Is It Possible to Prove God's Existence Without Using Faith?

Thanks for your excellent question.  Regarding "without using faith" I take you to mean proving God's existence without appeal to subjective experience.  I think this is a fine pursuit, but I would just warn at the outset that ruling out all subjective experience may be begging the question.  Which is when one assumes all "faith evidence" (IE, inner, spiritual experiences of God) isn't real evidence.  But is this so?  If we say all inner proofs are "nothing but emotion" and so rule them out as evidence, we've begged the question - we've assumed the very thing we're trying to prove.

William Lane Craig notes:

"If God does exist, He is certainly capable of communicating His truth to you in an interior way as well as through external evidences... many Christian beliefs are beliefs warranted to us by ...God's own testimony [inside]. Don't be too quick to dismiss it, lest you fail to hear the voice of God speaking to you."

So having said all that, you may actually agree with Craig that inner evidences are evidence, but your question is simply asking, "are there other, publicly available evidences?" I do not disagree that if the case for God relied ONLY on inner evidences it would be a much less compelling case.

It turns out the case for God's existence is very strong because it includes so much of the type of evidence you are interested in.  So on to that evidence.  There is so much material here I can merely describe 4 excellent, non subjective, non faith-based arguments.  I'll go more in-depth on the first, but I'll link you to 5 minute videos from Dr Craig's excellent YouTube page which will give you a primer on them all.

1. THE EVIDENCE FROM A BEGINNING
This is drawn from the core question, why is there something rather than nothing?  Everyone knows that things we see now are results of past causes.  You're here because of your parents, and they because of theirs and on back.  But does this chain of cause and effect go back forever?  Atheism requires that it does, but is this reasonable?

There are good reasons to think both scientifically and philosophically that the universe cannot be infinite in age.  Philosophically, actual infinites of anything usually lead to absurdities.  Imagine I went to heaven and God said, "you have to count whole numbers up to infinity before you can get in, but don't worry i'll give you as long as you need."  When I'm at 14 quadrillion, God gives the same assignment to another guy.  I think, man I'm so far ahead of this guy!  But actually, we both still have the same infinite number of numbers to count!  And therefore, we will both never get in!

Well, if you can't cross infinity positively, how can you cross infinity going backwards?  To say it another way, how can you go from minus infinity events to today?  It's impossible, because it's the same distance!  If the series of events in the past started infinitely long ago, it would have never gotten to today, because you would never have reached the first event to start the chain!

So the argument for God in all this is as follows: if everything that begins to exist has a cause, then even the universe must also have a cause, because it must have had a beginning in the FINITE past.  It could not have existed forever into the past, or else it wouldn't be here.

But if it is required that the universe began to exist, the cause of the universe must be something outside the universe, right?   A thing cannot cause itself, that's absurd - that would mean it already existed before it exists to bring itself into existence!!

We have to have what Aquinas called a PRIME MOVER - a FIRST CAUSE.  And if that cause was outside the universe, then we may infer some things about it.  It was enormously powerful, because it had to be greater than the universe.  An effect cannot be greater than it's cause.  But it would also have to be immaterial because matter is a property of the universe.  Another way of saying that is spiritual.  It would also have to be timeless, since time is also a property of the universe. And space-less, again because space is a property of the universe.

Thus we arrive at a rudimentary definition of God!  A timeless, space-less, immaterial, enormously powerful thing.

Now, this is where you can arrive at, just by THINKING about the universe and the question why there is something rather than nothing.

But science now gives this philosophical argument amazing support.  First the 2nd law of thermodynamics says that all energy always goes from states of high order and concentration to low.  In short, it says, everything is running down, entropy is a defining characteristic of the whole show.

This is true even if some parts of the universe temporarily increase in order and energy.  Local increases in order always come at a cost to the whole amount of order.  For example, if a goat is born from a single cell and grows up, that's an increase in order and concentration of energy.  But this comes at a net loss of usable energy to the whole system, from the grass it ate, the air it breathed, and the sun energy it took to fuel all this.

