Questioning my faith in God

Introduction: Many people, especially those of the younger generation, have started to doubt their faith in today’s digital and electronic world where everything is on a screen and answers are just a click away. To search for solutions to their enigmas or questions, young people often use Google to find advice for their physical, psychological, social, medical, familial and even faith questions. They use text, chat, Google Earth, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, or download an App to find what they are looking for.
Young people find less and less time to think of God nowadays, their head is on their palm, they do not look any more up to the source of life for solutions.
Some may pretend that their faith has deceived them or failed them in fulfilling their dreams or in making them a better person. They do not see any wrong on themselves doing what they do; “I am a good person,” they say, “why do I need a god?” Some others accuse their parents, the society, the Church, their teachers at school our university, and their education at Catholic or Christian Schools of fading their future. They say: “Although I believed, practiced and prayed for a long time, I did not see any change in my life; on the contrary, I often feel lost and all around me I see, poverty, killing and greed”.
Thus, some answers to today’s lack of faith are a necessity.
My essay could perhaps help to respond to some doubtful and -skeptical people, those who are scandalized and secularized or an agnostic family member or friend.
To make it easy to follow my work, I put a number before each new idea and bolded it. These numbers and bolded words will walk you through my train of thinking.
I divided it on two parts:
A- Is there really a Creator?
B- The risks of a Creator
A- Is there really a Creator?
1) Scientists of different fields, including physicists, and cosmologists, will tell you that the universe came into being at some point. There is no doubt on this fact. Material (water, earth, air, wood, oxygen etc) cannot start by itself. They do have within themselves neither the principle nor the final end or purpose of their existence. They cannot create their own being. The universe came into existence. (1) But who initiated it? Or how did it come to life? If we agree with many who believe in God, we say, “God is the Creator of all things”. He began all things. He started it all.
But God, we argue, does not need to create. The unlimited does not need the limited. The eternal does not need the temporal. The ever-living does not need a mortal. The Creator of the whole universe (trillions and trillions of creatures, stars, materials, plants, insects, fish, animals and humans to mention very few) does not need a nothingness like me and you made of dust and earth. God is self-sufficient. He does not need to have anything. He is a purpose by himself and to himself.
2) How did material come to exist? How did I come to be a living creature? Let us go back to the very beginning of the world. I want to know, and this is a valid question, whom and where I am in this universe of many creatures!
“In an unchanging universe a beginning in time is -something that has to be imposed by some being outside the universe; there is no physical necessity for a beginning, One can imagine that God created the universe at literally any time in the past” (A brief history of time, by Stephen Hawking”).
Scientists depart from the fact that the universe exists then. They cannot know what was before the universe has started. They only can say that it started. Let us study how it started and study what it really started. We means how every single thing on earth and in the heavens has started. Scientists study what they see. They work meticulous experiments and they research when it started, how it started and where it could have started. All their studies and research should be based on solid evidence.
3) Studies and research, for years, has given us with many theories. The last one is “the Big Bang” This is a theory that speaks about the early stage of the universe that occurred over 13 billion years ago. It speaks about the explosion of a first star that initiated the expansion of the universe to today’s trillions of stars. These stars expanded and still expand in the universe to the infinite; our world then is getting larger and bigger. Scientists tried to discover how all that has taken place. Where this first star did came from, how the explosion took place and why. They disagree on what initially caused the Big Bang. They recognized that material do not have its own principle to be by itself. Is there an intelligent promoter of it all? Is there a creator, a God? Scientists failed to define God. God is not in their scientific domain. The beginning of the universe is the domain of Metaphysics (Philosophy) or Theology.
