Last time I talked about the fundamental reality of all existence – that God is. While belief in a pre-existent God or gods was assumed by everyone in ancient times, much of modern American culture – especially among the Millennial and younger generations is unaffiliated with any religious institution. A large majority of Americans still has some vague belief in God, but it is largely uninformed. Therefore, a wide range of beliefs about who God is, what He is, and what our relationship with Him may be.

This raises the next question about God and our own existence that must be confronted. How do we know what we know about God? Is “God” a man-centered, man-made belief that is meant to give meaning where none plausibly can be found in our immediate surroundings? All animals are driven by instinct to propagate and survive. But we humans, once we satisfy the immediate demands of survival: drinking, eating, and staying sheltered from the elements soon think of transcendent things. We want to know why we are here, and what our purpose and destiny may be.

The four fundamental issues that form every worldview, according to the late apologist Ravi Zacharias, are origins, meaning, morality and destiny. All of the great world religions have stories or scriptures that account for these four elements. That humans have a felt need to understand these four elements sets us apart from all other animals. This need cannot merely be derived from a naturalistic source, because they can neither be explained from material or perceptible sources nor would materialism logically cause us to look beyond what we perceptibly are. There must be Something, or better yet, Someone who put this transcendent need within us.

Even the brilliant, anti-Christian French philosopher, Voltaire admitted, “If there is no God, someone would have to invent Him.” But of course, it is impossible for anyone to invent the Source of their existence. An effect, as Aristotle taught, can never be the source of its cause. There must be an Uncaused First Cause and an unmoved Prime Mover behind all that is and acts in this universe.

I mentioned last time that virtually all peoples on earth had some belief in a Sky God who brought this living planet into existence. I also gave several arguments for the existence of God. Yet without some definitive source of understanding who or what God is, no one could ever be certain of Him. So we’d remain forever uncertain of our origins, meaning, moral sentiments and destiny. Unless the Transcendent Source revealed Himself to us, we would remain always in a spiritual darkness and philosophical ignorance.

This is the dilemma that our Transcendent God understood fully before all creation. A finite creature can never truly comprehend a transcendent being that is beyond perception in all of His dimensions. Therefore, God had to reveal Himself to us first. This is the presupposition of the Bible, and it’s the only one that answers satisfactorily who, what and why we are. An infinitely intelligent Being logically would also have the power to pass on sufficient understanding to intelligent creatures that they would know not only that God is, but what God wants them to know. This is the logic that reinforces revealed religion.

Human reason alone can never adequately explain God. But human reason can evaluate facts as we perceive them. That human beings have the capacity to think and speak plausibly allows us to presuppose that the Source of our existence has the same capacity. The sublime, beautiful genius that underlies that orderliness and yet incomparable diversity of our living planet immediately suggests that our Creator also can think and act brilliantly beyond human comprehension. And this Creator wants us to know this.

Thus the Bible begins with the beautiful and purposeful words: “In the Beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This statement is a revelation of divine truth, that the authors plainly believed was emanated from God to them. Humans didn’t discover God; God uncovered Himself to us, and gave us the capacity to appreciate Him.

Genesis One amplifies the personal and revelatory nature of our Creator repeatedly by attaching personal terms to God in human ways. God speaks, God sees, God defines and God evaluates. We don’t know how and when the story of the creation in Genesis became part of the formal understanding of the Hebrew or Semitic peoples. This story is assuredly much older than Moses, although the first five books of the Bible are attributed to Him.