Prove that God Exists

“Prove that God exists.” This statement is the place where many atheists begin, and presume to end, the debate with those who believe. Their argument is that God cannot be proven by material evidence, or the scientific method of hypothesis, experiment, analysis and conclusion. The presumption of this materialist argument is that there are no other ways of knowing anything; that science is the ultimate and only source of knowledge.

The atheist will say that the onus for proving God is on the shoulders of those who believe. This is a fallacious argument. It belies the fact that they themselves have no argument to prove the non-existence of God. The truth is that no one will ever be able to prove “scientifically” that God does or does not exist. The reality is that there are certain things in life that are made to be experienced, not explained. But experience, to have any efficaciousness in our lives, must be first recognized and then be reflected upon. In other words we have to be both awake, humble, and responsible to be able to learn from the truths that our experiences reveal.

One of those things that has to be experienced to be truly known is love. God is another. Love is not something material, something that can be looked at under a microscope to be known. It is something that has to be experienced. Love is not just a feeling. It is not just a chemical reaction in the brain that can be measured. One can philosophize eloquently about it forever, but never experience it. The proof of its existence is only in action. It is seen in one’s behavior. In its highest form it is an emptying of the self in response to the beloved. The Apostle, John, tells us: “Everyone who has known love knows God. Everyone who has not known love does not know God, because God is love” (1 Jn 4:7-8).

Faith is another thing that is known only in the experience of it. It is something that comes from innocence, indeed, a humble, childlike innocence, that is, open to and capable of wonder. “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of God” (Mt. 18:3). Jesus is not implying that we are to be gullible here. He doesn’t mean that we are to be unquestioning. Rather, he is saying that false pride blinds us, limits our abilities to see anything of value beyond our own narrow ego-limited perspectives. It closes us down to what is possible. It deprives us of the gifts of surprise and, ultimately, of wonder. Ironically, Aristotle called this kind of wonder the beginning of all science and all philosophy. This is the kind of childlikeness we must recover in order to come to know all that is true, good, beautiful, just, and righteous.

God is never going to enter through your head. The door He uses is your heart. When we humbly open ourselves to God, He enters through our hearts first and becomes known to us not just as a feeling, but as a personal reality. The heart and the head are not disconnected, you see. There have been many intellectual converts to the faith who came to know God as well precisely because they shed their prideful egos and opened themselves, childlike, to the possibility of wonder, allowing God into their hearts, by experiencing the very real person of Jesus. It is in and through the experience of loving and being loved freely that we come to know the very real existence and presence of God, “who is love”. The world comes to know there is a God only when we Christians choose to live our lives loving others as Jesus loved us, openly, freely, and generously.