“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” (Genesis 1:1-2)
As the Bible opens, it makes no attempt to prove the existence of God. The words of Genesis 1 presuppose that He exists and declares it to be a fact. It asserts that God is the ground of all being and reason. There is no apology or explanation given for His existence. He is. If we are to make any sense of the Bible and the world in which we live, we must accept this as a given. The Bible presents God as the Creator of the universe and everything in it including man. He preserves and sustains all life and is personally interested in the affairs of all human beings. In the Bible, man is led to relate to God in a way that acknowledges his need for Him. Man must be accountable to God, to obey Him, and to depend on Him for His daily needs.
Yet man does not always choose to obey God. The person who does not obey does not believe in god, at least not the God who has spoken in the Bible. The Bible describes this person as a “fool”, a term that is not applied to an atheist since there are none in the Bible. The fool may rationalize or create a god of his own, one that he can manipulate. Ancient men made gods in their own image so that they could live in a way that allowed them to do whatever they pleased. This allowed them to live outside of God’s holy standard.
Modern man does the same by denying the existence of God altogether. But there are no real atheists. One god many worship is “science”. Science attempts to explain all the events of the natural world. Science gives us a measure or control over life and promises happiness, wholeness, peace, and prosperity. Another god many worship is “self”. Modern man has set up the individual as authority and interpreter of all that is. This has led to the acceptance and tolerance of a myriad of competing and contrary beliefs about life. This is, in essence, spiritual anarchy for every human does what is right in his or her own eyes rather than acknowledge that there is one Almighty God who declares absolute truth, who demands obedience. Many today reject all authority. For they reject the idea that there is one Supreme Being to whom we are all accountable. He will indeed punish all sin. No one will escape for God sees all. In the meantime, however, He still extends love, compassion, and mercy through Jesus by means of the Holy Spirit and the Church.