Good News about God
Welcome to our Good News studies. This is the first unit of the three in this series.
Each study consists of the information pages – to help you know the story – and the Response Pages, designed to help you integrate what you’ve learned into your daily life.
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This material is also covered in more detail in our Roots Course – see the Courses tab for more information.
1. The Good News about God starts with the fact that it’s perfectly sensible to believe in Him.
To believe in God doesn’t require either extraordinary intelligence or gullible ignorance. You don’t need a lot of religious background, and you don’t even have to have a mystical experience first. You don’t have to come from any particular country or culture, either: people from all kinds of backgrounds – including yours – already believe in God and follow Him. You don’t have to pretend anything. You can still think for yourself.
The most important thing that believing in God requires is honesty.
God’s existence can’t be “proved” by science. But it can’t be “disproved,” either. This very important question – like all the most important questions of life – is one that science can’t answer! There’s no way to conduct experiments which can be tested, verified, or falsified to answer this question. To ask science to answer this question is like trying to drive on the highway in your refrigerator: refrigerators are wonderful, for what they’re designed to do. They’re just not very effective as transportation. Evidence from scientific observation can be built into theories to support the claims of either answer to the question of God’s existence. But there can never be a scientific conclusion.
To say that “science cannot prove or disprove God’s existence” doesn’t mean that no one can know the answer! It simply means that we’re going to have to find the answer in a different way. We do this all the time in everyday life, because the most important questions in life aren’t about things science can tell us.
How do you know that you’re loved – or not loved? How do you know who you are and what you’re capable of becoming? Why should you go on living? Why should you behave in an ethical manner — or not? What will happen to you tomorrow? Why do people suffer, and what should be done about it? Science can’t tell you answers to these, and many other questions. We all have to answer them, though, and we answer them by trust, by “faith” that things will work out as we choose to believe.
When we’re honest about the question of whether God exists, we’re led to a very important conclusion: whether you believe in God or you do not believe in God, either way, you live by “faith”: either way, you make a choice and live with the consequences.
Science has nothing to do with it. So we need to think in a completely different direction as we ask our questions and try to understand.
Curiously, the most important question of believing in God starts with questions about you.
Do you want God to be there? If He is there, are you willing to live by what He wants? Of course, by itself, that doesn’t “prove” that God exists! But it does establish something very important: whether His existence will make any difference to your life.
This decision determines how you will see everything!
If you don’t want God, and don’t want His direction for your life, then no amount of evidence will convince you that He exists or that it’s worthwhile to find out what He’s all about. But keep reading anyway. You may want to consider it later.
If you do want God, and you’re willing to live by whatever His way calls for, He will be able to communicate with you, and you’ll find answers worth holding on to.
If, like many people, you’re not sure, keep reading. This course, and our other resources, can help you make an informed choice about God for your life. It can also help you find other questions that are worth pursuing.
There are many reasons why people reject believing in God. Most people who reject God really reject a “false picture” of God, a caricature: no sensible person would ever believe in the “God” they say they don’t believe in. They may do this because of misinformation, or from a bad experience with organized religion – or because they’re afraid of what other people might think if they decide to believe God and follow His ways.
Sometimes people who reject God believe this way because they’ve been traumatized by too much suffering, and they lose the emotional strength that would motivate them to look for God – in fact, they’ll blame God for their suffering, even as they assert that He doesn’t exist.
Often people reject the notion of God because they’ve seen suffering and evil in the world, and they can’t understand why a good God (as He is claimed to be) would ever allow such misery. They’ve been in the war zones, the cancer wards, the prisons — often they’re trying to do something good to counter all the suffering they see. Too much injustice, too much pain. It’s all too messed up to have ever been made by a good God. It’s never occurred to these people that there might be a very good reason why the world is so desperately shot through with misery and futility. They might feel quite differently if they heard a different perspective.
