Does God exist? is the most fundamental question for human beings to resolve. The answer to this question will either substantiate or undermine the meaning of your life, the reason and purpose for your life and how, or if you choose to live out your life.
For most of us scientific, philosophic and even spiritual arguments do not have as strong a role to play in answering this question as does our own direct experience. Our minds tell us that reality is what we feel, experience and then think. For instance, how do we handle that question philosophers like to ask: “How do you know that you exist?” We test it with our senses, our experience. “I feel like I exist!”
Typically, we think of our experience as being the input received from our five senses. But human beings also have another sense, if you will, the sense of thought of which the spiritual dimension is constructed. Our thoughts are an important part of our experience. It has been suggested that the best answer to the question do I exist? is the fact that I am can actually ponder and think about it right now. Do our experience, feelings and thoughts play a credible role in determining God’s existence?
Consider this true story example from Chris Blake's book Searching for a God to Love.
“Jerry Levin served as a news correspondent in the Middle East boiling pot of Beirut when in an instant his life changed drastically. Walking to work one March morning in 1984, he felt a tap on his shoulder. Turning, he faced a young bearded man who pushed a handgun into Levin's stomach, propelling him toward a gray car with an open rear door. Levin didn't resist. He slid into the seat as the assailant jumped in beside him.
"Close eyes! Close eyes!' the man shouted. "You see, I kill." The car sped away. For the next eleven months, Levin, a fifty-one-year-old grandfather, was held hostage, blindfolded and chained to a wall in a tiny room. He was a Jewish agnostic, caught in the crossfire of fanatic religious terrorism. While in his prison, with no literature, no preachers, no tender counsel, no human interference of any kind, Levin became a believer in God. In fact, he became a Christian.
“Outside, his wife had been praying fervently for him. Muslim, Jewish, and Christian friends joined in working for his release. One Muslim leader in Beirut commented that never in the past thousand years had so many people of differing faiths worked together on behalf of one man. On February 13, 1985, Levin wrestled out of his chains, lowered himself from his window, and escaped his captors.
"The irony," Levin said later, "is that all those people thought they were working for someone who was a godless man ... I am convinced now that none of us is ever really godless. I know now that God is there for us whether or not we are there for God."
What did Levin experience? Certainly the experiential factor with the most impact was psychological not physical—his thoughts, feelings and a deeper human spiritual experience. Were his thoughts and feelings sensing God? Was God prompting his thoughts and feelings?
A God Question you may want to browse next would be the question, “Does God Talk to People?” Levin’s experience suggests that somehow God communicates with us. But for now, click the MORE button below to go deeper into the question of God’s existence.
