Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. John 8:32

Suppose you are a young man whose best friend has a sister whom you have heard about but never met.  Your friend describes her jet-black hair, and lovely eyes, her outgoing vivacious personality and her fun-loving disposition.  The more you hear about her, the more interested you become.  Week after week, he tells you about her, and you find yourself wanting to meet her.  So you say, “How about introducing me to her?”  And he replies, “I don’t think you believe she really exists.”  You reply, “That’s dumb; of course, I believe she exists.  Remember, you showed me her picture!”   Should that happen, you would begin to wonder about your friend’s sanity.

Now, apply that same logic to the individual who denies the existence of God.  For a long, long time men and women have talked about God and His interaction with men and women.  Then when Jesus was born, He told us that He was the image of the Father.  “Anyone who has seen me,” He told Philip, “has seen the Father” (John 14:9).  Yet in spite of this some refuse to acknowledge God even exists.

Friedrich Nietzsche was one of them.  At the close of the last century, he declared that God was dead–not much different from declaring He had never existed.  In simple terms, he put God entirely out of existence and life.  And how satisfying was this position?  Well, Nietzsche died in a mental institution, if that answers the question.   Yet there is something which baffles me.  I once visited the village where Nietzsche lived and worked during the very time he came to the conclusion that there is no active, personal God.  It is located in the Alps, and on a beautiful lake.  I walked the very path around the lake where Nietzsche walked and saw exactly what he saw.  The autumn leaves were gorgeous; the snow-clad mountain peaks surrounding the village were breathtaking.  I saw them.  Nietzsche didn’t.  When people refuse to see the evidence, a blindness sets in which numbs the mind and heart as well as dims the eyes.

Francis Schaeffer wrote of Nietzsche, “I am convinced that when Nietzsche came to Switzerland and went insane, it was not because of venereal disease, though he did have this disease.  Rather, it was because he understood that insanity was the only philosophic answer if the infinite-personal God does not exist.”

Let’s face it:  Everyone who pushes God from His existence doesn’t end up bereft of his senses, but he or she does end up separated from God, just as was Nietzsche, and without the hope of life after death.

The fundamental axiom of existence is God, something which science, or philosophy, or psychology fails to recognize.  The fact is that the carnal or fleshly man is at war with God; but denying God, either philosophically or practically, leaves nothing which satisfies.

Today there are vast numbers of men and women who intellectually acknowledge God’s existence but live as practical atheists.  Their hearts are in rebellion and their actions deny the truth of what they assert.

“Mommy, why don’t we go to church like my friend does?” a little girl asked her mother. “Well, dear,” replied the mother, “we don’t believe in God.”  There was a pause and the little girl asked a second question, “Mommy, does God know we don’t believe in Him?”

Interested in getting some answers first hand for yourself?  Don’t take someone else’s word for it. Go to God’s word. The source itself.

Resource reading: 1 John 2:28-3:3