World without God? ...

Thursday, June 23, 2011. Yesterday I have been reading a book, which my daughter gave me recently and said: read it, that is good. She is 13 now, and it is more a book for teens, but I have been reading it with a lot of fun.

But one point in the book captured my attention in a particular way. There is a people there in this phantasy world, which do not believe in any God. They are atheists, but dedicated to nature, living in a deep connection with the planet and its various inhabitants, animals and plants. For the author this seemed to be a new, a breathtaking idea: living without a God, just with the things as they are …

Living without God? …

Perhaps for you the idea to live without God is as breathtaking or even heretic as for the main figure of the phantasy story. I must admit that I have been living like that for many years, for me it is more the past, a time which I know too well. When I was a teen, I started to ask many questions and think as independently as I could about God and about science. So I followed the idea that there was no God. I thought about the world how it would be without God … and how science could help to live in it and to understand it!

Perhaps, I have never really been without God. That time, I have been searching for answers, searching for a good and sustainable way to see our world. Some people have the experience that a world without God is terrible - and of course I can tell the various things which were not good at all without God. But people can be friendly and supportive without God. Honesty is possible without God, though there is no deeper reason why we should be honest. … Today I am quite relaxed in discussing the different states of life, the ways in which you can live and think.

Discovering God …

For me, God has been someone I started to discover. I had heard from him partly in my childhood. But it was not in a way I could take to an adult faith. So I lost faith for a while, started to think and to search. And I started to discover God …!

That is a journey I can strongly recommend: to discover God. He is fantastic, and he is deeper and wider and greater than we can ever imagine. The universe itself talks about his greatness, the creation about his beauty. Our human love talks about his love, and our joy is a tiny reflection of the joy he carries and generates every morning afresh.

In general I do not fear the world without God, though I to some extend I fear the ruthlessness of humans and other beings. I know this world which does not know God, its strength and I know where it is lost. But more than that I am attracted by the wonders of the eternal creator, the eternal saviour, the beginning and the end! ... more texts