In fact, the universe is running down, like a car running out of gas.  If it had been here forever, there would already be no stars and no galaxies, because all suns, all galaxies are petering out, expending themselves.  Even as new stars form from old ones, the whole show is gradually losing usable energy until it ends in what they call the "heat death": All matter/energy one uniform low temperature, everything dead.

But everything is not dead, so there had to be a beginning a finite time ago.

Of course the most powerful scientific evidence for a beginning is the Big Bang model.  And here we have the most stunning physical proof that the universe had a beginning in the finite past.   The proof was in the discovery of the expansion of the universe and cosmic background radiation, both testifying to the "Singularity" - a point of almost infinite density and energy, in the finite past, out of which all things exploded into the 13 billion light year monstrosity we measure today.

But there's one thing more: not only can we infer a timeless, spaceless, immaterial cause for the universe, we can also infer that this cause is personal. Here's why:

Before the universe, there was truly nothing around, not matter nor the laws matter runs by.  NO THING.  But nothing comes from nothing.  So without matter or laws around to cause things to happen, if something did happen (and we're here so something really did happen out of nothing!) it would have to have been FREELY caused.  But the only source of truly free agency we know of, is a person.

Therefore, the First Cause must be personal, because it wasn't acting due to the force of natural law or "have to" - It was acting based on "want to", and only persons do that.

So the maxim "nothing comes from nothing" turns out to be true.  There is powerful "non-faith based" evidence for a very grand SOMETHING, and both philosophy and science hint strongly at the qualities of that SOMETHING, which sound very much like what we call "God".
Kalam Cosmological Argument

2. THE EVIDENCE FROM DESIGN
The fine-tuning of the fundamental properties of the universe is off the charts uncanny.  Without this immaculate, exquisite fine-tuning there could be no stars, and none of the physical context required for life. So there has to be a reason for this precision.

Options include, either chance, law or design.  There's no good reason to believe we could get that lucky by chance (multiverse theories notwithstanding), and there's no law above the other laws causing them to be so improbably precise.  The only other option then, is that they were designed, which is exactly how they appear.
Teleological Argument

3. THE EVIDENCE FROM MORALITY
Objective moral values are something everyone, everywhere implicitly and explicitly believes exist.  But if God does not exist, then neither do these objective values.  If God does not exist, moral values are rather subjective and relative to different cultures and times and derived from chemical and social evolution and have no real demand on us.

But no one actually lives this way.  Everyone (except psychopaths) acts as if they ARE bound to behave in certain ways that are good and avoid other behaviors that are bad.  And not merely for expedience sake, for often the bad is rejected even though it is much more expedient!!  Law then requires a ground in a Law Giver, thus the universal moral urge is powerful evidence for God.
Moral Argument

4. THE EVIDENCE FROM JESUS
Jesus was crucified because he made the stunning claim that he was the long awaited Jewish Messiah.  But more so because he claimed that as Messiah he was the Son of Man, divine figure of Daniel's prophesy and further, that he would rise from the dead.  So if he did rise from the dead, this is powerful vindication of his claim to be God and evidence for God's existence.

The record of history (not assuming the Bible is 'inspired' but treating it as another ancient source) shows us 4 unavoidable facts about Jesus final days.  These events are agreed to by most scholars, believing and skeptical: Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate and interred in a known grave.  Jesus grave was found empty.  Jesus disciples experienced what they claimed were appearances of Jesus alive after his crucifixion.  Jesus disciples believed and proclaimed that they saw Jesus come back from the dead.   There is only one theory that captures those facts into a coherent explanation: Jesus actually rose from the dead.
Resurrection Argument

Is Allah the same as the Christian God?

Question: I heard a Christian teacher say the other day that the name Allah is the name of a demon, not God.  Not being a Muslim or an Arabic speaker, I was wondering if there’s any truth to that?

Response:  Well, I also am not an Arabic speaker... so like you I have to rely on what other people tell me about this subject.  And what other people say is often confusing!

