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 is not a his­tor­i­cal source, but it illus­trates anoth­er kind of lim­it we see in the things around us. Every­thing 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 changes? 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 alter. 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)

Perfect

God is per­fect in all his attrib­ut­es. He is per­fect love, per­fect rightous­ness, absolute­ly good. In every qual­i­ty which we con­sid­er valu­able, God’s good­ness is com­plete. He gives us the deep and pure joy that a per­son tru­ly needs. 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) (NIV)

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

Unlimited

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 hearts, 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, some­thing bad or con­tra­dic­to­ry in itself or con­tra­dic­to­ry to his nature. His unlim­it­ed attrib­ut­es are con­nect­ed with deep good­ness and integri­ty.

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

Any­thing that is lim­it­ed 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).

Without a reason for its own existence

Exis­tence is a gift — it is some­thing we received. The exam­ple which comes clos­est to us is our own life. Once we were born and one day we will die. We live, but our life is depen­dent on many cir­cum­stances. We did not decide to live and we can­not decide whether we want to die or not. There are many con­di­tions and exter­nal rea­sons for our exis­tence. In oth­er words, our exis­tence does not con­tain its rea­son in itself. We are not inde­pen­dent. We ask, “Why do I exist?” and we have to look for the answer out­side of our­selves. With oth­er things in this uni­verse it is sim­i­lar. In the case of some things we can direct­ly observe their begin­ning and their end. They come and go, start to exist and per­ish. In case of oth­er things we can observe their change­abil­i­ty. Every­thing that alters is sub­ject to changes and is not total­ly inde­pen­dent in its exis­tence. Its life con­sists of sev­er­al peri­ods, which come and go, start and per­ish. So 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 sense.

In this regard the uni­verse can­not be more than the sum of the parts which form it. If every­thing in the uni­verse received its exis­tence as a gift, how can we claim some­thing else about the uni­verse itself?

God’s being is very dif­fer­ent. Because of his attrib­ut­es described above he does not depend on any­thing or any­body else. His own being is a suf­fi­cient rea­son for his exis­tence. Because he is unlim­it­ed, out­side space and time, he does not need a cre­ator. Lim­it­ed things need an ori­gin. God is the one who gives exis­tence and life. He cre­at­ed the uni­verse from noth­ing by 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) then it means that love belongs so deeply to his char­ac­ter that he can­not deny it. His love is not self-seek­ing. He does not need any­thing from us. He loves us for our sake.

He 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 are able to search for what is good beyond the frame of our ben­e­fit, the ben­e­fit of our fam­i­ly, or our peers. With God’s help we can even love 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 enabled him to do that?

If we turn to God then God can com­plete­ly trans­form our life. He enables us to live in truth and self­less love. Many peo­ple who met Jesus expe­ri­enced such a change. He invites us to expe­ri­ence a change of life which goes beyond human capa­bil­i­ties.

Conclusion

God is a suf­fi­cient answer for the exis­tence of our uni­verse and the deep ques­tions of our soul. Yet because of our lim­its we can­not under­stand every­thing about God. We can under­stand through his help every­thing that is nec­es­sary for find­ing him. In his love he shows him­self in many ways. God 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 a rela­tion­ship with him. In this way the answer of God involves 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 its rea­son but also its aim.

We do not know every­thing about him 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 — see The Gen­er­al Causal­i­ty Argu­ment (Con­tin­gency).

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