4) Many Philosophers tried to discover who made all things. In fact, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Anselm, St. Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Immanuel Kant…sought to define the supreme power, God. St. Augustine, as a philosopher, issues this challenge: “Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air distending and diffusing itself, question the beauty of the sky. . . question all these realities. All respond: "See, we are beautiful." Their beauty is a profession [confessio]. These beauties are subject to change. Who made them if not the Beautiful One [Pulcher] who is not subject to change?”(2). An honest mind and sincere researcher can find the source of all things. In fact, man is made in a way that always looks for the ultimate truth. All our experiments, research, and studies seek this truth. Humanity has always tried to find the ultimate and full truth. The ultimate truth that man is looking for is God. Again our mind, sincere and honest, can find this ultimate truth. It can find God as a supreme power (3). “ Though human reason is, strictly speaking, truly capable by its own natural power and light of attaining to a true and certain knowledge of the one personal God, who watches over and controls the world by his providence, and of the natural law written in our hearts by the Creator; yet there are many obstacles which prevent reason from the effective and fruitful use of this inborn faculty”(4)
5) But who really God is? Only by complementing reason with faith can we come to know the full truth. So beside a philosophical and corrected mind that could guide us to God, as did Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Anselm, St. Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Immanuel Kant etc we have a book, the Bible, that tells us that God is the one who revealed Himself to humanity.
In fact, only God can tell about whom He is God. The Bible reveals God’s identity to us in many ways. God used sometimes images; other times extraordinary natural phenomenon, historical facts or real time, we find them in the different books of the Bible: the Law, the Prophecies, the Historical books, Poetry and Wisdom books.
6) In the first book of the Bible, Genesis and from the very first verse, God is called “Elohim”. (We read: Bereishit bara Elohim et hashamayim ve'et ha'aretz, which means “In the beginning Elohim (God) created Heaven and Earth”). Gen. 1:1. Elohim is the plural of “El” or “Eloah” in Hebrew. It is used as a singular of the plural as a sign of reverence to God in the Hebrew Torah. It comes originally from the Ugarit language EL that indicated the god of the Canaanites. As Aramaic was also one of the first languages of the Hebrews a Semitic language, it comes also then from different Semitic ones: the Aramaic ALOHA, the Syriac ALOHO, and the Arabic ILAH and ALLAH.
Note that in the Semitic languages up mentioned, the “E”, “A” and “I” are pronounced about the same. Example, we call Prophet Elijah or iIijah or Alijah depending if you are saying it in Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac or Arabic. The same also with the “O” and “U” they are about the same and interwork with each other and with the “A, E, I”.
7) There are no vowels in the Semitic languages, and that is why they interact when pronounced in different Semitic languages or dialects. Notice then how the singular name of “ELOAH” in Hebrew becomes “ALOHA” in Eastern Aramaic, “ALOHO” in the Western one, the Syriac, and ILLAH or “ALLAH” in Arabic.
If you take the vowels from these languages you find a common letter that did not change the “L”. The “H” is not always pronounced. The “L” is the common old name of God in theses Semitic languages pounced, as we noted, “EL”, “AL” or “IL”. These (EL, AL or IL) are also representing the article “The” in the Semitic languages. God then is the “The”, meaning a specific, definite person; he is not “A”, an indefinite person. “The” means “He who is He”. In fact, when Moses asked God what he should say to the Children of Israel when asked about God’s name by Pharos, God told him: “I Am who I Am”.
We find the letter “L” in French, Italian, Spanish with a vowel (e,a,i). We say Le/La in French to design a definitive masculine or feminine: Le bebe, La fille. In Italian we say: IL bamibino, La bambina. In Spanish we say: EL Bebe, La mujer. It seems then that the etymology of the French, Italian and Spanish definitive articles come from the Semitic language.
8) The Bible tells us then from the first verse in Genesis, the first book of the Torah, that the name of the Creator and the Author of the universe is “L”, Elohim in pural.
In the Bible we read that God created everything out of nothing. Please read the first three chapters of the book of Genesis. The word Create comes from the Latin language, CREARE, meaning to cause, to come into existence, to bring into being. The matter cannot by itself bring itself to be as all scientists agree. It can reproduce when it exists, but it does not come to existence by itself.
So, who created (caused into existence) the first atom which divided into sub-atoms, protons, electrons, and neutrons? Again the Bible brings us to a super Powerful, Omni Intelligent Being called “Elohim”, or God. When we say that God created from nothing, we mean to say that God brought existence from nothing. Exist comes from Latin word EXISTERE, which means to stand forth, to appear, to be.
In matter, the atom is the basic building block of all elements, and molecules are the smallest of all substances. Atoms combine chemically with other atoms to form the molecule of a substance. Matter changes form, but does not disappear.