For example, a Muslim scholar I read said that Allah stems from the Arabic verb “ta’allaha” , which means “to be worshiped”. Thus in Arabic, the word “Allah” means “The One who deserves all worship”.  They also made the point that Allah is fairly close to the Hebrew "El" and "Elohim" which usually refer to the one true Creator God... The difference there is that Elohim can be pluralized (Allah cannot) and so can be used for "gods" or when the context demands it,  the God, where it’s usually rendered "God of Hosts".  So it's possible that Arabic, having derived semantically from Aramaic would have derived it's meaning for Allah from "El".   When I was in Israel, I worshiped with some wonderful Arabic Christians whose Arabic translation of the Bible often used "Allah" for "Elohim".

On the other hand, if you look farther back than 6th century Arabia where Islam developed, the etymology (word origin) of "Allah" does seem to hearken back to dark pagan roots - and this is why the teacher you heard made his assertion about Allah being the name of a demon.  For example, the Encyclopedia of Religion says Allah derives from pre-Islamic times, from Babylonian "Bel" which means "Lord".  The ancient Phoenician and Canaanite deity also carried this title, Ba'al, meaning Master, or Husband.  And so other Christians I know in Muslim lands specifically avoid the use of Allah for Muslim converts - because of these pagan connections.

Not this cuts to the chase of the great question in our day with Islam in the news every night:  Is Allah the same God that Christians and Jews worship?  Well, many Muslims take great pains to defend the notion that they worship the God of Abraham, Moses and Jesus.  If this assumption is approached from the macro to the micro, we can both agree and disagree with it.  

At the macro level of broad Theism, I think they are correct: Muslims, like Christians and Jews, are Theists who believe in one, personal, all powerful Author of the universe.  Which means we are fixated on the same Being, even if we hold to different details about His being and character.  Muslims and Christians use the same arguments for God against atheists, for example.

It would be like two groups of scientists studying the Sun, one from Southern hemisphere, one from the north.  Some of their observations may seem different.  Some might even be irreconcilably different, and therefore one or both are error.  But it's not unreasonable that despite these differences they are both generally studying the same entity, since so many observations match exactly: the big, hot, glowing orb that appears in the Eastern horizon every morning.

But the devil, as they say, is in the details.  And because the image of the Christian God and Allah are so different in the details, Christians often resist the idea that we are worshiping and praying to the same God.  At the micro level of the details of God's character and being, vast and irreconcilable differences appear between Allah and the God revealed in Jesus.  And so to pray or worship one is to dishonor the other by affirming that which is not true of God.

But if we understand all this, then word etymology (which might have been a big deal to the teacher you heard) is really much less important than what's going on in the person's mind who uses the word, Allah.  It is finally, just a word.  So on one hand, we mustn't think the word is "cursed" or that Muslims who use the term Allah are really Satanists.  That's immature thinking.

For the word "god" after all, was never the name for the one, supreme all powerful Creator of the universe and the Christian Faith UNTIL the Roman missionaries saw the Germanic and Saxon pagans using some version of "gott" and then redefined it for them.  There is nothing inherently orthodox/ beautiful/ truthful about the word "God".  The way my pagan ancestors in ancient Europe used the word originally, "gott" likely was the name of a demon!  (More on that in a second)  Yet the word was infused with NEW meaning as Roman missionaries decided it was the best word to render the Greek word "Theos" or the Latin "Deus".

But let me get back demons for a second.  If the image of God (whatever word we use for Him) is deficient because, in our fallenness, we suppress the knowledge of God, then we are guilty of idolatry.  That is, we have made up a fake god (Rom 1:21-28) and projected ourselves onto it.  Well, from a Christian perspective, all idols are nothing at all, yet behind every deficient view of God in the mind of the worshiper, represented by his fake idols, are real spiritual powers hostile to the true God. Hence, behind every idolatrous conception of God is demonic deception.  (This is Paul's argument in 1 Cor 10:20).

Therefore, if the differences between Allah and the Lord are vast, then at that mirco-level, in the heart of the religious adherent, to worship and serve Allah is to serve a demonic power other than the one true God - even if you believe many true things about God along with Christians.  If a Christian thinks this is too harsh a thing to say to all Muslims, didn't Jesus say this about everyone who rejected his Messiahship?  (John 8:44)

So what are the critical micro (irreconcilable) differences between Allah and the Lord?  The one Muslims are most exercised about is God's Triune nature.  When I traveled to Israel, the Muslims in downtown Nazareth had a giant banner hung in the street in front of the Church of Mary - "Allah has no sons!!"  Subtle.

