FOOD FOR THOUGHT The Need to Believe We noted that two things about human beings must be special if Christianity is true. First, we must have some special godlike characteristics, for we are made in Gods image. Second, since God made us for a special purpose which includes loving fellowship with himself, we must in some way need God, desire to know him. Or at least we must be constituted in such a way that we cannot find ultimate peace and fulfillment apart from Him. Is this the case? Indeed it looks like it is. Down through the ages we have been incurably religious. The urge to believe in and worship a higher power is present in virtually every human culture. Usually, however, the skeptic will admit that religious needs are prevalent but reject the idea that this says something deep about human nature. The existence of these religious urges is explained by various natural factors. Then the skeptic tries to turn the tables. The fact that people need to believe in God is a sign that God is an illusion. The whole business is wish-fulfillment; God is a crutch for the weak, an indulgence for people with a flabby intellectual conscience. This widespread assumption that the need to believe in God discredits religious belief is really remarkable. It takes a fact which must be true if God is real and has made humans to fellowship with Himself and tries to count that fact as evidence against Gods reality! Suppose that it is true that human beings have a fundamental need to believe in and worship a God. Should this be interpreted as a sign that faith in God is suspicious in nature because it is likely to be a product of wish-fulfillment? Or should it be interpreted as verifying the existence of a God-shaped hole in human nature, which was implanted by God himself? Critics often remark in this context that the existence of a need does not guarantee that it will be satisfied. A shipwrecked sailor on a life raft may have a desperate need and a burning desire for pure water. He may want it so badly that he hallucinates its reality. Clearly this doesnt mean there is water available to him. Likewise, a person may need or want God but God may not be there for him or anyone. Notice, however, that the analogy breaks down. The sailor as an individual may not get any water, but it would be very odd if he had this need and water did not exist. The fact that people in general have a need for water is strong evidence that there is such a thing as water, though this does not imply that an individual person will get water on any specific occasion. In a similar manner, the fact that we have a deep need to believe in and find God strongly suggests that God is real, though of course this does not mean that any one of us will actually discover God and establish a relation with him. It would be very odd indeed if we had a fundamental need for something which did not exist. NOTE: The True God is the Spiritual being within, The living Child of God We are not human being having a Spiritual experience. We are Spiritual being having a human experience. TRUTH MATTER
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 22:44:38 +0000
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