Everyone, by the time they reach being an adult, have asked themselves some important, eternal questions. Philosophers label these questions as being about origin, meaning, and destiny. For most of us they boil down to three simple, but profound questions.

Is there a God?
Why do I exist or what is my purpose?
What happens after I die or is there life after death?

It is interesting that in order to answer the last two questions, you have to come up with an answer for the first one. Is there a God? This question has been on the lips of mankind from the beginning. Every people group that has existed has struggled with it and in some way has come up with answers. That is what we call religion.

If we come to the conclusion that the answer to the first question is no, then we are left with trying to answer how everything has come into existence. No matter how we approach that answer, it requires a huge level of faith. Faith that this is all an accident; that it all started out of nothing; that everything that happens is by chance.

If we start out with premise that God does exist, then it gets interesting. There have been many religions that have existed over time that believe in a creator. If we are serious about understanding something about God (which helps us answer the other two questions), then this requires some significant investigation. We think nothing of spending multiple years learning our vocation, but many of us leave the answer to who God is as something that isn’t even studied. We either don’t investigate it at all, or we go to church on Sundays and really don’t think about it otherwise.

You have a lot of choices out there, so here are some things to consider about the nature of God and what religion makes the most sense.

1. All religions that have existed (except one), requires the worshiper to achieve a standing with God through trying to please Him with what you do in your life.
2. All religions that have existed (except one), were developed by a people based upon what they think God might be.
3. That one, Christianity is based upon a person (Jesus), who claimed to be God. He demonstrated that during His life by:
a. Living a life predicted by prophets of God (In the Old Testament, a true prophet had to be 100% correct in their prophesies). Many witnesses saw the miracles that He performed.
b. Dying on a Cross (again predicted by prophesy)
c. Raising from the dead (proving that He was God), which was witnessed by 100’s of people.
4. C.S. Lewis, a famous English theologian, started out as an atheist, but as an adult decided to seriously consider whether God existed or not. He looked at all of the religions and decided that Christianity was the only one that made sense. He once said that many people try to dismiss Jesus’ claim that He is God, by saying that He was just a good man, just like any other. Lewis said that this cannot be right. Jesus was one of three things – a liar, a lunatic, or really God. But he could not just be a good man.
5. Others have said that if Jesus was a liar, then the disciples of Jesus would never have gone to their death proclaiming that Jesus was God. People don’t die for liars.
6. If He was a lunatic, then how was He able to perform miracles, how was He able to raise Himself from the dead.

Even with all of the evidence placed before us, it still takes faith to believe. The level of faith required to believe that this is all an accident, in my mind, is significantly greater than the level of faith required to believe that Jesus is God.

If then, you believe that Jesus is God, the answers to those other two questions become something that is possible to answer, because He gave us those answers in the Bible. If you believe there is no God, then those other questions don’t really matter.

If you haven’t already seriously considered these questions, I’ll leave you to ponder them. What do you believe?