We cannot live without God

God made us.

People throughout the history have been searching, trying to invent some kind of happiness for themselves outside of God.

What we call human history is really a recollection of how men and women have tried to find something other than God, apart from God, which would make them happy.

“‘Obey what I tell you. Do exactly what I command you. Your obedience will close the deal. You’ll be mine and I’ll be yours. This will provide the conditions in which I will be able to do what I promised your ancestors: to give them a fertile and lush land. And, as you know, that’s what I did.’” “Yes, God,” I replied. “That’s true.”

Jeremiah 11:3-5 (The Message)

And we can never succeed in this is because God made us.

He invented us.

And we need Him to be able to function, to be whole, and to be happy.

Jesus didn’t respond directly, but said, “Who do you think my mother and brothers are?” He then stretched out his hand toward his disciples. “Look closely. These are my mother and brothers. Obedience is thicker than blood. The person who obeys my heavenly Father’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”

Matthew 12:47-49 (The Message)

According to C. S. Lewis, “God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing”.

When God created us, He gave us conscience.

So it’s you who are in charge of keeping the entire commandment that I command you today so that you’ll have the strength to invade and possess the land that you are crossing the river to make your own. Your obedience will give you a long life on the soil that God promised to give your ancestors and their children, a land flowing with milk and honey.

Deuteronomy 11:7-9 (The Message)

This is the sense of right and wrong.

All through human history, everywhere we can see, there has been people trying to obey it.

But sadly none of us have quite succeeded.

When outsiders who have never heard of God’s law follow it more or less by instinct, they confirm its truth by their obedience. They show that God’s law is not something alien, imposed on us from without, but woven into the very fabric of our creation. There is something deep within them that echoes God’s yes and no, right and wrong. Their response to God’s yes and no will become public knowledge on the day God makes his final decision about every man and woman. The Message from God that I proclaim through Jesus Christ takes into account all these differences.

Romans 2:13-15 (The Message)

This post is part of an on-going series.

To begin, read Natural law. A post about the law we all have in our hearts.

If you would like to know what comes after read the post about Moral law.

Having read that, you'll need to know Which moral law to choose. 

If you agree we need to choose a moral law, maybe you'll agree that We need God.   

After we have understood the need we have for God, it is time to research What is sin. 

Having accepted your need for God, what kind of God is exactly a Christian God? This you can find out about in What we Christians believe. 

Why is it so hard to follow Christian faith? What prevents you to believe in God?

Do not let yourself to be fooled by Christianity and water. 

Who was first? The chicken or the egg? Read the post Of good and band - who was there first? The chicken or the egg? 

If God is above everything else and did not create evil then Why God accepts the evil in the world? 

More thoughts and questions on St. Teresa of Avila’s book “The Way of Perfection”

“Those who worry too much about the alms that they are likely to be given will find that sooner or later this bad habit will lead them to go and ask for something which they do not need, and perhaps from someone who needs it more than they do. Such a person would gain rather than lose by giving it us but we should certainly be worse off for having it”. St. Teresa of Avila – The Way of Perfection

@ Marja Sormunen

Do you ask from the people who have less than you do?

Are you able to wait for God to provide for your sustainment?

Are you blessed by what you give to others?

@ Marja Sormunen

“Poverty is good and contains within itself all the good things in the world. It is a great domain – I mean that he who cares nothing for the good things of the world has dominion over them all”. St. Teresa of Avila – The Way of Perfection

Do you think poverty is good?

Would poverty be good for you?

Why does St. Teresa say that it is good for us?

And why does she say that the person who cares nothing for the good things has dominion over them?

@Marja Sormunen

If you enjoyed this post maybe you would like to read the first post I wrote about St. Teresa of Avila's book: Thoughts and questions on St. Teresa of Avila's book "The Way of Perfection" 

Why God accepts the evil in the world?

We Christians believe that there is an evil power that has made himself, at least for a while, the Prince of this World.

And this raises a problem.

Is this state of affairs in accordance with God’s will?

If it is in accordance with His will, it would seem that He is a strange God.

And if it is not, how can it be if He has absolute power?

“The better stuff a creature is made of – the cleverer and stronger and freer it is – then the better it will be if it goes right, but also the worse it will be if it goes wrong”.

C. S. Lewis

But if you have been in position of authority you know how things can be in accordance with your will in one way and not in another.

If you are a parent, it is even clearer.

As a mother, it makes a lot of sense for me tell my son that I will not clean his room but he must take care of it himself.

And if I go there one day and find his clothes all over the floor and the bed unmade, it would be against my will.

I would prefer the room to be arranged.

I would prefer my son to always keep it tidy.

But if I clean it up for him, he will never learn to keep it clean himself.

It is my will to leave him to be untidy, so he can learn to be organized.

And we can find the same problem everywhere where there are people.

If you make something voluntary, generally half of the people will do it and the other half won’t.

It is not what the authority has wanted but it was his, or her, that has made it possible.

According to C. S. Lewis “Gog created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot. If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible”.

“The moment you have a self at all, there is a possibility of putting yourself first – wanting to be the centre – wanting to be God, in fact. That was the sin of Satan: and that was the sin he taught the human race”.

C. S. Lewis

Why would God then give all these creatures a free will?

Why would He make evil possible if He really is good?

“Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having”, C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity.

In a world full of preprogramed creatures that work like machines there would be no evil.

But it would hardly be worth creating.

Of course God knew what would happen if He made His creatures free and then they would use their freedom the wrong way.

But it seems He thought it was worth the risk.

It seems that He thought the price to pay little besides the rewards He had planned for His creatures.

In Lewis’s words, “The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free”.

We might disagree with Him.

But there is a difficulty in disagreeing with God since He is the source from which all our reasoning power comes.

If we are disagreeing with Him, there is no way we can be right and He could wrong.

It just isn’t possible, more than it is possible for a stream to rise higher than its own source.

If I am arguing agains God, I am arguing against the very power that makes me able to argue at all.

And even though it is like cutting off the branch I am sitting on, God still has the patience to listen to me.

There is a reason that God sees this state of things worth giving us the free will.

Like Lewis says, “If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will – that is, for making a live world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings – then we may take it is worth paying”.

And I for one I’m glad for it, because it is the only way I can exist.

“What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could “be like gods” – could set up on their own as if they had created themselves – be their own masters – invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history – money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery – the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy”.

C. S. Lewis

This post is part of an on-going series.

To begin, read Natural law. A post about the law we all have in our hearts.

If you would like to know what comes after read the post about Moral law.

Having read that, you'll need to know Which moral law to choose. 

If you agree we need to choose a moral law, maybe you'll agree that We need God.   

After we have understood the need we have for God, it is time to research What is sin. 

Having accepted your need for God, what kind of God is exactly a Christian God? This you can find out about in What we Christians believe. 

Why is it so hard to follow Christian faith? What prevents you to believe in God?

Do not let yourself to be fooled by Christianity and water. 

Who was first? The chicken or the egg? Read the post Of good and band - who was there first? The chicken or the egg?