But the difference that might be even more significant in our world is this: Allah loveth not his enemies, nor the unbeliever.  Yes, you can find the phrase, "Allah the merciful and compassionate" on many pages of the Koran, but in doctrine and practice, this Deity does not love the unbeliever and has no compassion on his enemies:

“God loves not the unbelievers” (III.25)
“God loves not evildoers” (III. 30)
“God loves not the proud” (IV. 40)
“God loves not transgressors” (V. 85)
“God loves not the prodigal” (VI. 140)
“God loves not the treacherous” (VIII.60)
“God is an enemy to unbelievers” (II. 90)

In complete contrast to this, the God of Christianity died for us in Christ while we were his enemies. (Romans 5:8-9) And Jesus said, 

"You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends his rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, . . . what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5.43-48) 

The very fabric of Christian salvation and ethics are built on this stunningly different vision of God. So while the claim is that Muslims worship the God of Moses and Jesus, and in the big picture they are Theists, when we press deeply this Deity is nothing like the God revealed in Jesus Christ.  

And while it may be inflammatory to say so, every Christian nevertheless believes (as every Muslim also believes) that those who do not see God as revealed in their religion is under some kind of spiritual deception. We don't for that reason hate those with a different view, any more than the agnostic/atheist must automatically hate all religious people because they think they're wrong.

To cycle back to the actual words used for God, if a Muslim is converted to Christ, he make look back on his use of the word "Allah" and admit, much of what I thought about Allah has been changed by Jesus Christ, and I see Satan blinded me and much that I worshiped was a lie.  But he may also say, "I had some truth, I believed in one, true, good creator God - that hasn't changed but i know him better."  In either case he may not stop using the word “Allah” to refer to God, and I would have no problem if he did not drop it.  We of European ancestry can be thankful that the word “God’ itself was redeemed from paganism to carry the honor of the one, true Maker of Heaven and Earth, enfleshed in the Word who was with God and WAS God.  Should a Christian convert of Arabic descent feel differently about the word “Allah”?

Is the God of the Old Testament different than the God of the New?

QUESTION: How do you reconcile the Old Testament to the New Testament picture of God? Specifically I'm reading Deuteronomy 28 and the God of this book just does not seem anything like Jesus. In verse 63 it even says he will get pleasure from it... It just seems so different than Jesus and everything he was about.

RESPONSE: This is a very common issue when reading the Bible.  There’s this seeming difference in God's character between the two covenantal periods.  Specifically, the Old Covenant God of Moses is full of wrath, the New Covenant God revealed in Jesus is full of grace.

There are two main things to say about this apparent discrepancy.

1. When we look more deeply, the differences are not as glaring as they first appear.  In other words, when we look inside, everything that is revealed about God's character in the Old Testament is still seen in the New, (and vice versa) even if there's a different emphasis.
2. The different emphasis in God's attributes fits with a well-established pattern of "progressive revelation".  Which is to say that God does not reveal all of himself or his plans at the earliest stages of his interactions with the chosen people.  God's revelations progress in content and depth over time, so we should never, from our position here in the "last days," consider the earliest revelations to be complete or interpret them in isolation from the later stuff.

In dealing with Deut. 28 specifically and this list of blessings and curses, we are getting insight into God that consistently runs across both Old and New testaments.  The holiness of God is revealed inside this moral order: obey and be blessed, disobey and be cursed.  As in physics, so in ethics:  for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  The message is simple:  attune your life to moral reality, just as you do to physical reality.

You might think that outlining (repeatedly) the specific consequences reveals a harshness in God, but would we think a parachuting instructor was harsh if he detailed the graphic results of failure to obey his instructions?  Would we think his lengthy, redundant, legal waiver meant that he was being mean?  No, once we understand the stakes involved, the graphic warnings are actually seen as a kind of mercy.

This teaches us that not only is God a merciful parent (laying out consequences up front), but also God is just, and holy for he follows through with discipline (every curse mentioned here ACTUALLY HAPPENED!).  Also, the stark warnings reveal that God is fair, because God is treating them the same as the nations they would be displacing in the Land.

