OK. It’s time for the rubber to meet the
road. We’ve been trying to set up the
parameters surrounding the possibility of doing an experiment that would
demonstrate God’s existence. First, we
worked on defining a question that the experiment would be designed to
answer. Here is the question we have
settled on:
“What would
Jesus have to do to prove to you that He is still alive, still God, still
active in people’s lives, and can be known by those who seek Him; proof sufficient that you would live the
rest of your life on His terms?”
To get to
this point, we discussed a lot of key points.
I’d like to summarize them here before we talk specifically about one
way we can approach an actual experiment based on this question.
1. There can be a
practical benefit to performing an experiment about something you are not sure
of…or even things you are sure of!
[see here]
2. Based on the way
Christians describe God, and the way He describes Himself in the Bible
(assuming there is “such a” God), it seemed like we could test out some of
God’s statements in an “experiment.” [see here]
3. We discussed the
need to create a carefully crafted question to define our experiment. We talked about the need to be open-minded
with respect to this experiment if we want to conduct it. [see here]
4. We discussed how
any result we might get from our experiment will be an answer to a very
specific question with respect to God.
[see here]
5. We discussed what
might prevent us from even attempting an experiment in the first place: that we believed the whole concept was
unreasonable. [see here]
6. We addressed the
whole related issue of why God doesn’t (or can’t?) make Himself obvious to
us. [see here]
7. We went back to
some old Biblical stories to illustrate some of the responses we human beings
have when God tries to “make Himself obvious”.
[see here]
8. I, somewhat
foolishly, suggested that the existence of “free will” might be one way in
which God tries to make Himself obvious.
[see here]
9. We pointed out
that this experiment was going to be personal.
Also, importantly, God has His own plans that could affect our ability
to perform an experiment. [see here]
10. We stressed that
you absolutely should not do the experiment just to gain information. You have to be prepared for the possible
positive results, even if you think there is zero chance you’ll see positive
results. [see here]
With that
background, I think we can dive in.
Without any further ado, let’s propose a specific experiment:
A. I
buy a lottery ticket and win the lottery.
This is my proposed
answer to the question posed above. It
has some excellent appeal, doesn’t it? I
mean, not only do I get to figure out if God exists, I also become rich. So, I will conduct my experiment in this
way: I’ll go to the nearest drug store,
let God control the random selection of numbers by the machine, and buy a
lottery ticket. If Jesus is still alive
and really cares about me personally, then He will make it so that the winning
numbers are selected (after all, He does know the future, doesn’t He)? If I win the lottery, then I will believe in
Jesus and serve Him for the rest of my life.
Oh, and I’ll give 10% of my winnings to the poor.
Well, I hope
by now you can recognize that such an approach is wrong on many levels. But first let me say this: it is
simply not risky enough – at least certainly not for me. People win the lottery all the time. I don’t know what the odds are, but whatever
they are, they are finite. Personally,
at least, there is no way I’m going to put my personal allegiance on the line
in a game of chance. There is some
chance of winning the lottery, and by conducting this experiment, I am putting
myself in the position of serving Jesus Christ for the rest of my life, whether
He is real or not. That seems like a
really bad idea. I believe the thinking
behind this kind of an approach is that if I win the lottery, then at least I
get something positive to balance out having to live the rest of my life as a
committed follower of Jesus Christ.
Well, I think it’s a bad trade.
If it was
reasonable to go this route at all, then I would suggest a much more stringent
and much more impossible approach. For
example, how about this:
B. I win the lottery without buying a lottery ticket.
Now we’re
talking about something that really seems impossible. At least from the impossibility standpoint,
this might start qualifying as a miracle.
But, of
course, there are other problems with this approach. I hope you can see by now that you can’t just
dream up something for God to do and expect Him to do it. We have to figure out what God wants to do. I mean, you can attempt the experiment in “B”
above, but if nothing happens, it doesn’t mean anything. Plus, how long do you wait? Maybe you should add “today” to “B”. And if that is the sum total of the
experiment you’re expecting to run, then you might as well not even do it. That’s not a serious attempt at all.
So what does
God want to do, if anything?
Well, how would we figure out what
another person wants to do? Seems like a reasonable starting place for
consideration. For example, if you wanted
to do something nice for your spouse, how would you figure out what they might
enjoy? How would you figure that
out? I would suggest there are at least
four ways:
A. You could ask them what they would like.
B. You could observe the kinds of things they do
and infer what they like.
C. You could ask friends of your spouse what
kinds of things they think your spouse would like.
D. You could read things they might have written
(letters, diary) and see if they expressed what they like.
I’m not sure how well this whole
analogy works. In fact, it seems a bit
odd now that I’ve written it out. But
I’d just like use it to help guide our discussion going forward. Next we’ll design at least one experiment
based on Option D above.
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