Are You Worshipping a God Who Doesn’t Exist?
Here’s a question most people never think to ask: what if the God you pray to, talk about, and sing to on Sunday morning isn’t the God who actually exists?
That sounds harsh. But it’s the most important question you can ask.
Most people in the Western world assume that all religions are basically pointing at the same thing. There’s some Power out there that’s vaguely good, and we should all be decent to each other. If you’ve ever heard someone say that, you’ve heard someone who has never seriously studied religion. Because the actual claims of various religions are wildly different from each other, and they cannot all be true at once.
Here’s the deeper problem: even among people who call themselves Christians, the “God” in their heads is often a customized version, shaped more by their background, their preferences, and their culture than by careful attention to what the Bible actually says. We’ve all done it. We dial up the parts of God we like and quietly tune out the parts that make us uncomfortable. The result is a god who always agrees with us, never challenges us, and fits neatly into whatever kind of life we’ve already decided to live.
That god doesn’t exist.
Christianity is not a collection of feelings about a vague spiritual reality. It is a set of truth claims about a particular being who has a particular identity, independent of your preferences or mine. When Christians speak of “God,” they mean someone who actually exists the way my neighbor exists, the way history exists. You can say whatever you want about him, but only things that match reality will be true.
This matters enormously. If we have wrong facts about God, we are worshipping, praying to, and building our lives around someone who isn’t there. That’s not a small problem.
The good news is that this God is not hidden. He is not unknowable. He has revealed himself, consistently and progressively, through history. The best place to start is where Jesus himself started, with the God of the Old Testament, the God of ancient Israel, the one the Hebrew scriptures call Yahweh. (Ancient cultures across the Mediterranean world had remarkably similar views of their gods, but Yahweh stood apart from all of them in ways that are still astonishing today. See the next post in this series to find out how.)
What to do this week
Pick up your Bible and read Exodus 34:6-7. This is one of the most important self-descriptions God gives in all of Scripture, and it’s the passage Jesus-era Jews would have known almost by heart. Read it slowly. Ask yourself: does this description match the God I’ve been praying to? Does it expand him, or does it shrink him?
If it expands him, you’re on the right track. Keep going.
If it shrinks him, that’s worth sitting with honestly. The God who actually exists is far more interesting, and far more worthy of your trust, than any version we could construct on our own.
Want to go deeper? (Re)Discover Jesus walks through all of this with historical scholarship and modern application, making it ideal for personal study, a small group series, or a church-wide reading plan. Grab a copy for yourself, order a set for your group, or invite Dr. David Pendergrass to bring these ideas to life in person at your church.
