THE RATIONAL GOD
Does God Make Sense?

Preface

This is the kind of book that drives theologian and philosophers crazy. It is written by a man with no PhD after his name, no training in philosophy, and no credibility in the academic community. His training and experience have been in secondary education, and his professional career was spent in a public school system that has not been held up as exemplary by anyone. His education was in science at a state university with further training in physics, chemistry, and earth science under the guidance of the National Science Foundation. [more]

Chapter 1: The War We Are In

One of the most fundamental differences between the atheist approach to life and the Christian approach is the question of why we exist. I firmly believe you cannot explain much of what happens in life if you do not have a clear view of why we exist. Why would an all-knowing, all-powerful, wise heavenly Father create something as ugly and clumsy and ignorant as myself? The atheist has no answer to the question of why we exist. [more]

Chapter 2: Man's Evolutionary History in the War

If we were to agree that there is a battle going on between good and evil and that the battle is being waged on a spiritual level by sentient beings both physical and angelic, the next level of understanding would be why we exist as we do today in a physical world and how mankind has changed throughout his history. Why should there be an “Old Testament” and a “New Testament”? If God and Jesus are “the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8), why do we see primitive violence in the Old Testament and commands of nonviolence in the New Testament (Matthew 5:38 – 48)? [more]

Chapter 3: The Coming of Christ

One of the greatest misunderstandings that people have made and continue to make about the Bible is the transformation that came about with the coming of Christ. For God to make sense to all of mankind there is a necessity to understand how complete the break is in biblical history between the Law of Moses and the Law of Christ. It was such an incredible change that God comes to earth to enact it. John 1:1 – 14 spells this out by the use of a special Greek word logos. [more]

Chapter 4: Is the Church a Rational Creation of God?

I am not naive enough to believe that what I have proposed in this discussion so far is going to be accepted by everyone — or even totally accepted by anyone. I know what the challenges are to many of the concepts that have been developed so far. While I believe I could answer a majority of them, that does not mean that you as a reader would be convinced. I would hope you would give serious consideration to the idea that God created the creation for a reason, and that man has a unique role in that reason. We are sentient beings, created in the image of God with the capacity to choose between good and evil. [more]

Chapter 5: Do Miracles Discredit the Bible?

To many people the subject of miracles makes God either a fake or a prejudiced, insensitive tyrant. The fake aspect comes from questions raised about whether the miracles actually happened. This is catalyzed by claims of miracles in today’s world where the miracle worker extorts money from the person he or she claimed to heal, or the miracle itself is shown to have never really happened. I have had a personal experience with this kind of miracle. I have a son who was born with a combination of birth defects. [more]

Chapter 6: Is Biblical Morality Relevant?

To many people the subject of miracles makes God either a fake or a prejudiced, insensitive tyrant. The fake aspect comes from questions raised about whether the miracles actually happened. This is catalyzed by claims of miracles in today's world where the miracle worker extorts money from the person he or she claimed to heal, or the miracle itself is shown to have never really happened. I have had a personal experience with this kind of miracle. I have a son who was born with a combination of birth defects. [more]

Chapter 7: Do Heaven and Hell Make Sense?

Nothing stretches the human mind more than the question of what our existence is like after we die. Atheists maintain that there is nothing after we die, that we are just like all other living things in the cosmos and that when we die we simply return to the elements in the crust of the earth from which we were born. For many of us that explanation is as unbelievable as the wildest fundamentalist preacher's guess. A country song by Ronnie Dunn said it well, “I just can't believe this all ends in a long, slow ride in a long, black hearse.” [more]

Chapter 8: The Individual Christian in a Religiously Divided and Confused World?

I love the line of a song that says “God is great, life is good, but people are crazy.” The basic theme of this book is that God makes sense. Even as limited human beings, when we stop and look carefully and open-mindedly at all God has done we can see in every aspect of our experience there is logic and reason in all God does. If that is the case, why is everything so messed up? Everywhere we look, from the world situation to the local congregation and perhaps, even sometimes, in our own families we see chaos and violence and a complete lack of common sense. [more]

Appendixes

Front Matter

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO
LINDA GLOVER

For over 12 years Linda has managed the banking and finances of the Does God Exist? ministry. Since my wife Phyllis died, Linda has been not only the financial manager of the ministry, but has been a personal confidant to me. She has helped make decisions, facilitated a wide variety of projects, made sure our ministry avoided the misuse of funds, and has shared in the joy of successes and the heartbreak at the failures we have had in our work.

Thank you, Linda, for your dedication, your endurance, and for using your enormous skills in sacrificial support of our attempts to convince all of mankind that God is real and that the Bible is his Word.