The point is, what the Jews are learning about God here is not diminished by the arrival of Jesus Christ.  This is Jesus' Father:

• no respecter of persons or nations, impartial and fair (Deut. 10:17).  
• whose rules are not arbitrary but based in his good, fair, and loving character.  So his law is built on love, forbidding unfettered self-interest, protecting the weak, foreigners, children, orphans, widows (10:18-11:1).  
• who chooses his children not based on their pedigree but because of His love! (7:13).  
• How is this inconsistent with the God revealed in Jesus' gospel which teaches us that God adopted us out of no goodness in us, but purely by unmerited favor (Eph 1:3-6)?

Christians did not stop believing in this Lawfulness, and Holiness of God just because Jesus revealed God's grace in a supreme way.  Look at Galatians 6:9 - "do not be fooled, God is not mocked, a man reaps what he sows."  In fact, the Cross makes no sense apart from these characteristics of justice and holiness revealed in the Law.  As much as the Cross shows off God's grace, the pain of it also reflected the terrible, ultimate punishment for sin.   No, the cross is God's grace AND justice together (Rom 3:26).

So to my first point:  there is justifiable wrath in the New Testament (Romans 1:18, 2:5, 5:9) and in the teaching and actions of Jesus (Matt 3:7, Luke 21:23, John 2:15), which is consistent with the picture of God we get from Moses.  Also there is amazing tenderness and grace in the God of the Old Testament which is consistent with Jesus (Hosea 2:14).

The consistent picture of God is simply that God is completely "other" - holy and perfect and hating sin.  Also there is one consistent picture of sin separating people from people and people from God and ultimately diminishing human life and leading to terrible outcomes; in the Old and New Testament.

To underline this, remember that the picture Jesus paints of the sinner apart from his Grace, is probably worse than the picture Moses paints of his People who are disobedient!  The Old Testament warned of people being pillaged and suffering greatly for disobedience, and yes death for many... but for Jesus, the disobedient will suffer eternal death (Luke 12:5)!

And look at the curses of Deut. 28, and how it paints the disobedient as groping, blind, oppressed, robbed, hungry, and powerless.  This isn't a contradiction of the New Testament, rather, it sets it up beautifully!  For how can we see the sacrifice of Jesus as a Rescue unless we can see in our own disobedience, the same kinds of helplessness God predicts for disobedient Israel?  We too were disobedient and wrecked and helpless when Christ came into our lives.  This is painting one consistent picture of human nature, and God's nature.

But perhaps you still struggle with the language Moses uses - in the language of Deuteronomy, it looks like God is sort of deliberately inflicting suffering on them (and gleefully!).  Yet who is the one who ACTUALLY decides to invoke the consequences God warned about?  The people do!  See, Moses didn't care to separate the primary cause from the secondary cause in his language, which makes it seem to us like God is more callous than he actually is.

Imagine primary and secondary causes like this:  I set up a booby trap in my home for robbers.  I say to you, don't go in there, you'll get smashed by my trap, it's for robbers.  Then you go in anyhow.  And guess what?  You get smashed!  Who smashed you?  Well, in a sense, I did, I set up a trap to smash - it was MY trap after all, so clearly I caused it.  But truth is, YOU caused yourself to be smashed, because I warned you away, and you went in anyway!

It's just like that here in Deut. 28.  It feels really rough because God says, I'M doing curse X, Y, or Z.  But God's actually simply allowing natural consequences to flow, rather than deliberately inflicting arbitrary terror.  In fact, God is only a secondary cause of the curse, we ourselves are the primary cause of the cursing.  In the New Testament Paul will put it like this, "God hands the disobedient over..." (Romans 1:28) so He releases them to do what ought not to be done, and then they suffer according to their choices.

So God's holiness, and his judgment on sin is consistent throughout the Bible.