9) The story of creation or existence was a popular verbal and written story before the Bible. Though not to be taken literally, we believe that the story still conveys a truth about creation. Sacred scriptures are recognized by the main monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) as the Word of God.
Because it is the Word of God, let us try to read what scientists and theologians found in the Biblical story of Creation.
When God creates, He takes care of his creation, because God is Love. Love never abandons what it creates. When you invent something, or make a beautiful painting as an artist, you are proud of it, you take care of it, you tell others about it and you always perfect it; you never think to destroy it or throw it in the garbage. It is your beloved creation.
10) The Big Bang, today recognized by scientists worldwide, is compatible with what the Bible expresses to us about creation. The Bible do not speak of the Big Bang, but it speaks about the cause to be (creation) of the material, the plants, the animal and man. Again, it is the work of scientists to study when it started and to find the first cell that had life. If Scientists can point to the date of the first plant, the first insect, the first fish or animal and the first human, if they estimate that the Big Bang occurred over 15 billion years ago, if they gave some thousands of years to the first man, how old then is the first atom that exploded and expanded?
11) So, read with me, from the Torah, (the Torah, in Hebrew, is the first five books of the Bible) on how ELOHIM, God created the world: chapter 1-3 of Genesis. We read that God created everything out of nothing. We said that from this nothing everything began to exist by the power of Elohim, the Creator, and God. We read also, in the Bible, that God used what he created, called dust or earth, and formed different things: the material, (material is anything made of matter consisted of one or more substance) water, air, plants, fish, the birds, insects, wild animals and everything even man are material. Scientists can mix and combine materials and substances to form other kinds of materials, today they even clone.
Notice, please, that there is a distinction in the Torah between the creation of these different materials, including animals and man. Only to man does God give a living breath -- “ruah or ru’ach” in Hebrew, “pneuma” in Greek, “Spiritus” in Latin. Spiritus or Ruah is the breath, the living breath, or the spirit.
12) So notice carefully, that while all materials and animals are made from dust or earth, that man is the only one who is formed from dust or earth but also with another dimension. God gives him a living breath, a spirit, a ruah. Because of that spirit, man possessed an important and eternal gift different from any other creature. God says that He made man in his image: “God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him, male and female he created them.” (5)
This “ruah or ru’ach” or spirit given to man does not mean a biological life. Plants, animals, fish, insects, etc. have a biological life, which means that they are living creatures. “Ruah or ru’ach” means more than a biological life that science cannot clone today. Man, as created in the image of God, was given the eternal spirit of ELOHIM, God. Again, man is then very different from any other creatures made only of material.
As a biological living creature like others, man needs to drink, to eat, to grow, to reproduce, etc. As a “ruah”, a spirit, man has a spiritual life and relation with his Creator. This dimension gives man the possibility to accept or refuse God. It means a full freedom. Man is then responsible for his actions. Man progresses by an act of free will; when the plants, animals, etc. follow their instincts, they do not choose in the same way as we do, created with free will.
It is true that man in his biological element (body) is not free from the necessities and the rules of nature; he follows the rules that were made by God, he eats, he drinks, he sleeps, and dies, like any other animal. But through his spiritual element (ruah, spirit, soul) he is free and responsible. So he can be held accountable for his choices.
13) In the Bible, we also read that while God created other creatures in groups, he created man and woman individually. - Of all God’s creation, he only created man and woman as individuals, as unique persons, giving them the names Adam (from “adama”, in Hebrew, earth) and Eve (means a living, she has also a ruah, a spirit and she is the image of God).
God calls man, in his wisdom, to give names to the different creatures, which means that he made man responsible for his beautiful creation on Earth and in the skies. God thus makes man a creator and an inventor of things. Man uses the different substances to mix and produce and add to the beauty of the creation; he creates.
Again, science tells us that all has started by the Big Bang. The Bible tells us, God is the Creator. It means that God has created the very first atom, the god particle called “Higgs boson” after the scientist Peter Higgs, announced on March 13, 2013. God cared for it until the moment of the Big Bang and will continue to sustain all of creation until the end of the world. Science gives dates, how, and what, the Bible gives us the Who.
