Archives article 50

“ I believe in God the same way I believe in the sun : not because I can see it, but because by it I can see everything else. ” C.S. Lewis

This is not the normal way we think about God. We normally want some kind of mental proof that He exists so that we can believe in Him. What Lewis proposes is the exact opposite. He didn’t believe in God because he was convinced by a series of evidences that God exists. Intellectual though he was, there was none of that. Nor, however, did He believe God in an irrational way. He simply understood that his very capacity to think and reason were gifts from God in the first place.

In the times when Jesus lived, it was the Jews who kept on asking for miracles so they could believe on Him. The Apostle Paul wrote instead of the Greeks who wanted the philosophic proofs of God in order to believe on Him. But us today? Well, I think we normally want to see Jesus resolve our problems – quickly – and then we’ll believe in Him. . . perhaps!?

What Lewis was saying was that these ways of possibly helping us believe in God don’t produce faith. The very fact that he was a thinking person, alive in an ordered universe, were sufficient proof that God existed. No, he didn’t need any proofs for God. This brilliant professor at Oxford held that it’s only because God has given us life itself that we can even think about Him.

This is exactly what Psalm 36: 9 says: “. . . in your light we see light”

It’s this that frees us from the uncertain and fragile world of speculation.

An example of this came home to me when for the first time I encountered the medical battle against cancer. Very often, when the doctors tried to explain to me what was happening, they would use the image of cells which had gone mad. No longer able to behave according to their healing and healthy role, a number of cells had turned on their fellow cells and had begun to devour and destroy them. Their job, they explained, was not only to stop that devastating activity but to try to understand what had caused such a shattering development. These now evil and rebellious cells were the object of their study. If they could understand what might have caused such an unnatural evolution, they could then begin to work on a way to prevent it happening as well as developing a cure.

It fascinated me that talented oncologists would spend so much effort and energy studying something which had gone wrong trying to understand a system breakdown. It spoke so clearly of the incredible way our universe is ordered and even when it breaks down, the only way to repair it is by discovering the reason for the collapse and put in place a new reparation process. Our world is very delicately tuned. It is not a result of a chance process. It’s not chaos ordered by possibility or even probability. It’s wonderful regularity, an order put in place by God Himself, let’s us look everything – just as Lewis said: it’s only because God exists that I can see anything at all.

Jesus, too, said the same thing when He referred to Himself as the light of the world. The apostle John writes about it in the 8^th chapter of his Gospel in the New Testament, and records how Jesus then went on asking people to believe in Him because if they did they would have “the light of life” v.12b. It’s true. Society is desperately searching “life” – in work, in a home, in money, in pleasure, in ‘something’ that gives a meaning. Jesus stands as a massive signpost asking us to believe Him and find true satisfaction.

That’s why here in Ferrara, when we come together as a Church, we open our Bibles to hear what God is saying. It’s not to discover the light – but rather by the light come into life!

Please feel free to come and join us at any one of our meetings!!

Pastor Paul Finch