Whether we realize it or not, search engines are a window into our hearts and minds. What we search for often reveals something about our hopes, dreams, and fears. Something I do on occasion is type the beginning of a big question into the search bar on Google to see what it suggests. Not too long ago, I started with, “If God is real.” There were, of course, some common questions like “why is there war,” “why do bad things happen,” and “why do we suffer.” But one that stuck out to me was this: If God is real, where is he?
There is a lot below the surface of a question like this. Most of it I can never know without knowing the person asking the question. But there is something to it that we can all latch onto. I mean, how do we know God is real at all? After all, we can’t point to a specific location where we meet with him face-to-face. We also don’t hear him speaking words directly to us audibly.
Yet Christians believe he is real and isn’t hiding himself from us. In fact, we believe he makes his existence obvious to us.
How does God let us know he is real?
One of the most important beliefs in the Christian faith revolves around this idea of revelation. Revelation means God intentionally makes himself known to us. He doesn’t leave us in the dark, wondering if he exists. God doesn’t leave us guessing about what he is like, and what he expects of us.
Usually, when Christians talk about revelation, we focus on one very important aspect: “special revelation.” For this, we most often point to the Bible, which reveals God’s unfolding plan to rescue and redeem the world through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. This is good and right. But there is another kind of revelation we can’t ignore, even if it doesn’t tell us everything we want to know. But this revelation makes his existence undeniable—if we have eyes to see.
We call this “general revelation,” which is a fancy way of saying that God speaks through all creation.
Psalm 19:1 describes it this way, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the sky displays his handiwork.” So in this poetic proclamation, the psalmist wrote that everything God made, everything seen and unseen, proclaims God’s existence. Over the Psalm’s first six verses, the psalmist leads us to this conclusion: that day and night, every moment of every day, everything everywhere all at once practically screams this reality. It is all the handiwork of the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.
And this psalm isn’t the only place where we see this in the Bible. Other psalms praise God for revealing himself in creation. But, arguably, the most famous example comes the Apostle Paul, who wrote:
What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world his invisible attributes—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, because they are understood through what has been made (Romans 1:19–20).
What does the world around us tell us about God?
So how does this work? How does God make himself known through everything?
Well, think about the world around you—the beauty and wonder all around us. It’s easy to think about natural wonders like Niagara Falls, Thor’s Well in Oregon, or Spotted Lake in British Columbia. Or our attention might be captured by images from the James Webb Telescope that let us see far-off wonders in vivid detail. Or maybe it’s something as simple as a sunset that makes us stop and stare.
These are the things that declare the glory of God. These are his handiwork, revealing his power because, let’s be honest, the power required to make and sustain any of these is astounding. These wonders also reveal something of what God is like. For example, God is orderly, and he is creative. God is attentive to detail. He loves beauty. All of that from just looking at the world he made—a world that screams of his existence. Without even having to speak a single word that we can audibly hear, God tells us so much about himself through the things he has made.
It’s no wonder John Calvin wrote, “When a man, from beholding and contemplating the heavens, has been brought to acknowledge God, he will learn also to reflect upon and to admire his wisdom and power as displayed on the face of the earth, not only in general, but even in the minutest plants.”1 Warren Wiersbe likewise wrote, “Nature preaches a thousand sermons a day to the human heart.”2
God speaks through his creation. He does not hide himself far away so that we cannot know him. He makes himself known to us. “The heavens declare the glory of God; the sky displays his handiwork.”
Go Outside and “Listen”
As an avid indoorsman, I am a fan of technology. I love how much it’s helped us in so many ways. But I’m also painfully aware that it has also harmed us in so many ways. And I don’t just mean how it’s disrupted our ability to see people as people.
One of the most harmful things that things like our phones becoming handheld supercomputers with cameras that filmmakers could only dream of 50 years ago is that we have stopped looking with our eyes. Too often, we look through our phones. We mediate our experience of the world through technology.
But have you noticed that whenever you take a photo with your phone, it doesn’t match what you saw with your eyes? As beautiful as the photo might be, something is still lost. And so if there’s anything God might want us to do in this particular time, as this particular people, is to be present. To use our eyes—even those of us with terrible vision—as we experience the world. To see and experience creation as it proclaims God’s glory.
So if we want to know if God is real, go outside and “listen.”
Photo by Léonard Cotte on Unsplash