Sometimes the reason for rejecting God is simply because many people don’t want anyone telling them what to do. The idea of God means that someone has a right place of authority over them – they don’t really reject God: they reject authority. They want to live life as they desire – not as they think God would tell them to live. It’s easier for them to insist that God doesn’t exist than it is to face the truth: they don’t want Him – whether He exists or not.
None of these issues has to stop you from searching and learning, and maybe finding God. None of these issues stops God from searching for you! You might disagree – keep reading, because you might find some fresh ideas that you haven’t considered before. You might even find a new kind of hope.
The real issues of evidence for God’s existence are not difficult to understand. The universe — from the huge, overwhelming vision of the Hubble space telescope, right down to the microscopic and submicroscopic worlds we know only from science — all this speaks of an incredible complexity, which all functions with an order that we experience so much every day – we’ve forgotten how unlikely it is that this would ever come about by chance.
Is it sensible and reasonable to believe that a modern jet aircraft would suddenly appear out of a random tornado roaring through a random junkyard, as they say? That’s how reasonable it is to believe in such a complex universe, with such complex people in it, coming “out of the blue” by mere “chance.” No vast amount of time can rescue it and make it sensible. It’s “a possibility,” but so unlikely that it makes no sense at all to base your one and only life on it. Besides, nothing else in your life works like that! Try it, and you’ll see.
So why should you choose to live your one and only life as though the whole universe and your life was all just a big accident, happening out of chance – when the odds are so against it?
Now, it’s a stretch, to be sure — but doesn’t it make more sense to think that somehow, someone bigger and stronger than us put it all together? You see, someone “thinks of it” and “makes it”: isn’t this the way most things happen in your world? Isn’t this at least a better possibility for explaining everything else?
If it’s true that someone bigger and stronger than us put it together and holds it together, isn’t it realistic to expect that humans, such as we are, will always have some sense of mystery about how it happened? Isn’t it sensible to believe that because we’re so limited in what we know and what we can accomplish, we will never fully understand all the design and power involved in creating and maintaining the universe?
If there is no God, we will never have answers for all our questions. If God does exist, we will still never have answers for all our questions — because He’s God, and we’re not. But we’ll know what He shows us, and that will be more than we would know without Him. Either way, we’re in the dark. Either way, we will always be limited, not in charge. Is this something you can accept for your life? You’ll have to decide whether this direction of thinking makes sense to you.
But here’s an even more important question: which would you rather believe? Would you rather believe that we are completely alone in the universe, a totally meaningless accident without hope or direction, that what we do and say and feel makes no difference whatever – or would you rather believe that there is a possibility that whoever made us knows what’s good for us, has shown us what’s good for us, and wants to help us? Your answer determines whether you are capable of believing at the moment, and it will make a big difference to your life.
It is possible that God does not exist. However, it is also possible that God does exist! “What you would rather believe” doesn’t prove that God exists or doesn’t exist. It simply says what kind of person you are: you prefer to live without God or you prefer to live with God. Most people have never thought very much about it: this course will help you think clearly, so that you can live honestly.
Curiously, the Bible doesn’t ever argue the question: “Does God exist?” The Bible assumes that everyone has a “God” of some kind – whether it’s money, sex, politics, culture, or self, everyone worships something. The Bible answers the questions: “Which God is the real one? What kind of God is He? What is He like? What does He want?” These answers are the information humans really need!
The real God gives you the right to choose your own destiny: with Him or without Him. He won’t force you to believe in Him. He hopes you’ll want to. He would like to help you believe in Him – as He helps everyone who searches for Him.
2. “Where do you get these ideas about God and what He wants? Who told you all this?”
