First, if you don’t believe in God or a Supreme Being, I’m not going to convince you there is one. But if you don’t, I urge you to go the country on a cloudless, moonless and no-light-pollution night and look up at the sky. Think of what you learned about probability and try to imagine what the probability is that we’re alone in the universe. To me it’s preposterous to suggest that there ISN’T a God!
God matters because He and His teachings are the basis for the standards by which we need to measure and conduct our lives – the basics of right and wrong, of good and evil, of truth and falsehood. The specifics of whether he is the Jewish God, or Catholic God, or Mormon God, or Muslim God is less relevant if one considers that virtually all religions and dogma subscribe to the fundamentals we know as the Ten Commandments. Without standards, there is only chaos, and without God, there are no standards.
God also matters because we need humility. Without humility, arrogance and the temptation to lord over others takes hold. With all our advances, and with our advances coming at an increasing rate, it’s easy to see why we think we’re pretty special. It’s led to many people just assuming we don’t need God. And, since the array of circumstances we face vary widely, it’s tempting to think we’re better than someone who is less fortunate or who lives in less favorable circumstances than we. We need God to remind us that we’re really all just specs of dust and mustn’t get too big for our britches.
God matters because we need fellowship. Worshipping a Supreme Being with others who believe as we do gives us a sense of belonging that transcends ethnicity, politics, economic circumstances and all our other differences. We simply don’t do well by ourselves, as much as we’d sometimes like to think we do. Gathering together to acknowledge, pay homage to and invoke the blessings of God brings us together and helps us smooth those differences out.
God matters because we need to understand gratitude. Not to suggest for a second that I agree with anything Obama ever said, but borrowing on his phrase “You didn’t build that,” if you have success, comforts, joy, love, uplifting experiences and peace in your life, “you didn’t build that.” God had a hand in helping you. A dramatic sunset, a spectacular night sky…God (and most certainly not the government as Obama was suggesting) built those, not us. We need to be grateful.
Finally, God matters because there exist laws in the universe that we simply don’t understand yet. Notwithstanding the brilliant minds of scientists and philosophers, we still can’t say what happened BEFORE the Big Bang. And we still can’t comprehend an endless, infinite universe. Believing and trusting that there is a Being out there who knows more than we do and who has, who can, and who in the future can communicate His knowledge and expose new truth to us is not only comforting, but exciting. We should continuously try to get to know Him.
We need to look up at those stars from time to time and remember how small we really are…how insignificant compared to the vastness and power of an infinite universe and return to thinking about how we’re ALL related and need to help one another.
Today we know so much more than our grandparents new. And tomorrow, our grandchildren will know so much more than we do. Gaining knowledge with the help of a God who can reveal things to us and give us guidance as we progress…matters.
