John Bergsma - Yes, There Is a God. . . and Other Answers to Lifes Big Questions

And Other Answers to Lifes Big Questions

And Other Answers to Lifes Big Questions

JOHN BERGSMA

Copyright 2017 by John Bergsma

All rights reserved

Published by The Word Among Us Press

7115 Guilford Drive, Suite 100

Frederick, Maryland 21704

www.wau.org

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ISBN: 978-1-59325-310-3

eISBN: 978-1-59325-494-0

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture texts used in this work are taken from The Catholic Edition of Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1965, 1966 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used with permission. All rights reserved.

Cover design by Faceout Studios

Illustrations rendered by Jacob Popcak

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the author and publisher.

Made and printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017941008

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Hello!

Hi there!

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is John.

I was born in Hawaii. I live in Ohio. The Empire Strikes Back is one of my favorite movies, and barbecued spareribs is my favorite food.

Okay, enough small talk. Id like to talk to you about the Big Questions, the things people usually talk about only late at night with friends after a party or on long road trips.

Sometimes these questions are called GLUE: God, Life, the Universe, and Everything.

This is me.

(I have glasses. When Im not wearing my contacts.)

And this is you.

(I hope this is what you look like.)

And we are together on this planet, hurtling through space.

We just have a few minutes to talk by means of this book. So we should use our time well and try to figure out together what we are doing here on this planet.

Why are we here?

Did someone put us here?

Is there a purpose for our being here?

If so, what are we supposed to be doing?

These are some of the GLUE questions.

It seems like most of these GLUE questions come down to this:

Is there a Someone who put us here, or not?

If there is a Someone who put us here,

then there probably is a purpose for us to be here

and something we are supposed to be doing.

If there is no Someone who put us here,

then probably everything is an accident

and there is nothing in particular that we should be doing.

Now, usually people have called the Someone God.

God is different from gods. When we talk about gods, we just mean supernatural beings.

But God with a capital G is the Creator, a Being who made everything but was not himself made by anything.

Some ask, Who made God? but thats a misunderstanding of what God means.

God is eternal. No one made him, because he has always existed. He made everything else. Thats what it means to be God.

We want to ask: is there such a Being? A great Someone?

Ill tell you right from the start: I hope there is Someone out there.

If there is, it means there might be hope for us.

Hope that theres a reason were here.

Hope for a future after we die or this rock we call earth hits something.

Hope that theres something Good at the end of this story were in.

On the other hand, if there is no one out there and were here by accident, it seems a little depressing. That means theres no reason or purpose to all of this.

We just wait in the lonely universe until we die or the rock hits something.

If we find out thats just the way it is, I guess Ill deal with it. But I hope Someone is out there.

Still, hoping something is true doesnt make it true. We have to ask the Big Questions and see if there is some evidence for an answer.

So this is the first Big Question Id like to talk with you about:

Is there a God?

Chapter 2

Is There a God?

So is there a Someone out there who put us here and has a plan for us?

If so, there is probably a purpose for why we are here. And something we should be doing.

If not, then we are probably here by accident, and we dont need to do anything in particular.

Now, maybe you already believe in God. Many people have a strong sense that God exists and dont need an argument or a proof. One person I know of came to believe in God just from looking at a beautiful tree in the fall. Another began to believe when he looked at his baby daughters ear one day and saw how lovely it was.

If youre the type of person who just knows in your heart there is a God, you might want to skip to the next chapter.

However, if you are the more skeptical type and would like a reason to believe something, then this chapter is for you.

Id like to offer you some reasons to believe in God. These reasons come from looking around us as we hurtle along on this rock we call the earth.

Looking Up

First, lets look up at the stars, planets, and galaxies above us.

When we do this, we notice something strange. All the stars and galaxies are zooming away from us at high speed. The universe is expanding rapidly, as we speak. And this has been going on for some time.

That means that in the past, the universe was much smaller and everything was closer together. In fact, if we rewind time to the very beginning, we discover that the universe started as a single incredibly small, incredibly compact point that just blew up many, many years ago (14.5 billion if you are counting).

Scientists call that blowup the Big Bang. It was the point when everything began to exist in a big explosion of energy.

Not only did matter and energy start to exist, but according to Einstein, even time and space began to exist. Before the Big Bang, there was nothingnothing at all.