“How do you 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 there’s a God?”

Every so often I’m asked, “How do you know God exists?” or “How do you know there’s a God?”

I’m never asked, “Is there a God?” because people have already made up their minds about that one. Nontheists say no; theists say yes. Agnostics, who claim they aren’t sure one way or the other, frequently act like they’re just gonna presume there’s no God for now, and live accordingly… which is why I lump ’em in with nontheists. I’ve met exceptions, but they’re so rare.

But even though people have their minds made up… some of the theists have doubts. Because they’ve never seen God, and aren’t sure they’ve seen the effects of God. If God exists, and actually did or does stuff in our universe, shouldn’t he be detectable? Really detectable?—we aren’t just claiming certain things are God-things because we’re so desperate to see him in our universe?

This is why they ask, “So how do you know?”

This is the point where Christian apologists make the mistake of going through the logical proofs of God’s existence. Which is actually not what they’re asking for. It’s the fastest way to annoy them. “Well y’see, I know there’s a God because the universe works on cause and effect. So if we trace all the causes back to a first cause…” Yeah, yeah, they didn’t ask for a philosophy lesson.

What they’re really asking is how you know. When they ask me, what they really want is to know how I, me, K.W. Leslie, the guy who talks about God as if he’s a real guy, the guy who talks about God as if I’ve met him personally, know God exists. They wanna know if I have personal experience with God.

Fortunately for them, I do! Met him personally.

No, really.

No, really.

No, really.

The most common way I encounter God is of course by talking with him, i.e. prayer. I talk to him; he talks back.

“What, in an audible voice?” No. He could; never rule out that possibility; Christians have audibly heard him. But typicallly he drops ideas into people’s heads. We just have to learn which of those ideas are God-ideas, and which are just our own wishful thinking. We learn it by confirming they’re actually God-ideas, and it gets easier with practice.

But there are other God-experiences I’ve had. like the baptism of the Holy Spirit, like miracles I’ve seen, like impossible prayers that were answered, like impossible prophecies which later took place. You know, same as the stuff we see in the New Testament. God’s still doing all of it. I’m fully aware there are Christians who inist he’s not, but that’s only because they refuse to believe God does anything anymore. Hence God’s not bothering to do such stuff among them. Their unbelief is really hindering their relationship with him—but hey, that’s the way they prefer it: God at a safe, remote distance.

I haven’t had a near-death experience. There are Christians who have, and claim it bolsters their faith… and yeah, the way near-death experiences work would support everything they believe. That’s the problem with near-death experiences. Everybody who has one, sees what they expect to see. People who believe in heaven, including pagans, see heaven. (Or, if they feel they oughta go there, hell!) People who believe in other afterlifes see those afterlifes. The reality, according to the scriptures, is only Jesus has been to heaven. Jn 3.13 Any other dreams of heaven are precisely that: Dreams.

Yet there are far too many people who think the only time they’ll ever get to encounter God is in one of those near-death experiences. Or, of course, actual death. You’ll even hear this in Christian songs.

But I know I’ll never know

Until I pass away to the next life

I know I’ll never know

Where your soul roams tonight

Until I reach the afterlife

Sixpence None the Richer, “Soul”

Whereas I figured long ago, back when I was going to one of those cessationist churches: If God exists, why can’t we see him doing stuff in our world today? It happened in the bible; why not now? So I sought. And found.

And when I tell people I met God, and continue to meet God, they figure I have a screw loose. I’m having God-experiences? I must be mad. Only madmen have God-experiences. God doesn’t intervene in our universe. He stays out there, somewhere, in his.

Or deep down, what they really believe about God is he’s a figment. He’s imaginary. He exists only within the human mind, within imagination, and never emerges to muck around with the real world. He’s not even remotely “real” in that sense: He’s a platonic ideal or an anthropomorphized abstract. He’s mythological.

The very idea God’s totally real, in every substantive sense of the word “real”… kinda terrifies them. ’Cause if he is, it means they oughta take God a lot more seriously than they currently do. They’re far more comfortable with an impossibly distant, non-interventionist God, whom we can put off till we die. In the meanwhile, all we gotta do is believe in him, and he’ll let us into his heaven.

Only problem: This is not at all how Jesus describes his Father. He has an interactive relationship with his Father, powered by the Holy Spirit, and gave us his Spirit so we can have the very same relationship. His instructions about living in his kingdom, now, require the interactive relationship. The apostles’ instructions likewise. The scriptures aren’t written for cessationists; they don’t work when applied to a cessationist lifestyle. It’s why cessationists barely even have a Christian lifestyle, and have to replace Jesus’s living religion with cold hard determinism. Or legalism. Or politics.

It’s also why a lot of ’em give up on God, quit church, and don’t share the faith of their parents. There’s no living God in their lives, so why follow him?

But there is a living God, and if you wanna silence your doubts about his existence for good and all, you gotta get rid of this imaginary-God crap and start treating him like he’s real. And to your surprise, you’re gonna discover all this time—when you weren’t paying attention ’cause you were too busy playing church—God’s been here all along.

“But I tried that and it didn’t work.”

I grew up Christian. Baptized Catholic, but then Mom became Protestant, so I became Protestant too. We moved a lot, so we went to various churches, and while all of them thought of themselves as bible-believing, not many were miracle-believing. The church I attended in junior high and high school was most certainly not miracle-believing. Still isn’t.

In my early 20s I realized understanding God on a purely intellectual basis simply wasn’t enough. I knew of present-day miracle stories; I knew of bible-times miracle stories and knew there was no reason such stories couldn’t keep happening. I told God I wanted him to either reveal himself, and make his existence super obvious, or I was gonna quit Christianity. (For what, I had no idea. Certainly not atheism; probably some eclectic combination of things.)

Now, when people challenge God like this, some of ’em decide to preemptively quit Christianity, and wait at home till God gives them some vision and calls them back. I didn’t do this. I kept following. I presumed God would answer. Some folks have told me, “Well that’s what made all the difference; you still had faith.” Meh; I’ve heard nonchristians share their stories, and they insist they totally had faith, but God never showed. Contrarily Christians will say they had no faith, yet God showed up. So I’m not gonna naïvely insist faith is part of any necessary formula. There is no formula. Faith helps. Earnestness helps. Pure stubborn determination helps. But God’s gonna do what God’s gonna do.

In my case, God came through. I experienced what I later came to realize was a baptism of the Holy Spirit. I started to identify when he talked back during prayer time. He showed me stuff, then confirmed it. He showed me miracles. He revealed himself to me in many different ways, many times since. Any doubts I might have had in God’s existence, are absolutely gone.

How do I know there’s a God? Because I’ve met him personally.

How’d the apostles know there’s a God? Same answer.

1 John 1.1-4 NRSVue

1We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— 2this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us— 3what we have seen and heard we also declare to you so that you also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. 4We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

Unlike today’s Christian apologists, the apostles didn’t give logical apologetic proofs for God’s existence. They totally could have; Aristotle of Athens had come up with the “unmoved mover” idea three centuries before. But they didn’t share that. They shared what they saw and heard.

Acts 4.19-20 NRSVue

19But Peter and John answered them, “Whether it is right in God’s sight to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; 20for we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.”

Acts 22.14-15 NRSVue

14“Then he said, ‘The God of our ancestors has chosen you to know his will, to see the Righteous One, and to hear his own voice, 15for you will be his witness to all the world of what you have seen and heard.’ ”

That’s what people are looking for: Legitimate God-experiences. People who’ve had legitimate God-experiences. They aren’t looking for intellectual arguments or reasons to believe; those are easy to find, but they aren’t enough. If you figure they are enough for you, that’s awesome; even Jesus says so. Jn 20.29 But in the context in which Jesus said this, he was personally appearing to his skeptical student Thomas, who needed such an appearance before he was willing to believe. Jn 20.25 Y’notice Jesus didn’t tell Thomas, “Well, you doubt, so you get no such experience until you stop doubting.” He showed up. He’s gracious like that.

If he hasn’t yet showed up for you in a convincing way, it means one of two things:

1. He totally did. But you weren’t convinced. You’re a particularly tough nut to crack.
2. He hasn’t yet… and deep down you’re kinda happy he hasn’t, and have avoided looking for him where he might be found, whether you admit this to yourself or not. You don’t think you can handle that kind of God.

I’ve met plenty of Christians who are avoiding the real-world God harder than they’ve been avoiding coronavirus, and I’ll write about them another time. Meanwhile I wanna encourage you to seek God-experiences. You wanna know there’s a God? Seek him where he might be found. Get your doubts eliminated, wiped as clean as Thomas’s.