Why should anyone believe in God? Why implies a moral question. What is the good of believing in God? How does not believing deprive one of an essential good? Why should I believe in God is often only half the question. The second half is “what’s in it for me?” The truthful answer is nothing, if what’s meant is the satisfaction of one’s desires from God as a genie in a bottle fulfilling the wishes of its master. The idea that believing in God requires submission to God is not what some want to hear. They want a god who can be manipulated to serve their desires.
For others an answer might begin with another question. Consider a famous, powerful person whom you have never met or seen in person but heard about and admire greatly. What if that person’s agent came to you and said ‘she’ knew who you were and wanted to meet you in person? Curiosity, if nothing else, would be reason enough to say yes to the invitation. Why? To find out who this famous, powerful person really is, and why, for heaven’s sake, she wants to meet you face-to-face.
God is, in a sense, like that. The source of all being knows this speck of dust hurtling through space, each person on it, and desires to be in a personal relationship with each of us. The question why would one want to believe in God may be, but why would they not? Nathanael discovered that Jesus knew him well even though they had never met. Out of little more than suspicious curiosity Nathanael followed Jesus to find out more about why this wonder working rabbi would have any interest in him. (John 1) He took the risk and discovered what it meant to be in an intimate relationship with God incarnate. It took time, but he learned it meant to be to be embraced with God’s steadfast and abounding love and that he was called to be an agent of that love for others. The whole of scripture is the revelation of God’s love of ‘his’ creation and intention that we live into the fullness of all we were created to be – something we cannot do without being in relationship with God.
I suppose there are people who do not want to be intimately embraced by God’s abounding and steadfast love that intends only good for us. It’s too frightening, especially when not even the deepest secret is hidden from God. Not one of us is worthy. Could it be a trap set by a vengeful God intending to send us to hell? Even if his love is real, surrendering to it might deprive us of some important part of our self identity, something we hold tight. Can God really be trusted? The question brings us back to why anyone should believe in God in the first place. Part of the prior question suggests doubt about whether there is a God to believe in at all. But it also suggests an awareness of the God one is hesitant to believe exists, which is another way of asking can God be trusted? Belief is not simply acceptance that God is real but that God can be trusted. It is not an unreasonable question. We know none of us can be trusted wholly and completely at all times, in every place, with everyone, under every condition. How can anyone be sure of God’s trustworthiness? Hellfire and brimstone preachers make it sound safer to stay as far away from God as possible. But Jesus proclaimed that he came not to condemn but that we might have life in abundance. The only people who do not receive the gift of redeeming grace are those who refuse to accept it. It is always offered, with the offer never withdrawn. It only has to be accepted.
And and that is why one should believe in God.
Is it a persuasive argument? Maybe, maybe not. It is persuasive for those who understand that we do not define God, that God is made known to us by ‘his’ own self revelation, and most fully in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is not persuasive for those who want to define God on their own terms. They are not thereby condemned. They have simply gone as far as they can for the time being. None are behind the mystery that is God’s redeeming love for all whom ‘she’ has called into being as sacred and beloved.
Is there a point where someone can say a final and irrevocable No!? Perhaps, but it is not ours to know. Jesus’ death and resurrection was once for all, not once for some. How it gets worked out is not for us to judge. We are only called to proclaim the good news of God in Christ Jesus and be agents of his love as best we can.
You wrote, Steve:
“But Jesus proclaimed that he came not to condemn but that we might have life in abundance. The only people who do not receive the gift of redeeming grace are those who refuse to accept it. It is always offered, with the offer never withdrawn. It only has to be accepted.”
There is a difficulty here, I think, in the use of “only” in “It only has to be accepted.”
To see the difficulty go back to the “good news” of the forgiveness of sins. Is this forgiveness unconditional? or is it necessary to first acknowledge the sin that, in light of that act of acknowledgment, *will* then be graciously forgiven?
This act of acknowledgement must itself be an act of free will, after all, the gift of free will, of the capacity to say, “Yes” or “No,” is itself an essential dimension of God’s creation of a human being.
So, yes, I certainly agree that the gift of redeeming grace is always “on offer”: it is, so to speak, always already right *next* to who you are right now.
But who you are right now is already a sinner who has, at least not yet, come to freely acknowledge *singularly* what that means for you.
Jesus’ ministry on the way to Jerusalem is devoted to creating a context that invited each person in each encounter on the way to freely acknowledge the given fact of his or her being a sinner.
Now ask: Is it possible to accept the gift of redeeming grace *without* this prior act of acknowledgment?
If not, then the sentence “It only has to be accepted” needs to be modified to include the prior necessary condition of free acknowledgment.
But if so, then does God’s love fail to be unconditional? Or does the traditional “opposition” between conditional and unconditional need to be rethought precisely by way of asking how what it takes to acknowledge is necessary part of what it means to accept?