Dreamers’ Hub

A conversation with a child at church made me nervous and sweaty. I realized that children’s questions were the most profound and the hardest to answer.

Last Sunday, a member’s son asked me if I was watching “May Bukas Pa,” a local TV series aired on ABS- CBN. He asked me if the premise of the show is true- that “Bro,” the endearing term used by the seven year old protagonist to refer to Jesus, really exists and talks to kind young boys. I said yes, and explained that he won’t only talk to Santino, the miracle working child in the series, but to all other children if they will just pray.  Then he quipped, “it was not Jesus who talks to Santino, it was Big Brother!”

I just stood there dumbfounded with my mouth open.

The child’s doubt about Jesus made me realize the adult version of his question: Is there a God?

The world wonders if indeed a supreme being, the uncaused cause of everything there is exists. If he does, how may he be found and where?

It was a basic question that was hard to answer.

Consider this words from Jose P. Rizal, the Philippines’ foremost national hero:

We are entirely in accord in admitting the existence of God.

How can I doubt his when I am convinced of mine. Who so recognizes the effect recognizes the cause. To doubt God is to doubt one’s own conscience, and in consequence, it would be to doubt everything; and then what is life for?

Now then, my faith in God, if the result of a ratiocination may be called faith, is blind, blind in the sense of knowing nothing. I neither believe nor disbelieve the qualities which many attribute to him; before theologians’ and philosophers’ definitions and lucubrations of this ineffable and inscrutable being I find myself smiling.

Faced with the conviction of seeing myself confronting the supreme Problem, which confused voices seek to explain to me, I cannot but reply: ‘It could be; but the God that I foreknow is far more grand, far more good: Plus Supra!…

I believe in (revelation); but not in revelation or revelations which each religion or religions claim to possess. Examining them impartially, comparing them and scrutinizing them, one cannot avoid discerning the human ‘fingernail’ and the stamp of the time in which they were written…

No, let us not make God in our image, poor inhabitants that we are of a distant planet lost in infinite space. However, brilliant and sublime our intelligence may be, it is scarcely more than a small spark which shines and in an instant is extinguished, and it alone can give us no idea of that blaze, that conflagration, that ocean of light.

I believe in revelation, but in that living revelation which surrounds us on every side, in that voice, mighty, eternal, unceasing, incorruptible, clear, distinct, universal as is the being from whom it proceeds, in that revelation which speaks to us and penetrates us from the moment we are born until we die.

What books can better reveal to us the goodness of God, his love, his providence, his eternity, his glory, his wisdom? ‘The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork.”

Beautiful words from a beautiful mind. It helped clarify my own ideas about the existence of God.

I believe in God. I believe He created me and everything else in this world. I believe what the Bible says that only fools say there is no God.

When I was young, I believe that there is a God because my parents said so. As I grow older, my reasons became more than just that. Now I believe in God for deeper of resons.

I believe that there is a God because there was once a void in my heart that was filled when I believed. Money wasn’t able to fill that void. Education failed to fill that void. No person that came across my way was able to fill that void except God. Blaise Pascal may be right in saying, “there is a God- shaped vacuum inside every man’s heart that can only be filled by God Himself.”

I believe in God because when I look at creation I see complexity and beauty. Such complexity and beauty could not have come from accident. It could have only come from an intelligent designer who made them all in their vast array.

I believe that God exists because everything I see are all real and if they are there must be someone who made them real. Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing can come into existence unless someone brings it into existence so there must be a God that transcends time who created them all.

Lastly, I believe that there is a God because the Bible says there is. The Hindus believe that the existence of God cannot be inferred from mere sense perception (pratyaksa) or from mere logic (anumana). Rather, the existence of God can be understood from the revealed scriptures (sabda). We Christians believe this too. We can never know God unless He will choose to reveal Himself. We have that revelation in the Bible which is God’s timeless Word.

I have a problem though. How would I explain all these these to that member’s son on Sunday? (Deep sigh). Kids…kids…kids.

Popularity: 33% [?]