14) God is eternal. Time does not exist for God and He live in the Omni present. Billions of years or one day is the same for God. Everything was created in the present time of God and through God’s love and care. God always creates; He never stopped. Man continues to find new creatures in the present time and will continue to discover new ones. God continues sustaining and creating.
We read also in the Bible that God created man at the beginning as a one person and not as a group. He did not create Adam one, Adam two, Adam three, etc., but rather one Adam and one Eve, so as to tell us that those humans are equal in front of God. The Bible tells us that God created them male and female in his image. It means that they have the same “ruah” of God, that they are then equal.
The first chapters of the Bible tell us that Cain jealousy kills his brother Abel.
God made us all equal to love each other and not to kill. God asks three questions after the first sin in the Eden Garden. The same questions are asked after Cain kills his brother Abel: Where are you? What did you do? Where is your husband, where is your brother? These questions emphasize our responsibility for our choices, reminding us that we belong to each other and that we are called to be stewards of creation. Hubert Revees, a famous Canadian scientist, says that man has destroyed half of the species on earth since his existence (6). When Man still kills and destroys, God still creates.
15) The Bible says that man and woman were naked. They are naked before God, and are also naked to each other, transparent; it emphasizes equality between man and woman. They know each other perfectly; nothing is hidden, and there are no secret plans. They share the same past and same destiny, in the present and the future. They are together now and always to build their lives. We also read that they leave father and mother and they should become one body and that no human can put asunder or separate what God has joined and united.
It is after the sin that they discover that they are naked and they feel that they need to cover themselves. It means that by their personal choice, they start to separate, to have hidden secrets and individual plans that would destroy equality, unity, solidarity, love and their future together. After the sin, they start to hide from God and to hide from each other. By their own choice and with their full responsibility, they begin to distance themselves from the will of God, the One who gave them everything freely. They left the Garden of Eden to follow their own free will and to live their own ways away from God.
16) To live their own ways, the Bible tells us, Adam and Eve were tempted by the serpent that represents Satan (from Greek, satanas, the adversary). They wanted to be like God, to know good and evil. To know what is good and what is bad is not wrong, but we should discover it in the right way, through God who is the Good, rather than through the devil who wanted to destroy what is good, just, fair, wonderful, and beautiful.
It may be just a story that wants to tell us that man wanted to possess something for himself alone, to be completely independent, to dominate everything, and to work for his personal interest. Greed is emphasized, rather than love. Man’s motives take on a criminal aspect (from “Cemo” in Latin, “crimen” a cry, “Krema” in Greek, intellectual mistake, or offense against the community). It is a refusal of God who is Love, and seeks to bring judgment on everything, when God is the true and fair judge. So as to live his own way, man chose to separate himself from others. In doing wrong to others, man separated himself for his real image God.
In separating yourself from others and thus worshiping yourself, you separate yourself from the source of all good, God, and you destroy the purpose for which you have been created. Sin changes your nature. God, the source of our divine nature, will never tire of calling you back to himself, because God is love and regain your real nature; we are called to live love. God then had to reverse the course of evil. He had to redeem and save (Redemption, Salvation) his own creatures, ELOHIM, as we read in the first chapter of Genesis, saw that the entirety of his creation was fundamentally good, not bad. Called to live love man is called to enjoy the creatures in harmony with each one of them (7).
17) The Bible does not give us a detailed scientific description of God’s essence; but the Old and New Testaments help us to discover him slowly and slowly. In Jesus, we discover that God is “Our Father Who art in Heaven” and that He is love. We need generations of education; God educates man to discover him, again, slowly and slowly. In fact, the Bible tells us that God presents himself to man, He reveals himself, REVELATION. The purpose of the Old and the New Testament is to tell us the story of our salvation by God. It takes us from the complete destruction that man, by his own personal will, has initiated. God who is love will do the impossible to save man. God does save man at the great price of Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection. He gives him ways to continue to find him through the Sacraments in a community of love, the Church, the new Garden of Eden.
