How Do We Know There Is a God?

Q&A by the Reverend Doctor Durrell Watkins, Senior Pastor

Question: I am… a scientific person (civil engineer)… [To me] everything has an equation, an answer that can be proven… My question is: How does one know that God really exists if we cannot physically (visually) see Him?

Answer: If God is a person on a throne in the sky, then “He” will always feel distant and perhaps even unreal to us. But there are other ways of understanding God. Theologian Paul Tillich described God as the “Ground of Being”. Jesus said that God is “spirit”, and the word he used for spirit is the same word that can be used for wind or air or breath. St. Paul, quoting an ancient Greek poet, said that God is That in which we live and move and have our being. The writer of the New Testament book of 1^st John said, “God is love…”

If we think of God as just a bigger person with magical powers who answers some prayers and punishes misdeeds, then obviously the scientific mind (or any critical thinker) will have trouble embracing that image. But if as the mystics have always said (including Jesus and Paul), God is the Source of life, then we can see God in ourselves, in nature, in our loving relationships, in our creativity, in beauty or peace or joy.

I think of God as All-that-is, and I know that the Whole must be more than the sum of Its’ parts. God is what I call this All-in-all, but that is my choice. I could call It Spirit, or the Inward Light, or That in which we live and move and have our being, or the Ground of Being, or Love, or a thousand other things. God is simply my word for ultimate reality, and I believe in reality because I experience it.

My guess is that you see God (or Love or the Energy of life or the Web of existence… what’s in a name?) every day. Reason tells me that there is a Source, and faith tells me that that the Source is good. My choice is to call it God, but whatever you call it, I bet you already experience it in profound ways.

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If you have questions about faith, the bible, the church, or sexuality & spirituality, you can email your questions to durrell@sunshinecathedral.org, or go to the Ask the Reverend Durrell Watkins page and click on the link there. Rev. Durrell Watkins will answer your questions and publish the answers here and in the weekly SunBurst. Your name will always be withheld, so only the actual question and the response will be published.