In the book of Genesis we see a remarkable story, Genesis 32 shows us a story of God (or the Angel of the Lord) wrestling with Jacob. It seems rather odd, that God would wrestle with a man, or the man could actually wrestle with God. Never the less in vs 25 God puts his hip out of joint. Whether God was nearly defeated by Jacob or He was just going easy on him, I think we can draw many points from this story, for our own life and our experience with God.

My personal experience with God has been somewhat bizarre. From wanting to be a missionary since I was ten, to being nearly sold out God doesn’t exist. I have wrestled with God, especially questioning His existence or relevance, but have come to terms that He does exist.

When I was an-in-the-closet agnostic, I was looking for any evidence of God’s existence, anything. I thought I had found it, but after reading, ‘The God Delusion’ by Richard Dawkins, I was devastated. I felt like my faith and belief was like a coke aluminium can, which had been stomped on and just needed to be thrown into the bin. Somehow the can didn’t enter the bin, but came back to life, with vigour and a renewed strength. However, before I show how I got to believe in the Christian God, one has to look at the last jigsaw piece which fell together, my philosophy.

My Philosophical baggage was pushing me to atheism, well, at least being an Agnostic Deist. Being in the SDA (Seventh Day Adventist) church my entire life, I had been taught there are pretty much only absolutes. The idea of absolutes is so deep within Adventism; they deem themselves the ‘true’ church. If we were the ‘true’ church all other churches (The majority of Christians) would all be wrong. Another fine example is, to be a true Christian; one must keep the Sabbath, especially, if they know the ‘truth’. These sought of ideologies, in my opinion lead to sectarianism (Arrogant fools, who don’t associate with anyone) rather than helping our brothers and sisters out eg. The Catholic Church, Pentecostal church, Baptist etc.  Adventists are obsessed with looking for, hopefully, exegetical evidence to back up their alleged claims. I searched the scriptures far and wide (and history for that matter) for the proof of the Sabbath; every single claim came under my knife. Although most Adventists are too lazy to do such vigorous research, Adventists still need evidence to back up their claims.

These two ideologies created in me, the perfect ingredients for a sceptic of God and religion. I was looking for the Holy Grail, to prove God did exist or He didn’t. My mind wrestled with this and as Jacob wrestled with God, I was wrestling with God I wouldn’t and couldn’t let go of Him.

Before I was going to throw it all in I decided to read some Christian apologetic works, I picked up books by Antony Flew, Aliaster McGrath, Edgar Andrews and so forth. I didn’t know what to think. The following day I picked up the book called, ‘Did the Resurrection Happen?’ edited by David Baggett, a conversation with Gary Habermas and Antony Flew. Habermas proved to me that Jesus rose from the dead, or, as Will Durant says, ‘The denial of that existence [Jesus] seems never to have occurred even to the bitterest gentile or Jewish opponents of nascent Christianity…That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels.’ I don’t have any quotes I would like to quote from the book, it was all brilliant and then I would spend time trying to explain something that is irrelevant to the article. I was convinced there was enough evidence for one to rationally believe that Jesus resurrected from the dead, thus that a deistic view of God was wrong, as God had revealed Himself to man, through His son, Jesus.

Although, it was a ‘eureka moment’ doubt continued to exist. Modern philosophy usually tries to do what Descartes did, doubt everything and prove it exists. However, should we start with doubt? Or should we start with a belief? If we doubt something exists, than, we are limited and close minded. If I doubted the holocaust happened, any amount of evidence would hardly persuade me, as I already doubt the holocaust. Yet, if I believed in the holocaust, I could look at the evidence and discern what was true and not. As soon as you say it is impossible, you will not possibly believe that it is true. So perhaps to be intelligent, we should start with the belief of God, not with doubt, after all, truths change from century or even decade, so maybe Descartes was wrong?

If we start with a belief we can look at evidence for X and more objectively consider if it’s true or not. Dawkins, in his book, ‘The God Delusion’ unsuccessfully attacks theism, however, he believes there is no God, because he convinced himself at age 16 God was a delusion, any evidence which is presented is a coincident, or theists are looking at it the wrong way. Anyway, the strongest argument for a God is the fine tuning argument; it is a form of the teleological argument. The fine tuning argument goes as this:

  1. The universe appears to be finely tuned
  2. The universe could only be finely tuned if there was a being who finely tuned it
  3. Therefore there is a being, as the universe is finely tuned

The more we are learning about science the more this statement becomes a fact. Even Dawkins and Hawkings will not contend the fact, that the universe appears to be designed, but they will say we are just ‘lucky’. This parody clearly shows how ridiculous that idea is; suppose you are in front of a firing line, of skilled marks men, you have been sentenced to die. The captain gives the call, there are fifty men and fifty guns aimed at you, the scene is erupted by gun fire and, you are still alive! After realising you have not gone to heaven (or hell) you get back up and wonder what are your chances of all the men missing; there was fifty men, even the most skilled marksmen will miss at times, and perhaps all of them were drunk? Perhaps all of them were sleep deprived? Yet, all of them still missing you is astronomical, you conclude that someone intervened on your behalf, and they have, for some reason God just saved you. No doubt would be in my mind, if I was in the above scenario, that God had saved me from my death, I would give Him all the credit. This is similar to how the universe should be perceived, either there was a God who had His hand behind the universe, or it was merely all luck and you, reading the article, are very lucky and a produce of randomness. I think it’s safe to bet that God is behind the start of the universe.

Lastly, I would like to talk about another argument for the existence of God, the Kalam cosmological argument. This argument has been pushed by Dr William Craig (for good reasons). It goes like this:

  1. Everything that has a beginning has a cause for its existence
  2. The universe has beginning of existence
  3. Therefore, the universe has a cause for its existence
  4. If the universe has a cause for its existence, then that cause is God
  5. Therefore, God exists

This argument is taken from Aristotle’s idea that everything has a cause. This article is written by my fingers striking keys, the fingers are given a command from my brain, which travels through the neurons, which activates the muscles in my fingers and tells them to press down and sure enough they do, my point is; everything has a cause. You have a cause, your parents conceived you. Everything in this universe has a cause; the sun, black holes, galaxies, they can’t escape the inevitable – something has to bring them into existence. What brought the universe into existence? An un-caused cause. Some scientists, who don’t want to use the four letter word, ‘God’, say aliens created this universe, or there are many universes out there (multiverses). This just moves the equation back; we still need something to create multiverses and the aliens, an un-caused cause, which is God. Whether one enjoys the realisation that there was a creator (which we call God) or not, there was an un-caused cause, which is God. Some Atheists and scientists say, ‘This is just a God-of-the-gaps-fallacy, just wait, we will find the answer.’ This is not true at all, the belief in God is being supported by more and more evidence every day, one of the leading philosophers in the 20th century and who wrote much defending the atheist idea became a Deist, due to the evidence, he perceives, that there had to be a creator. Antony Flew was a giant – it would be like Dawkins saying that he believes in creation. Although atheists claim, Flew had lost his marbles (he was very old), Flew wrote his last volume in his famous, ‘God and Philosophy’ books.

Evidence for a God is growing and becoming stronger, science has been ironing out abstract and fictional beliefs and ideas, however, science has not been able to remove God from the equation as Einstein said, ‘Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.’ Although Einstein was a pantheist, he still makes a very interesting point, science needs religion and religion needs science. Without science, we would think that lightning came from heaven and that the world was flat and we would be very superstitious people. Without religion, we wouldn’t have a meaning or morality. I would like to end with the famous quote of Robert Jastrow, “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries”