Where did God Come From?

I recently saw a post on Facebook that said, “If God created everything, who created God?” Initially, I thought about responding to the question, but I chose not to because I do not know this person very well. They are somebody I went to high school with a long time ago, and even then, they were just a casual acquaintance. I try to refrain from engaging in controversial matters on Facebook very much, because, many times it just regresses into a back and forth argument with no one convincing anyone of anything.

I remember a time in my own life when I asked a variation of that question: “Where did God come from?’ I thought I might write down my thoughts on that matter, and just put them out there, to give you, the reader something to think about, and possibly use if you should encounter someone who puts that question to you.

The first thing that went through my mind as I read that post was “What is the motivation for asking that question?” Is the question asked because the person asking wants to engage in an honest discussion, or is it more of a “Gotcha! You are stupid for believing in God” kind of thing?

It has been my observation that most people’s life paradigm forms at an early age, and becomes solidified quickly, and is very difficult to change. When I use the term life paradigm what I am referring to is a person’s basic set of assumptions or beliefs about life. It is the framework through which they interpret life. For example, the assumption that undergirds an atheist’s paradigm is “There is no God”, and they interpret everything through that lens. The Christian, or the member of another religion, believes that there is a God, or many gods, and they interpret life through that lens. Whatever the initial orientation is on these matters, we all need to be able to recognize that paradigm for what it is. We need to understand our own filters.

If the person is asking the question, “If God created everything, who created God?” from the “Gotcha” perspective, there is not much point in trying to debate with them, unless they really desire to listen to what you have to say. Otherwise, the conversation regresses into this pointless back and forth arguing that tends to happen so much on social media.

If the person is asking the question from an honest desire to know, I offer the following points to think about:

You are asking a question that cannot be answered. There are lots of questions people ask that cannot be answered, so this should not come as a shock for me to make that statement. A child may ask his parent, “Why don’t cats like water?” or “Why is grass green?” The parent could postulate all sorts of theories on these matters, but the end result is not a definite answer, it is a resounding, “I don’t know.” The truth of the matter is that much of what we spout off as knowledge is simply theory and speculation.

Christian theology maintains that God is an eternal being. He is outside our realm of space and time. He is uncreated, hence the answer to the question, “who created God?” No one. Do I understand that? No, I do not. I am a human being that was born in linear time. You are as well. That is all we have ever experienced, and it is all we know, so we cannot answer a question that is outside of our field of reference. As a created being, all I have the possibility of knowing is what my Creator has revealed to me. It is impossible for me to go beyond that. If I were capable of going beyond that, I would be greater than my Creator, and that just does not make sense.

Now back to the atheist’s assumption or belief that there is no God, that is an assumption that cannot be proven. I cannot prove that there is a God in the sense that we think of proving something as in the scientific sense. I cannot dissect God and put Him under a microscope and show Him to you. You cannot prove that there is no God, so whichever approach you take, the theist, and the atheist both start with an assumption that cannot be proven. “Who created God?” To that I say, “Who created the big bang, or the primordial ball of matter?” We both start with a premise that there is no answer to.

I choose to believe the first principle of a Creator, rather than the opposite principle of random chaos creating order and beauty out of nothing. Believing in a Creator is more in line with reality as we know it. Our reality looks much more like something that was intentionally made, not something that is the result of nothingness producing the beauty, orderliness and complexity of life we see on this earth, and in the cosmos.

Christian theology also maintains that God, our Creator, has revealed all we need to know about Himself in the person of Jesus Christ, the God-man, fully God, and fully man, the Redeemer of mankind. Do I understand what it means to be fully God, and fully man? No, I do not, again because that is outside the realm of my experience. But if human to human is the most effective form of communication we can experience, it makes much more sense to say that God would use that method, rather than some other way.

Can we know all we want to know? No, because the nature of reality as we know it does not permit that. Has God given us everything that we need to know? To that, I say, emphatically, YES! You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need. What you need IS available right now IF you are willing to admit that you do not know everything, and there is someone higher than you that you cannot control.