These things come from the Bible – if you want to know more about the Bible itself, come to our Roots Course – we have a whole session all about the Bible, where it came from, what it means, and how to read it. For now, walk with us through the first 11 chapters of Genesis, the first document in the Bible …
The Good News about God is that He really does care about people. He’s not too busy with other things to get involved. He’s not too angry with what we’ve done to the world to care anymore. God has been busy from the beginning of time trying to help people, and He hasn’t given up yet. In fact, He is working out a plan to make the ultimate difference for human life. It’s all there, in Genesis 1-11 – and it’s a theme that’s repeated over and over again throughout the long history reported in the Bible – a story that’s worked out in the story of nations, and in the stories of individual people.
The Bible is all about God caring for people, and about what has happened throughout history as He’s reached out to help. It’s not always a pretty picture. Even though God has always loved people and done what is best for them, people have a hard time trusting Him. When people don’t trust God, they hurt themselves and other people – and their environment.
The earliest stories of God and people are in the book of Genesis. A simple, clear pattern of events emerges if you read chapters 1-3, 4, 5-9, and 11 as units. Read it carefully. You won’t understand everything in the stories, of course – but you will understand more than you expect, if you keep these things in mind: each story shows a pattern:
- God loves people and blesses us.
- People stray from His loving help, hurt ourselves and other people. We lose control of our lives to other forces which hurt us and our environment.
- God intervenes to put a limit on the destruction people have unleashed. He helps us face the consequences of what we’ve done, to help us find Him and do better in the future. But it’s usually not easy.
- God puts people in a position where we can start over, and He continues to help us.
Here’s how it happened please read the 4 basic stories of God and humans in Genesis 1 – 11:
Genesis 1 – 4.2 God creates a world that works, puts humans in charge of it, provides incredible blessings. Humans and God do very well together until humans begin to listen to outside influences. The man and woman decide they can’t trust God, and try to go on their own. God meets them, tries to help them see what happened so He can restore them — but they’ve been damaged. So God starts a new chain of events: a life that includes suffering and frustration — in order to help them find their way back to Him. He puts them back into a changed world, and continues to help them.
Genesis 4 God continues to interact with humans to help us — and two brothers respond to Him in very different ways. Abel is joyful and grateful — Cain is resentful and angry. God sees this and tries to help Cain come to terms with his anger. However, Cain eventually listens to the outside influences — he follows his impulses, which move him to kill his brother — something that had never happened before! God meets Cain and tries to help him come to terms with what he’s done, but Cain is still angry and remorseless, only complaining that the consequences he faces are too severe. God offers terms of protection! but Cain walks away from God! His descendants become technologically advanced — but as they advance technologically and culturally, they become angry, embittered, full of conflict and rage. This eventually turns them against each other.
Genesis 6 – 9 After several generations, most humans chose to live independently of God, to pursue their own lives, to make their dreams come true. In their quest to end the frustration of a broken world, to achieve power and immortality, they did something very strange: they allowed interference from the spirit world into this world. By mixing with more powerful beings they anticipated victory over the futility of life — but this resulted, as all power-lust does, in conflict. Before long, the entire world of humans was at war with each other. God saw the situation, and determined that He would have to intervene to put an end to the conflict, before humans completely destroyed themselves and the world they live in. For 120 years God tried to invite humans into a place of safety — and at the end, only 8 humans responded! So God flooded the world (a sort of “reverse-creation”) and started over. The 8 humans — and all the animals that were rescued with them — stepped off the “ark” into a whole new world without sin and “the trouble.” God blessed them and helped them start over again. Unfortunately, before long, within the 8 humans serious personal conflict arose, and the trouble of the old age returned again.
Genesis 10-11 After many generations, humans once again tried, collectively, to acquire power over their world. This time they tried to build a huge tower to reach the skies, so that they could take their place next to God. This time God saw what they were plotting to do, and realized that if they were allowed to pursue power as they had done before, they would return the world to Genesis 6! So God intervened earlier, in a much gentler (but very frustrating way) to prevent humans from eating the fruit of power and being poisoned by it again, so to speak. This time they scattered into their own language and culture communities, and God found a new way to reach them. But that’s for another day!