Ok, now my second point.  There is progressive revelation here.  Yes, we can see judgment and wrath in the New Testament and even at the heart of Jesus very mission to save because it borrows the same language of God cursing the disobedient sinner to separation... (See John 3:36).  HOWEVER, in Jesus we get no sense of God “delighting” in the judgment which you pointed out (Deut. 28:63).  So do we have reason to think this may be not the whole story on God's attitude?  Yes, because of what ELSE is said about God LATER in revelation history.

For example:

Ezek. 18:23-24: Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked?” This is the declaration of the Lord God. “Instead, don’t I take pleasure when he turns from his ways and lives?

Because of progressive revelations, we can see Deut 28:63 as hyperbole.  We can see this in the context of the sarcastic, dramatic way that the ancient Middle Eastern mind would think and talk, not as proof of God's callousness.

If we take all Scripture as one, we rest assured, God is not happily cursing his people.  We don't interpret one verse in isolation or in violation of another.  So we learn from LATER revelation that God must have been speaking in Deut. 28 like an exasperated parents speaks.

In fact, I have said something similar to my kids - "If you don't put your bike away, I am going to run over it someday and I won't even be sad, I will not shed a single tear, I will just happily take that thing down to the dump!!"  Saying such a thing, doesn't mean I wouldn’t have empathy for my kids or wouldn’t feel their pain at loss - even if it was all due to their choices.  I would have empathy still, and so does God.  We KNOW this, because Deut. 28 isn't the only thing God ever said to us.

Also, when it comes to progressive revelation, how did this all play out AFTER he laid down the law?  In fact subsequent history shows, God laid out these curses, but then rather than invoke them at the first sign of disobedience, tolerated the worse kind of violations of his law for centuries before they finally reaped the harvest they had sown.  And in this demonstration of God’s patience we see yet another consistent insight into God's character which spans from Old to New Testament.  For the God revealed in Jesus also said:

2 Peter 3:9:  The Lord does not delay His promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.

So if you look deeper you will see not only the consistency in the Bible’s picture of God’s character, but also how all Scripture must be interpreted as a whole.

Is God Arrogant for Wanting Glory?

Maybe you've heard this one before:  God wanting honor and Glory makes him arrogant and I'd never worship a being that desired honor and glory for himself. 

What is the proper response to this?  This is a common objection and I think it’s built on the skeptic's inability to imagine a truly perfect being. The atheist builds this objection on a limited platform of what it means to be human – any person we know of, no matter how great, would be considered an egotistical megalomaniac if he demanded others to tell him how great he is. But God is not a human, not fallen, not in any way imperfect. God is the greatest conceivable Being. Therefore the atheist is here guilty of a failure of the imagination to consider the motivations and actions of a being of truly infinite power, wisdom and love.

So if we do start with such a Being, what should we make of a repeated desire that he be worshiped and that glory be ascribed to him? Well, if we reach in our minds for a PERFECT being, we reject out of hand a motivation as base as arrogance or insecurity. An all-sufficient being has no need to prop up a sagging ego. The atheist has in mind the flighty, petty deities that inhabited Mount Olympus when he sees the God of the Bible being worshiped. He thinks of a schoolyard bully who demands homage and we know why: he fears his own weakness.

But the God of the Bible never comes across like this. Instead, his glory (literally, his “weight”) is simply said to be a fact of his all loving, all holy, all powerful nature (Ex 24:16). His glory is not first a thing he seeks from us, it is first an unalterable fact of his very being. God IS glorious, whether you or I acknowledge it or not. So in that sense, his seeking to be worshiped by us, is not arrogance but a desire to teach a primary lesson in the nature of reality. If God is aback all things, this God is glorious, and when we align ourselves with this fact, we come into truth, and then it goes better for us. Far from being selfish then, God’s desire for glory is a gift to us.

Example: A person can live their life without ever knowing fully electricity really is. They see it, but maybe ascribe it to unknowable forces. But the more they find out what electricity is, the more they develop a healthy fear of its power, while at the same time developing more awe of the benefits of that power if channeled correctly. You can live OK without a really accurate view of electricity, but when you bring your life in line with reality, life takes off. If electricity had a “will” to bless us, it might instruct us to “glorify” the lightning bolt – for our own sake!