Love redeems. If God is not love, He ceases to be God. God is Love, and because He loves his creatures, God should come to save man, made in his image. It is in the nature of God to always love, forgive and redeem, at the cost of everything. In his eternal love, we find the mystery of the Incarnation, Death and Resurrection. This is what the Bible tells us about God. It helps us to find who really God is.
18) So why would God create the world if he knew that this could put him in a great risk? Love is always a risk. The first risk was when God created man free, giving him the choice to renounce even Him, as God. Freedom gives us the capacity for Holiness and evil. It is all about the choice that we make.
Here is another way to consider it. Why do my father and mother want me? My father and my mother can stay together for life, they can enjoy the house, the money that they earn, and they can have a lot of vacations and a lot of free time and happiness together. Why should they renounce a lot of these things and instead devote time to caring for me? I may betray their trust and love. Many children do. The answer is that Parents want to share their love. I am a living sign of their love. I am their love. God who is Love cannot do less. He created me out of Love, in his eternal image. He intends for me to share his eternal happiness. He created me for Heaven.
19) We read in the Second Vatican Council document, “The dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he is called to communion with God. This invitation to converse with God is addressed to man as soon as he comes into being. For if man exists it is because God has created him through love, and through love continues to hold him in existence. He cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and entrusts himself to his creator.”(8)
The purpose of God’s creation of everything then is to share his love. He created them male and female, as we read in Genesis. I am the purpose of God, and my happiness is his vision of love for me, so he will do anything to bring me to his happiness. This is the reason of the Incarnation of the Son of God. When I lost my way he brought me back. “There is no better love than to give your life for the one that you love”. (9) God loves us.
We read in the Catechism of the Catholic Church no 3:1 “Created in God's image and called to know and love him, the person who seeks God discovers certain ways of coming to know him. These are also called proofs for the existence of God, not in the sense of proofs in the natural sciences, but rather in the sense of "converging and convincing arguments", which allow us to attain certainty about the truth. These "ways" of approaching God from creation have a twofold point of departure: the physical world, and the human person.”
Man can live without acknowledging God, because God did not impose himself in the order of a necessity, but in the order of free choice. We can choose God, and thus live in harmony with ourselves, with all the creatures and with God, through God and in God.. We can also refuse God, thus choosing ourselves and separating ourselves from anything and anybody, to stay within ourselves forever. The Bible calls this Hell, where there is no love, no purpose, no end. Again, it is always a question of a personal choice.
B) The risks of a Creator !
1) Today nobody questions the historicity of the person of Jesus Christ. Historians, scientists and archeologists recognize that this man existed. He was born in Bethlehem, died in Jerusalem, was abandoned by his disciples, and condemned by the civil and religious authorities to be crucified under Pontius Pilate, a Roman Governer..
How is it possible that a person considered by many as a failure, who finished his life in one of the most horrible deaths on a cross, who did not leave any writings, whose life is reported mostly by his disciples in the Gospels, could have such a great success after this seemingly horrible failure?
How could historians be interested in such a failed person, who failed himself and the people who followed him, his disciples? How could these disciples tell an untrue story or create a big lie? Who dies for a lie? How could thousands and thousands die for a lie; the lie that says that Jesus died and is raised? It is really impossible.
And how this invented story brought his disciples to announce this impossibility to the Jewish, Roman and Greek world of that time and pretend to be heard? All these people were against such story? How could his disciples announce Jesus Christ is raised without using any technique than their preaching and accepting martyrdom? If they died for their faked imaginative creation, why did they do that? How could thousands, then hundred thousand and hundreds of millions follow their teaching when they know that persecution and death were awaiting them?
Still today Christians are persecuted and killed. How could a pagan Roman Empire after killing thousand and thousand of them during three hundred years changes completely and became Christian. How could this Christianity become one of the most religions that influenced the world civilization based on its teaching on a man who died and that his disciples say that he lives?
2) So as to understand Christ and other important religious figures, let us consider some of them:
Moses, born in Egypt, died at old age after he freed his people (the Hebrew, Jews) from the Egyptian slavery and “passed over the Red Sea to Sinai” and showed them their promised land from Mount Nebo in Jordan.
