I have a child in my confirmation class that told her Mom she doesn’t believe in God. She doesn’t know what to do with this. I don’t know if this girl is looking for attention or truly questions the exhistance of God. My only answer is, that we are an extention of God. If you have disbelief in God, you have disbelief in yourself. I don’t believe in evolution. If we evolved from the apes, there would be no more apes, they supposedly evolved into us. I needhelp with this one.
Describe for her the natural world. Ask her to look around her. The beauty of the seasons, plants, animals, the sea and sky, mountains, rivers, valleys and us as people. Not only do we have freewill in the world, but your parents were given the gift to love each other and have a child of their own. You are that child. Who do you think gave us this gift? The ability to create new life directly from love? This is not an accident. It can only come from someone who created this world for us.
Because we only understand things of this world with our mind it’s hard for us to understand things that are outside of this world. We understand the natural world through science and investigation. Things that are outside of this world are hard or impossible to grasp. This is the world of the supernatural.
If we accept that we did not create ourselves, then someone else did. That someone may not be a person, like us, because otherwise they would be of this world, and we would be able to understand and see them. We cannot see the one who created us. However, we can accept that God exists.
Think about the natural things in the world. These are dogs, cats, trees, tables, cars, bikes, tools, toys. They all have their own characteristics. Their purposes and behavior is diffierent according to why they were made or what they are. We can all this an essense. Each of these things (including people) are different. A dog does not have the essense of a table, or a cat. But dogs have the essense of each other.
With thousands of thousands of different things in our world this is the way we define them and look at them.
Now imagine what might be the essense of the one who created us. Unless you still think that we are here by some sort of accident and noone created us. Thinking about God or the one who created us is a mindbending exercise. Why? Because God is not of this world, he is beyond this world, and therefore beyond our comprehension. When we try and put our mind to thinking about him we cannot even imagine what may be there.
There is a word for this. It’s called ineffable. It means we cannot use words to describe what God might be or look like.
Many thelogians, over many centuries have studied this topic. The conclusions they have reached are arrived at by a combination of reason and faith. Reason, using the scientific principals and faith from the sacred word of Scripture, interpreted by the tradition of the church.
The definition that best describes this indescribable God is:
God is sheer existance.
There is no before, no after, no time, no history, no creation of God. He was, is and always will be. He has no form we can imagine and the best others have used to describe him visually is “unapproachable light”. All these are terms of man so they will not do him justice.
Because God knew we did not understand his nature or message from our poor behavior on earth, he decided to give us a gift that would let us understand who he was and what he wanted us to be. This gift was his Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus was made man incarnate to show us the light, the way to treat each other and have a means of loving a God we could better understand. One we could relate to. Through his teachings on each he revealed himself and the message of God directly and divinely to his people. He passed this message on directly through the Bible and founding the Church to preserve this message through the centuries.
This is known as
divine revelation. Where God reveals himself personally to mankind.
We are informed by Jesus Christ, God made man that God was,
is and always will be. Therefore a more precise expansion of sheer existence might be: *perpetually sheer presence. *Perpetually sheer presence describes an ineffable God. Here is why:
- *Perpetually *because is illustrates God’s consistence presence without the limitation of time defining or limiting our understanding.
- *Sheer *because he is absolute, pure, complete and total.
- *Presence *because he is infinite in his existence, always with us, yet not of this world.
I hope that this helps you and your student over this question that many ask at different times of their lives.
Accepting that all the beauty and life in this world could not be created by those in it is the starting point for understanding a higher power is involved. Once that is accepted, faith will be established in that soul’s mind to begin the journey of revelation, wonder and love for that person.
Thank you for the work you do spreading this Word. I will pray for you.
