God, then there would be more hatred, fear and destruction in this world. There’s already a lot of evil in the world because of us, not because of God. He gives us the choice to live our lives for Him or to live our lives independently of Him. If we choose to live independently, then we’re under the influence of the evil one. But, if there was no opportunity to choose God, then evil would prevail, and we would experience a massive increase of wickedness.
Since we’re bombarded with negativity, it’s easy to become overwhelmed with the evil of this world. But, God will overcome evil. Therefore, there will always be greater amounts of good than evil. As evil increases, so does good, and it will triumph over the bad.
The Lord gives us freedom, so if there weren’t a God, we would be living in captivity, even if this captivity were simply mental. There would be nothing to counter the negativity that would circulate our hearts, minds and soul.
We have a foundation for our life because God does exist
If it were nonsense to believe in God, we wouldn’t have a foundation for our life. We wouldn’t have any purpose or desire that was greater than ourselves. If it were absurd to be a Christian, then we wouldn’t just be wasting our time on Sunday morning. We’d be entirely lost. This is actually how much of the world lives because they aren’t willing to follow the Lord’s intentions for their life.
God does exist which is why we have religion
The fact that various religions have been formed over time demonstrates the existence of God. People turn to religions to satisfy their need of finding purpose, self-worth, belonging and love from others in what they perceive to be God. We were all created to be in a relationship with God. Therefore, if we’re all drawn to the existence of God, we’ll look to satisfy this need. Many people have found God through His Truth in Jesus Christ, but many still seek a higher power in hopes that other religions will fulfill the longing within. If we weren’t created to be in community with God, then people wouldn’t feel the need to pursue a higher power in other religions. Religions wouldn’t be fabricated to satisfy a need that wasn’t there.
God does exist and so does heaven and hell
We must factor the afterlife if we question the existence of God. If there were no God, there would be no eternity. There would be no heaven or hell. When we die, we would just be dead. Every day we live is one less day we have available.
If this life was all we had, we would have nothing to motivate or inspire us to pursue something larger than ourselves. There would be no need to account for our behavior when we do leave this earth. That would give us the freedom to sin all we want, which would leave our soul deeply unsatisfied. Events and occurrences would never make sense to each of us individually. We’d never be able to look back at life and see how God was in control or why certain things happened. We would never be able to analyze how we grew in strength, wisdom or compassion. We would never be able to realize goodness out of hardship. Our life would have no meaning and we would have little understanding of why our life matters.
WOULD WE WANT TO LIVE A LIFE WITHOUT GOD?
Would we be able to handle our life without God’ presence? Would we be smart enough to successfully be in charge? Would we have the capacity to help and support others? Would we know what to do if we didn’t have God to rely on? Who would we turn to? If there were no God, there would be no one available to direct anyone. Our parents, coaches, teachers, etc. would only have their personal experience to use as a guide for their own lives as well as helping us with ours.
When we consider the world without the existence of God, it’s easy to see how and where He is present. Living our life for God gives us hope. The Bible teaches that God’s in charge of everything (even if we deny Him, He still works in our life). God has chosen not to control every aspect of our lives on Earth. This means that there are many times when God’s WILL is NOT being asserted. That’s the difference between God being in CHARGE versus God being in CONTROL of our life. He’s not a controlling God; we’re not a bunch of robots that God manipulates and controls. God doesn’t WANT to control our lives. He wants to lead us, and desires for us to ALLOW Him to do so. This means that He not only impacts our life, He also impacts the lives of others around us.
Regardless of our willingness to let God into our life, He WILL be glorified. The question we all have to ask is whether we’ll be a willing part of His glory? In the well-known Old Testament story of Moses, we see how, at Pharaoh’s expense, God is glorified. He was not willing to admit that God was in charge, and as a result, he was destroyed, and the Israelites were made free. God’s will is going to prevail, not matter what. Are we going to be an active participant, or are we going to refuse or deny His desires for our life and end up losing the battle like Pharaoh?
