Does God Exist?

Hi this is breeding welcome to the Salvation Army's words of life-the Salvation Army, this is Bernie Dick Cheryl Gillam and Bernie. It is so good to have you back in the studio things on the back. It is good to be back in I am glad to tell you I'm blessed to say that I was out for surgery related to colon cancer and the doctors told me that they find no evidence of disease be raised and were starting a new 11 week series today with our friend, and my pastor or what the Salvation Army calls core officer, Capt. Ken Argonaut in the series is called skeptics welcome.

This is a series we've been working on for a while and were very grateful to all of you who have sent in your own questions around this topic.

That's right. Several weeks ago we began asking our listeners what questions you get from unbelievers or questions you may have yourself about God, creation, the Bible and you name it and can Argonaut has joined us to do a deep dive into many of these questions and I know this is going to be a tremendous blessing for us all now. Full disclosure can is a seminarian. He's really very knowledgeable about the Bible and he he does not ever come unprepared to a pulpit and in a sense this radio program is a pulpit for him because to share what he's learned or gleaned from his study of the word of God, but I think we should say it's perfectly natural for us to question our faith, particularly when bad things happen or in my case when you're given a diagnosis of cancer mean, how could God let that happen.

I feel like I'm a good person. I do good things, but at the end of the day if I love God. I have to trust God and I think you've probably heard people ask questions about their faith or their why God would let things happen to good people thing is where machines rightly created as machines and were created to have a personal relationship with God, and I think these crisis moments that you're talking about are actually very important for our development and our faith helps us to know the very foundation of why we believe what we believe because were going toward ourselves and it's not you're not being spoonfed. Whether that's from your parents or spiritual mentor anybody else, but it's your own personal faith journey with God heard some people say that God does not have any grandchildren because were all children of God. He doesn't want us to be harmed to to experience harm are bad things but this is one of those times when in a fallen world, like you said was we were preparing for the episode. Things happen and we believe that God can make all things work together for good for those that love him. It's just these. This is going be a great series. I hope that our listeners really tune in particular to your cabin.

Now we will say that while Ken tried to address specifically as many of the questions as he could. There's only so much she could cover in this series so please reach out to us during the series. If there's a question or a topic that you really looking for answers on will try our best to point you in the right direction and we got a great team of people here that want to help send this email at radio@uss.salvationarmy.org or call 1-800-229-9965 and the long and all he and all I know is the will hello welcome to show my name is Capt. Ken Argonaut I am an officer in the Salvation Army, the pastor of the Atlanta Temple core, which is what we call churches in the Salvation Army and over the next 11 weeks we are going to be looking at different questions that many of you have sent in and we we sort of entitled this skeptics welcome the truth is, I think there's nothing wrong with being a skeptic. In fact, I think that's why they chose me for this podcast because I don't just believe things right out of the box.

I need some proofs I need to wrestle with the logic I need to experience it for myself and I believe that anything that's worth believing needs to be able to go through this filter of our own imagination in order to come out to the other side where we can say yes. I believe this and it's true. And so that's will be looking out over the next 11 weeks and so I hope that you join us in that journey. When the first questions that no sort of pops out in everybody's mind is does God even exist that yummy you can ask the question. Can anything exist. If you watched a young Sheldon and there's virtual-reality you know how I know that I'm not in some kind of game being played by some big caterpillar who knows my dad always brought up the idea that a bumblebees wings are too small to carry the bumblebee.

According to science. Yet the bumblebee doesn't know it. And so the bumblebee keeps on flying.

Anyway, you don't some things don't make sense and we have to really come to critically look at where logic comes in and were sometimes faith comes in. Where those intertwine and then sometimes where we might even need to separate them.

If you want a fair treatment of whether God exists or not. I I ask you to look at a book called does God exist by Hans Kung. He also has two other books on being a Christian that are vital for you to read.