Just like that, it is God’s gift to us to show us (in Creation and Redemption) that behind the Universe is a First Cause, who necessarily must be all powerful, self-existent, eternal and spiritual. In a word, Glorious. When we get in line with this reality, we find the Source of our being, the Source of meaning, the Fountainhead from which we sprang, the Source of eternal comfort.

Moses, after being faced with the awesome power of God in the Egyptian plagues, had only one request, to see more of the glory of God (Ex 33). This request was not born out of a man being an obsequious runt, playing to Yahweh’s pathetic need to be feel “great”! Far from it.  Read the text, the OPPOSITE is true. His desire to see the glory of God was born out of God bringing him along in relationship and intimacy – in short, his desire to see more of God’s weighty splendor came as a result of God deciding to share that splendor with him.

How is this arrogant? This is the opposite of petty arrogance or insecurity. This is generosity! God wants to share who he is (his glory) with his creation. And only people who hunger for that glory, will get in on it – again a natural consequence of living in line with reality. Paul says that the people who will not so hunger (IE who did not glorify God) received in themselves all manner of troubles (Romans 1:21-25). Their chief error is that they believed a lie – and certainly if there is a God responsible for this grand universe, to ignore his existence and nature is a terrible oversight and will naturally lead to life not working right – and that's just how Paul's describes those who diminish or deny God’s “glory” (Romans 1:29-31).

As for people being somehow bullied by God into giving God this glory, two misunderstandings are probably happening.

Number one, the skeptic is probably incorrectly interpreting a specific Calvinistic branch of Christianity. They perhaps have a vague idea that Calvinists talk about God’s glory being the sole purpose of all his activity. And when one hears (as some Calvinists believe) that this God has pre-selected people for an eternity in hell, all for the “sake of his glory”, it’s not hard to imagine they have a problem with such a God. I won’t chime in here in on the debate within the church about predestination to hell, but suffice to say that most Calvinists struggle with “double predestination” (election to hell) and so the whole objection to God seeking Glory by sending people to hell, is probably a gross misunderstanding of A) how election works and B) God’s motives within election. We should rightly look at predestination as a separate problem to work out aside from the problem of God’s glory.

Number two, they probably are imagining this God saying time after time, “give me glory!” Perhaps some psalm or proverb in the Bible puts this sentiment in God’s mouth just like that… but I can’t think of even one time myself.  I’m ready to stand corrected on that point.  But the larger point is the repeated examples in Scripture of those human agents who have experienced the glory of God, who willingly and energetically “give God glory” and encourage others to do the same (Ps 29:1,2). Again, most of the time God’s glory is simply described as a simple fact of his perfect, splendorous and weighty nature – and how is that arrogant?

When the call is made to glorify the Lord, it’s usually not (if ever) God’s demand, but the fellow traveler’s plea to us: "I've seen the glory of the King, bring him worship, he’s worthy of it." This is therefore the furthest thing from an arbitrary, self centered demand from a petulant Deity. In Scripture we never find this formula from God’s mouth: “I'm great, say it, say it!"  Rather, the formula is something closer to, “I have greatness within my very Being, and if you will align with it, you will share in it.” (Romans 8:17)

So God's glory turns out to be awesome good news and speaks to God’s awesome liberality, not conceit.

How do you explain the Trinity?

Question:

I'm having a difficult time trying to explain the trinity to someone who is not a believer an I find it quite difficult, any suggestions on how to simplify the concept of three in one god to a non believer?

Answer:

Well, your difficulty in explaining the Trinity to your friend is quite natural since the concept has been historically hard to explain. It's been so difficult that some Christian sects have just repudiated the concept altogether, such as the Jehovah Witnesses.

I think it's helpful to start by explaining how Christians came up with this description for God. Why invent this paradoxical (some would say contradictory) vision of God's nature in the first place? Well, that may actually be a mark in it's favor as revealed Truth. Indeed, who WOULD invent something like this? Certainly not someone interested in winning converts through a user friendly religion!

