How I Met Our Father

I met God in a quiet place. He prefers to speak to us that way. The Lord does not speak to us with cataclysmic events like earthquakes or fires or storms but in the whistling of gentle air (1 Kings 19:11-14). He does this because He wants us to seek Him out. If you want to ignore God, it’s easy to do so. Though He loves us all, those that aren’t looking will never find Him.

I met God time and again in Church, but I did not acknowledge Him back then. Though my parents raised me to be Christian, there was a time in my teenage years when I felt that God wasn’t important to me. From the point of view of the world, He doesn’t seem all that important. If you don’t believe, then think about how often you think of Him outside of Church. I’d imagine it’s not easy. Faith never is.

It was in reading works of philosophy and theology that I came to love God all the more. Many people would find the Scholastic manuals tedious and boring. They contain a lot of verbiage that makes the average believer scratch his head. How can one get a personal relationship with God through a philosophy textbook? These manuals seem to contradict the “intuitive” theology that “ordinary lay Christians just reading his or her Bible” has. But such people cannot be more incorrect.

God not only created the world; He is “upholding all things by the word of his power.” Philosophical arguments prove that the world, being a finite and composite thing, requires an infinite yet simple God to sustain it. Without God willing each existing thing to exist, they would stop existing. This is because anything with a distinction between what it is (its essence) and that it is (its existence) has to have something combining the two at all times. God, whose essence is His existence, is the only candidate. If God creates and maintains everything that exists, then He does so for everything good in my life. God handles all the good in my life, so I owe Him everything.

Philosophy also tells us that God necessarily loves the world. To love something is to will its good. In God, there are no divisions. So, His goodness is His will. Further, since everything good comes from God, He wills the good of everything He creates in willing His goodness. By being Himself, God loves His creation.

Once I studied enough philosophy, theology, and history, I began appreciating how important God was to everything. It’s difficult to take such arguments seriously and not come out of the other side thinking religious faith is a lot more important than you might think. The world may try to sway you with half-truths and empty promises, but the fact of the matter is that God is important. You can’t get around that.

There are times when you read Scripture and feel that a particular verse or line is speaking to you. That is how I felt reading these texts. God was telling me through them that I needed Him, and that He wanted me. I met God through these texts, in the soft turning of the pages, and my life was made all the better for it.