Part I: Suf­fi­cient Reas­on for the Exist­ence of the Universe

Why is there “some­thing” and not “noth­ing”? Why does our uni­verse exist and why is it just the way it is?

Intro­duc­tion

Chil­dren ask lots of ques­tions. Each answer a child receives only prompts fur­ther ques­tions. Seem­ingly nev­er sat­is­fied, the curi­ous inquirers not only ask “what” and “how”, they also ask, “why?” Answers open doors to new rooms, invit­ing us to pro­ceed for fur­ther dis­cov­ery. As the ques­tions probe deep­er, many things become assumed fact without requir­ing fur­ther explan­a­tion. Yet the answers many of us received as chil­dren could not explain everything, so at some point we gave up ask­ing. Answer­ing one thing with anoth­er which itself also requires fur­ther explan­a­tion leads us nowhere.

Our final answer must be com­plete – able to explain itself without end­lessly rais­ing new ques­tions. Such an answer must be some­thing or some­body who is:

• Unchange­able
• Per­fect
• Infin­ite
• Inde­pend­ent
• The Source of Love

We will try to explain these attrib­utes in detail. We will point out why only God can ful­fill them and so be the suf­fi­cient reas­on for the exist­ence of our uni­verse. It might be dif­fi­cult to start believ­ing in God who is seem­ingly very abstract. Com­ing to believe in him goes hand in hand with get­ting to know him.

God is Unchangeable

The Jew­ish tra­di­tion con­tains the fol­low­ing legend about the child­hood of their fore­fath­er Abraham:

(The little Abra­ham) saw the bright sun in the sky, and thought that it was God, who had cre­ated the heav­en and the earth, and him, too. But in the even­ing the sun went down, and the moon rose in the sky, sur­roun­ded by myri­ads of stars. “This must be God,” Abra­ham decided. But the moon, too, dis­ap­peared, and the sun reappeared, and Abra­ham decided that there must be One who is the cre­at­or of the sun and the moon and the stars, and the whole world. (Midrash)

This legend illus­trates that everything we see around us is change­able. Even the whole uni­verse is con­stantly chan­ging. A long time ago it was small and hot. Tomor­row it will not be the same as today.

Who dir­ects the change? The uni­verse itself? But it does not have its own will. Is there some law that con­trols the uni­verse? But who defined it? …

When we say “God” we mean the one who has no begin­ning and no end and who does not change. His exist­ence is com­pletely inde­pend­ent of any­thing else.

“Every good gift and every per­fect gift is from above, com­ing down from the Fath­er of lights with whom there is no vari­ation or shad­ow due to change.” (James 1:17)

God is Perfect

God is per­fect in all his attrib­utes. He is per­fect love, per­fect right­eous­ness, and abso­lutely good. In every qual­ity which we con­sider valu­able, God’s good­ness is com­plete. He gives us the deep and pure joy we truly need. There is no defi­ciency in him. Moses said about God:

“… his work is per­fect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faith­ful­ness and without iniquity, just and upright is he.” (Deu­ter­o­nomy 32:4)

Our world is dif­fer­ent. It is good but not per­fect in the sense described above. In one Psalm we read:

To all per­fec­tion I see a lim­it, but your com­mands are bound­less. (Psalm 119:96, NIVUK)

What is not abso­lutely per­fect can­not be supreme either. Only a supreme being can be the final answer to all our questions.

God is Infinite

God is not lim­ited by space and time because he cre­ated them. He is omni­present (present every­where sim­ul­tan­eously) and omni­scient (know­ing everything).

God is great­er than our heart, and he knows everything. (1 John 3:20)

Not only does he know everything but he can also do any­thing he wants. Job said, “I know that you can do all things” (Job 42:2). This, how­ever, does not mean that God will do some­thing non­sensic­al, bad or con­tra­dict­ory to his nature. His unlim­ited attrib­utes are united in good­ness and integrity.

The uni­verse is the sum of everything that exists around us. It is the sum of finite things and must itself also be finite. Even sci­ent­ists say that the num­ber of stars and the amount of energy in the uni­verse, though bey­ond com­pre­hen­sion, is lim­ited, and that our uni­verse had a beginning.

Any­thing that is finite depends on some­thing superior—something that determ­ines its lim­its. Noth­ing but the omni­po­tent, one and only God can be com­pletely inde­pend­ent and supreme.