So it begins like this: Christians believe in one God. We're monotheists. We accept the testimony of Moses who said in Deut 6:4 "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one." But then secondly, we realized that there came a man (Jesus) who claimed to be One with this one God. And not merely "One" in the sense of being "on the same page" as God, but One in the sense of being one in nature, character and being. But He wasn't just God taking Human form for a while, because this Man claimed a relationship WITH God as well as being God himself. He referred to God as his Father, and he was his Son. Thirdly, this Man also taught that God would send his very Presence in a special way on his Followers. And again, this wasn't just God sending forth his power, but a distinct person from God is named, the Counselor, the Spirit of God. So now you have three entities, all claiming to be God, to have all the divine prerogatives of Godhood, and yet all are not just "modes" of this One God, they exist independently and simultaneously. The moment that confirms these three persons co-exist is Matt 3:16,17, the Father speaks from heaven, the Spirit descends like a dove and the Son is baptized.

So there it is, One God existing eternally in three Persons - the Trinity. This is not what we believe because we WANT to believe it, or because we made it up. It came to us by revelation and so it's not entirely clear to anyone HOW this is true about God, because it seems illogical. So some have tried to give illustrations to help ease the tension.

But all attempts to come up with metaphors for the Trinity to make it "easy to understand" eventually break down. The reason they do, is because they all either minimize the true Oneness or Threeness of God. Together they can help to make the Trinity a little more accessible, but none is a perfect analogy.

Here's a few famous ones:

1. A man is a Husband to his wife, and he's a Father to his children and he's a worker on the job. There's just one man, but he's three people in different situations. Weakness: it compromises the THREENESS of God because the man is never in his roles simultaneously, co-existing side by side with his "alter egos". He's only ever one of these. But the Trinity is Father Son and Spirit, at the same time, all the time.

2. Water is made up of three atoms - two hydrogen and one oxygen. Together they make one cohesive element, but it's made up of three distinct parts. Weakness: it compromises the ONENESS of God because if you break the three atoms up, you don't have water. Each are not fully water themselves but only when all the parts are put together. Each member of the Trinity is fully God, not 1/3 of God.

3. Water is able to take three forms, solid, liquid and gas, yet these distinct forms are still just one element. Weakness: it compromises the THREENESS of God because water is not simultaneously all three phases.

4. An egg is made up of three parts, the nucleus, white and shell, yet all the parts form just one egg. Weakness, it compromises the ONENESS of God because the parts are not fully "egg" in themselves.

Despite the weakness in each, you might find each of these analogies to be helpful in explaining the Trinity. As long as you come back to this simple formula, God is One in Being, Three in Person - you are staying true to the Biblical data about God's nature. "Never comingling the Persons, never dividing the Being."

How can this be? It is not perfectly explainable and Christians rest in the fact that if every part of God's nature as revealed to us was perfectly agreeable to us, we might wonder if we made a God in our own image. But the Trinity is not the kind of God I would have invented or wanted. Yet, Jesus revealed this is the God who is.

Probably the most helpful analogy to me is the one put forward by CS Lewis in Mere Christianity. It doesn't violate the THREENESS or ONENESS of God by lifting the paradox out of our limited playing field. Imagine a world where it's entirely 2 dimensional. All creatures exist with length and width, but no depth. And all these creatures exist as squares on a perfect grid. They relate only along their sides and each square has only one "face". Now imagine into this 2D world there descends a square from a 3D world. This being interacts with the other squares touching their length and width, but he says that while he is a square, he is nevertheless different from them. In fact, he says, I'm what we call a cube. What's a cube?, they ask. He says, it's a special square, where I'm actually 6 squares, 6 faces within ONE square. How can that be?, they ask. They have no way in their 2 dimensional world to assimilate the idea that a square could be eternally 6 squares and yet still be just one thing. In their world, 6 squares are 6 entities. We of course, can see how adding a dimension makes the 6 in 1 paradox possible, but they cannot.

Likewise, we cannot see how the 3 persons can coexist within the 1 being of God. Surely it's either THREE gods or it's ONE god in three modes! We can't see the way it can fit in our scope of experience and in our space/time reality - it's illogical, self-contradictory! But if we can understand how the difference between 2 dimensions and 3 dimensions can make the impossible possible with squares, surely in the extra dimensionality of God's eternal existence, it's not inherently impossible for the 1 God to exist in 3 persons.