God made people to function very well within certain natural limits. When people choose to act independently of God’s guidance, we “sin.” That mean” our living is “off-target.” When we sin, we inevitably injure ourselves and other people. Sin always has a destructive “ripple effect” of unforeseen consequences far beyond the original act. In fact, when humans try to live independently of God we unleash trouble and destruction to our environment, too. Everything becomes tainted and diminished when God – the One who made everything – is pushed out of the picture.
God absolutely hates sin because He absolutely loves people. He hates sin because it destroys people. God gives guidance and direction because He’s trying to protect people from destroying ourselves and each other.
But all of us have already gone deep into sin. We’ve all grown up in cultures and nations that try to live independent of God, and we’re affected by this. Many of us sense that this is true. How else can we explain the mess the world’s in? How else can we explain some of our own problems? Is our failure always someone else’s fault? Something about the world and people is broken. No war, new technology, political system, or information seems to help change it for very long, either.
Sin doesn’t just make people “bad.” It makes people ignore the one Person who really could help us overcome it. It keeps people from seeing the need for help. It makes people think that God would keep us from good things and make us live in an undesirable way. That’s real darkness.
Sin and the forces behind it are bigger than we are. We’ll never overcome it on our own. Fortunately, God has a heart for helping us, and a plan for rescuing not only us but the entire world from the darkness of sin and evil. The story of the Bible is not about religion: it’s the story of how we got this way, and what God is doing about it.
God believes that people are worth whatever it takes to help us overcome sin. The only time He ever gives up on people is when we’ve damaged ourselves beyond the hope of ever wanting Him. As you can see from the Genesis stories, He’s willing to allow people to create a lot of misery for ourselves, if it will help us see that independence is suicide. God uses beauty, joy, satisfaction, music, art, deep thinking, and many other things to help us look for Him. If self-inflicted suffering will make us look to Him again for answers, then He will put up with that, too.
3. “Sounds pretty bleak. Where is the story going?”
Let’s do a close-up: See Genesis 3: On the day that humans first believed the lies – that we don’t need God, that we can be complete on our own, that God is keeping us from something good – the world changed. Many beautiful and worthwhile things were damaged and lost.
Death and sickness started on that day. Hurt in our closest relationships, the oppression of women, frustration with meaningless work, all started on that day. Peace with our environment was broken on that day. We lost our sense of who we are and where we belong, on that day. Peace with God was lost on that day, too: though God tried to fix it, the humans wouldn’t trust Him to help us.
But on that terrible day, God did something wonderful, to give us hope: He made a promise and set another Day, a Day of victory over sin and death and all kinds of evil – for us and for the whole world. Though evil and death trouble us now, He will one day return in full power, fully visible, to make the world new, to make us all new, to banish the trouble forever.
The story of the Bible is the story of how God holds out hope for us, calling us back to where we belong, calling us back to the life we are made for. One day everyone see that God’s promise will come true. Everyone who wants to be a part of His new creation is welcome!
Whether or not you believe in God makes a big difference to your life. This decision will affect the way you feel about yourself. It will impact all your relationships, and all your efforts to make your life worthwhile. It will shape your most basic attitudes and behavior. It will determine whether your life is ultimately a life of despair and emptiness, or hope and joy.
You can’t be “neutral” about God. You will either live like there is a God who makes a difference, or you’ll live like there isn’t. To choose the “I don’t know” idea automatically puts you in the “there isn’t” category – because that’s how you’ll live.
The Good News about God is:
God is there whether people believe in Him or not.
We desperately need His help — whether we think so or not. He loves people, and He wants to help us — whether we believe in Him at the moment or not. He believes that people are worth the trouble it can sometimes take to get through to us.
He is going to overcome all evil – everyone who wants to be with Him is welcome to share in the victory, which is coming.
EXPLORING THE ISSUES
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On our Response Pages you can compare your ideas to our suggested answers. We hope this will be a useful aid for you as you grow in your understanding of Good News.
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