He is a Catholic priest, theologian, but he can't teaching Catholic schools because he doesn't believe in infallibility. So it's interesting that all of us have our places where we say that doesn't fit the test of what I think I know about the Scriptures. What I experience in my heart and mind. Wesley will even go on to say that there sort of like a quadrilateral test that Scriptures and reason experience and tradition all play a part in what we believe but Hans Kung will go through every question that you might even want some kind of answer to from Hegel to need ski and then he even adds why Christ and his ways are are what we should follow. Thomas Aquinas said that there are five reasons in his book will though his works summa theological there five reasons why we should believe that there's a God that exists there's the unmoved mover which is sort like that clockmaker mentality that there has to be something that in the beginning that created all this, there is the first cause that you can't have anything that is set in motion and that first have a cause and then this affected the cosmological argument there is this necessary existence theory where like where did our ideas come from Udo.

The fact that we even come up with an idea about God must mean that there must be some reason to that there is this idea of degrees of goodness because I want to do good, and why, why, what if if there is no God. Why will we just want to do all kinds of things in we could care less about anybody else. I mean, that's that sort of evil, but why would we choose to do good. There must be something out there that says we must do good, and then this idea of need for purpose that we have a purpose in life that not just at the end of life. There is zero existence and were done to end up buried 6 feet deep were thrown our ashes into the sea as if nothing even mattered.

We believe that there is something intrinsic about life that there is a purpose for each one of us now you can go through all those tests and you could still come up with his idea well where is the empirical evidence where you show me God.

I don't think were ever to get to that point all I can think of is from my own limited human mind is that in all the things that are possibly knowable. There's no way that I could know it all and when I look at creation and when you look at the sunrise in the sunset and you look at the mountains and the trees and and you think of all the grand design that goes into creation which is mentioned by Paul in Romans 120, and following that all creation you'll showed us this idea that there is indeed something drawing us to a God that that no one should miss this and so I believe that at the end of the day you can reason. All the things you want to, but you're going to have to take a leap of faith. Soren Kierkegaard will often talk about this that there is this at the end of the day are you going to take the leap of faith and say yes I trust this to be true because it's better than everything else that I've looked at you not get to know at the end of the day for sure.

Anything. But there will come this what Wesley called a assurance in your heart that yes I'm on the right path and I choose to follow him part of the reason why we are doing this show is not to convince you that you believe in Jesus believe in God but it's many times a you come in contact with your friends and there can ask you all these questions as to what I would say about that is be careful when we think that we have to defend God. Now apologetics is sort of like the defense of God, and I'm probably the wrong guy. If you're looking for the apologetic guy. I don't like to argue people into the kingdom because I don't think that that works very well and God doesn't need our defending.

The purpose is evangelism. When you go to Paul and you see him there in Athens and he's looking at all the gods before him, and he finds this one statute that says to an unknown God so we can't possibly know all the gods out there so this is one God that we don't even know his name and Paul says to those who are standing around.

Let me tell you about this God that you don't know that's evangelism.

It's not defending God, it's about showing God through our life and through our understanding of the Scriptures that there is indeed something that somebody has never seen and there's some good news for them today. That's it for today. Next week join us again to look at the question of God may exist but doesn't really care was seen as the Salvation Army's mission doing the most good means helping people with material and spiritual needs become a part of this mission every time you give to the Salvation Army visit Salvation Army USA.org to offer your support and love to hear from you. Email us at radio@uss.salvationarmy.org or call 1-800-229-9965 or write us at PO Box 29972, Atlanta, GA 30359 tell us how we can help share prayer request or share your testimony. Would love to use your story on here. You can also subscribe to our show on iTunes podcast store and be sure to give us a rating. Just search for the Salvation Army's words of life. Follow us on social media for the latest episode extended abuse and more. And if you don't have a church home. We invite you to visit your local Salvation Army worship center will be glad to see you this is pretty join us next time for the Salvation Army's life