Most of us believe in God. We may not belong to any religion. Yet we all accept that there is Someone who created us and is watching us every minute as we go on our journey on earth.
Some individuals who are lucky for having been gifted with high intelligence or are simply endowed with restless minds question or doubt the existence of God. Not a few claim, with bated breath and a naughty wink, that God does not exist. They are invariably called atheists, agnostics, heretics, or pagans. They live a life of wild abandon; aimless, restless, and lost.
The circumstances, cultural milieu, and settings of our birth sharpened the disparities of our spiritual beliefs. This explains why many religions exist. Each religion has its own concept of who is God and why they worship Him. Through the years, religious wars have claimed millions of victims. They fought with fierce and abiding faith in the righteousness of their beliefs. Christianity and Mohammedanism have waged wars against each other yet both also have come to terms with each other in many countries, particularly in our country, the Philippines.
Ironically, both believe there is only one God.
Our faith in God is shaken every time we are confronted with unbearable problems. We seek God’s help. We pray for deliverance from the crisis which visits us even at our most difficult times. The Four Horsemen of Apocalypse have been visiting us almost every one hundred years. But God gave us the courage to overcome the ravages of wars, pestilence and death. We survived.
The third Horseman is in our midst. Its ferocity is terrifying. But we are confident we will overcome this pandemic. God loves mankind as He created him in His own image.
It is in the midst of this crisis brought by the coronavirus that we hear voices of despair and resignation. Not a few are desperately demanding that God intervene and stop this pestilence. A number are wondering why God is not answering their prayers. They are anxious to hear His voice and to be relieved of their deepening despair.
Someone wrote a lengthy treatise on God’s existence. He quoted the insights of most of the world’s philosophers and seers. He defined the different and conflicting attitudes and beliefs of those who doubt or even deny the existence of God.
I found the article illogical and amusing.
It strengthened my deep and abiding faith in God and in the reality of His existence. I promised to invent one for him.
The life of Jesus Christ; the celestial circumstances of his birth; his startling wisdom as a young boy and while growing up; the miracles he performed, the certitude of his short sojourn on earth, how he will be condemned as a Jewish outcast, how he will be crucified and will die on the cross and how he will rise again from the grave and return to God, the father as told by his disciples and previously predicted in the Old Testament could not certainly be works of fiction.
My faith in Jesus and my belief in His being the Son of God remains unshaken. Other religions may have their own saviors and saints and certainly their own concept and belief in the existence of a Supreme Being, in someone they call God.
God is with us every second of every minute, in every hour and every day.
You hear God in the first shrill cry of a baby. You see God in the graceful unfolding of a beautiful flower. You must have felt God inside you every time you regain your senses from a serious illness. You will feel and embrace God when He summons you to join him to live in paradise. It is in near death, at the last seconds of your existence, at the faltering cadence of your heartbeat that you come to terms with yourself and entrust your life to God.
To deny that God exists is to deny your own being. This is the reality of God’s existence.
Ernesto Banawis is the former general manager of the Philippine News Agency.