Solomon said:

“Behold, heav­en and the highest heav­en can­not con­tain you.” (1 Kings 8:27).

God’s Exist­ence is Independent

Exist­ence is a gift—it is some­thing we received. The example which we can identi­fy with most eas­ily is our own life. We are born once, and one day we will die. Our exist­ence is depend­ent on many cir­cum­stances. We did not decide to live and we can­not simply decide wheth­er or not we want to die. There are many con­di­tions and extern­al reas­ons for our exist­ence. To answer the ques­tion why we exist, we must look for the answer out­side of ourselves.

We find this to be true also con­cern­ing oth­er things in this uni­verse. We can dir­ectly observe the begin­ning and end of many things. In the case of oth­er things, we may not observe their begin­ning and end, but at least we can observe their change­ab­il­ity. Everything that changes is not totally inde­pend­ent in its exist­ence. The life of someone or some­thing con­sists of peri­ods which come and go and have a begin­ning and an end. We observe that not only we ourselves, but all things in this uni­verse received their exist­ence from out­side. It is a gift. If some­body starts to see things from this per­spect­ive he will become deeply thank­ful for this gift of exist­ence and will find its real purpose.

God’s being is very dif­fer­ent. Because of his attrib­utes described above, he does not depend on any­thing or any­one else. His own being is a suf­fi­cient reas­on for his exist­ence. Because he is infin­ite, out­side space and time, he does not need a cre­at­or. Only finite things need an ori­gin. God is the one who gives exist­ence and life. He cre­ated the uni­verse out of noth­ing through his word.

“The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heav­en and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed any­thing, since he him­self gives to all man­kind life and breath and everything.” (Acts 17:24–25)

“I am the Alpha and the Omega”, says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty”. (Rev­el­a­tion 1:8)

Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeem­er, the Lord of hosts: “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god.” (Isai­ah 44:6)

Explain­ing Our Abil­ity to Love

When the Bible says that “God is love” (1 John 4:8), it means that love belongs so deeply to his char­ac­ter that he can­not do any­thing against it. His love is not self-seeking. He does not need any­thing from us. He loves us for our sake.

God enables people to have a sim­il­ar atti­tude. If people learn this from him then they become liv­ing proof of his work—proof that we are more than a product of blind chance strug­gling for survival.

Jesus called us to love our enemies.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neigh­bour and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who per­se­cute you, so that you may be chil­dren of your Fath­er in heav­en; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the right­eous and on the unright­eous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax col­lect­ors do the same? And if you greet only your broth­ers and sis­ters, what more are you doing than oth­ers? Do not even the Gen­tiles do the same? Be per­fect, there­fore, as your heav­enly Fath­er is per­fect.” (Mat­thew 5:43–48)

We can seek what is good even apart from our own per­son­al bene­fit, such as when we seek the bene­fit of our fam­ily or friends. With God’s help we can love even our enemies. We find many examples of such people in the Bible. The best example is Jesus him­self. He served self­lessly his whole life. He did not profit from it, nor did he do it for human praise. Dur­ing his suf­fer­ing he per­severed in humil­ity and love towards all people. Who gave him the strength to do that?

If we turn to God, then God can com­pletely trans­form our life. He enables us to live sin­cerely and love self­lessly. Many people who met Jesus exper­i­enced such a change in their lives. He invites us to exper­i­ence this change which we can­not achieve on our own.

Con­clu­sion

God is a suf­fi­cient answer for the exist­ence of our uni­verse and the soul’s deep­est ques­tions. Because of our lim­its, we can­not under­stand everything about God. Yet with his help we can under­stand everything that is neces­sary for find­ing him. God lov­ingly reveals him­self in many ways. He helps us to draw the right con­clu­sions on the base of what we exper­i­ence in the world and in our life.

God is not a the­or­et­ic­al reas­on for the exist­ence of all things. Once we find him, we can enter into a rela­tion­ship with him. Thus, the real­ity of God’s exist­ence con­cerns not only our intel­lect but our whole being. We will nev­er find peace and rest in a merely intel­lec­tu­al answer to our ques­tion about the reas­on for our exist­ence. If we find God, we will know not only the reas­on for our exist­ence but also its aim.

We do not know everything about God, but we know that he can exist inde­pend­ently of any­thing else. This is a big dif­fer­ence to the phys­ic­al things. God can exist without the uni­verse but our uni­verse can­not exist without him.