Buddha, India died peacefully at the age of 80 surrounded by his disciples, a large number of Buddhist monks and nuns.
Confucius, China, was over 70 years old when he died after returning from Lou where he was exiled. He formed a group of disciples and gave them his teachings.
Mohammed, Saudi Arabia, a religious and political chef in Arabia, called his disciples to convert the world to Islam with the Jihad. His disciples invaded the surrounding countries and imposed their faith on others. He wrote the Koran and died at the age of 62.
Jesus is the only one who died young, at the age of 33 years old on the cross as a criminal. He did not give any written teaching to his disciples. He preached openly to everybody. He did not finish his work with his apostles; he left them in suspense when he died on the cross. His disciples were very disappointed by his death. They may have regretted “wasting” three years of following him. After dying on the cross, he failed their expectations. They were scared of the Roman and Jewish authorities who could accuse them and hurt them and eventually killed many of them. His Resurrection continued Jesus’ failure on the cross. They were not moved, nor did they understand the purpose. They wanted to return back to their old profession, fishermen; “I am going for fishing”, said Peter. “We cannot continue to follow a deceitful person; we were expecting more from him,” discussed the two disciples on their way to Emmaus. (10)
Philip Schaff, a famous historian, writes “How, in the name of logic, common sense, and experience, could a deceitful, selfish, depraved man have invented, and consistently maintained from the beginning to end, the purest and noblest character known in history with the most perfect air of truth and reality?” (11)
It is only after the descent of the Holy Spirit at the Pentecost that the disciples started to understand Jesus’ identity and their mission on Earth as fishers of men.
In fact, at the moment of the Pentecost, they started to understand Jesus’ teaching to love each other. He told them to love their enemies and forgive their persecutors. Jesus did not leave them a book to read or a reference to look at other than himself, his own life with them. The disciples had only one way to continue the unwritten teaching of Jesus: by word and living example: imitators of Christ. They needed first to experience and practice his life. They wanted to know if their lives had a meaning, a future and a purpose. Then and after years of this experience of the new life, some of them started to compose the teachings on papers, the Letters of St. Paul, the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles…
3) Historians, Scholars, and theologians, non believers, Jewish and others who do not want to believe in Jesus questioned who could this person be?
No Jewish person could claim the identity “I AM”. The Jews knew exactly what “I AM” means. They wanted to kill Jesus for saying it. Jesus, as a Jew, also knew what it meant.. If Jesus did not say that he is before Abraham, the one who came from Above, the Son of God, the one who forgives sins, the one who will sit at the right hand of God, the one who will come on the clouds, he would have not been condemned by the High Priests to death.
4) People were amazed how he could walk over the water, calm the storm, forgive sins, open the eyes of who were born blind and the ears of who were deaf and raised the dead. They could not believe that he could rise after one of the most horrible deaths.
Jesus did not do all this to gain power or to become famous. He had power already and he refused any honor: “Do not tell anybody,” he used to say after performing a miracle.
The only answer would be that he really was something else. Was he really the God who visited the earth to save the world, the “Lamb of God” predicted by the Prophets of the Old Testament?
5) If God is Love, God would come to earth for those He created in His image. God’s creation was astray. God cannot be Love if He does not forgive, redeem and correct the destruction of his image. God should win over evil. Evil should be defeated. If evil wins over God, evil will be then god.
After his Resurrection, Jesus did not present himself to the Religious Authority of his time, the High Priests, who condemned him to death. He did not have his revenge of the High Priests and the Pharisees in presenting himself to Pilate, Herod or to Caesar. He presented himself to the frightened disciples who could not understand yet why he died first or why he did not come down from the cross to save himself.
Jesus did not create a religion, but a real faith in God his Father who sent him as a Son by the working of the Holy Spirit incarnated in Mary a holy lady of Nazareth.
6) The Church, the community of his disciples and all those who believed, is a community of people who live their faith. The Church is a community of sinners and not of saints who try to follow the one who died on the cross. Faith should never become merely a ritual experience or a static way of life. It should be a dynamic and living experience of God in me and in you, in the community of Faith. Faith can fail any person who does not live itg the exact example of Jesus of Nazareth.
Jesus came with a power over sin. He did not want to kill but to offer his life to the end. He stopped even the killing of animals as a sacrifice for divinity. He became the sacrifice. We can know the True God through the life of Jesus and not through science and experiment. Through Jesus we can know and love His creation and the reality of the Incarnation. We cannot know God with hatred and wars. God is known through his love. Love your enemies, taught Jesus (12). The love of God is known and lived through faith. Faith is not made of atoms, and thus cannot be put under a microscope.
7) The Holy Scriptures, although historical books, are not intended to be read as history books, but rather with a lens of loving faith. Faith touches eternity; love is eternal.
The Holy Scriptures tells us that God is not a person far away in Heaven, but a living and loving Father, Son and Holy Spirit that gives Himself for love because God is love and Love is life eternal.
8) When the Holy Scriptures tells us in the book of Genesis that God created us, man and woman, in his image, this emphasizes the beauty of all human life, in every stage of life. Because in each person is a reflection of Divine Love, the Church proposes a “seamless garment” understanding of the sanctity of human life, from conception to natural death.
God wanted to bring us back to our source as image of his Father, eternal persons. We will live with God for ever in his Kingdom of love after an earthly life. This is why we exist. He made us for him.
9) In fact the word “Exist” means to be and to persist in time and over time and beyond any space. God exists, meaning God has no beginning and no end. “God exists” means “He IS”. The Holy Scriptures read “I AM”. God is eternal.
God gives us existence, meaning he put me in time and over time and space. Today I am on earth, tomorrow I am in Heaven. Death thus lost its meaning because of the act of Incarnation of the Son who restored to us the “Image” of God the Father.
10) Today scientists discovered that the universe had more or less a history of 15 billion years and as large as 50 billion years light; our earth is an ordinary planet that turns around the sun in an universal galaxy that has many hundred billions of stars. We as humans are like a grain of sand loved by the Creator of the whole universe. This Creator cannot be but LOVE, otherwise there is no meaning to “I AM”. This “I AM”, because He is Love, He became man to save us from ourselves and restore love to LOVE.
Only love can know what love is, experience love, appreciate love, and understand love.
11) Science can see the effects of love, the physical, psychological, social transformation that love produces in a person who is loved or unloved. But science alone cannot experience the reality of love. It is faith that can help us to experience the reality of a living Love.
Love reveals itself within us. For this reason, religions look to find Divinity in within the human being. Through meditation, the Sufis of all religions find the real God who revealed himself to them because they looked for him out of love. They found him in the loving Son of God, Jesus.
12) Jesus told us about God, his Father because “No one knows the Father but the one who came from the Father, who came from above”.(13) Faith in Jesus manifested God to the world.
13) It started with the work of fishermen, who became fisher of men. When you love God, and listen with love to God, God reveals himself, just as Jesus tells us: “He who loves me… I and the Father will make our dwelling in him”. (14)
14) The essence of our Christian religion is that we can know the real God through Jesus Christ, the Son of God. “He who sees me, Jesus says to Philip, saw the Father”. (15)
15) The Holy Scriptures cannot explain to us the entirety of God, for it is impossible for finite being to completely comprehend the Infinite. But the Holy Scriptures give us many means to help us encounter God, for God is truly present in the Word.
16) Jesus, the Son of Man, spoke to us in parables about God and told us that God is “Our Father who art in Heaven,” who provides our daily bread and forgives our trespasses as long as we forgive others. He tells us that God is near us, in us and within us to the end of the world.(16)
I hope that this treaty will help you to redefine your faith in God, if it did tell others about your discovery and commit yourself at the service of Love, who is God.
May God in his love open your heart and guide your life, he who is:”The way, the truth and the life” (17)
Amen
Notes:
1) Please see “A Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawking, p.5-14.
2) St. Augustine, Sermo 241, 2:PL 38,1134.
3) On the Catechism of the Catholic Church we read no 27 “The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for.”
4) Pius XII, Humani generis, 561:DS 3875
5) Genesis 1: 27.
6) Interview on the French TV5, Program Librairie
7) that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.22For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. 23And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.…Romans 8:21-23
8) Gaudium Et Spes