InterVarsity Press

Why Do Some People Find God and Others Don't?

By James W. Sire

For over forty years (I'm 62) I have been watching people wrestle with finding the truth about God. Does a God exist? What is he/she/it like? Is God interested in me? I have seen people look a bit, quickly get uninterested, stop looking and seemingly never look back.

Jean-Paul Sartre, one the 20th century's most well-known atheists, commented on his own experience at age eleven. Sartre told his close friend Simone de Beauvoir, "I don't know where the thought came from or how it struck me, yet all at once I said to myself, 'But God doesn't exist!' It's quite certain that before this I must have had new ideas about God and that I had begun solving the problem for myself. But still, as I remember very well, it was on that day and in the form of a momentary intuition that I said to myself, 'God doesn't exist.'"1

Then he said, "It's striking to reflect that I thought this at the age of eleven and that I never asked myself the question again until today, that is, for sixty years." Much later Sartre did construct a philosophic argument, proving to his satisfaction that God does not exist, but he admits that it was ex post facto. After his youth, he says, the possibility that God exists just never concerned him.

I have seen one person delighted beyond ecstasy that I could not prove to him that God exists. If God could not be proven by an argument, he felt free to do whatever he wanted. He was off the moral hook. And I have watched others search, puzzle, and struggle, and then finally come to see that God does exist—not just any God, but the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So, why do some people find God and others don't? The same objective reasons are there for all of us to see, as are many of the same subjective reasons. All of us can see the amazing order in the universe (the existence of an intelligent, rational Creator can explain that). All of us see the love between a mother and her child (the existence of a God who loves us, his "children," can explain that). All of us sense the immorality of murder (the existence of a good God can explain that).

Likewise all of us face the same objections to the existence of God—the problem of evil, the hypocrisy of believers, the astounding notion that an infinite, personal God could become a man in Jesus.

What then makes the difference between those who find that God exists and those who don't?

Before I answer this question, let me put all my cards on the table. There's nothing up my sleeve in the answer I will give. I am assuming up front that the biblical God, the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) does in fact exist. What I will say now is not a "proof" for his existence. It is, rather, an explanation why many—if not all—believers in this God come to this belief.

The key to finding God is wanting beyond all else to know the truth about God. It is wanting to know the truth about God so much that you are willing to take the consequences of finding it. You see, the truth about the biblical God is that he not only exists but that he makes demands of us. If we believe that God exists and do not respond by obeying him—or at least trying to obey him—we have not understood who God is. Let's see why.

God is not just all-powerful and all-knowing; he is also goodness itself. Everything about him is good. He created us in his image to reflect in small and finite form the character of his goodness (Gen 1—3). Then, even after we rebelled against him (Gen 3), he continued to love us and provide a way for us to be restored to substantial fellowship with him now and eventually to perfection as humans in the afterlife. He knows what we should be and do. His standards are high, beyond our reach without his transforming power, but they are what we are called to follow; they are part of the goal set before us as human beings.

This, then, is both the good news and what looks like the bad news. The good news is that God is ready to reveal himself to us. Like the Hound of Heaven in Francis Thompson's poem, God is already searching for us. We need only stop running from him.

But why should we run? Isn't God the one we want to find? Yes, but, along the way we realize that finding him (or him finding us) comes with a price. We discover that if we are to find God, we must yield to him not as an abstract principle but as a person. We must recognize him as our Lord. That means that we must give up our desires for self-advancement, pleasure and autonomous dignity. This sounds like bad news. But it is the best news possible, for if we continue to pursue our selfish goals, we will forever be frustrated. The fact is that we cannot reach these goals. We are denying who we are even by trying.

So here's the seeming dilemma. If you want to fulfill your life by reaching self-satisfaction, you will never come to know the truth about God. But if you are willing to do what you discover the truth itself demands, you will begin to know the truth and you will find true satisfaction. In short, if you want to know the truth about God, you must be willing to obey the truth about God.

All this I have both seen for myself and seen in others. But what I have been saying is not just based on human experience. It is what Jesus himself said about knowing and obeying.

About the need to obey, Jesus said to those who had begun to believe that he was the one sent from God, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free" (Jn 8:31-32). Holding to Jesus' teaching doesn't mean just reading the Bible or listening to the pastor of your church. It means obeying what Jesus says. The cost of finding the truth is obedience; the consequence is knowing the truth and being set free, free from all that separates us from God and final human fulfillment. Is it worth it? A thousand times over.

About setting aside our selfish desires, Jesus said, "Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and the gospel will save it."2 Then Jesus counted the cost: "What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?" (Mk 8:35-37).

Consider too those great, comforting words of Jesus: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and by burden is light" (Mt 11:28-30).

Finally, there is God's great promise to the Jews in exile in Babylon hundreds of years before Jesus: "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you" (Jer 29:13-14). So: Why do some people find God? Because, unlike Jean-Paul Sartre, they seek him with all their heart, willing to do and become what God wants them to do and become.

Notes

1 See Simone de Beauvoir's Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre, p. 434.

2 In Out of the Saltshaker, Rebecca Pippert gives a clear illustration of the point I am making in this article.

Further Reading

If you'd like to study this issue further, take a look at one or more of the following books.

Beauvoir, Simone de. Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre. Trans. Patrick O'Brian. (London: Penguin, 1984).

Clark, Kelly James, ed. Philosophers Who Believe. (Downers Grove, Ill., InterVarsity Press, 1993.)

Morris, Thomas V., ed. God and the Philosophers. (Oxford University Press, 1994.)

Pippert, Rebecca Manley. Out of the Saltshaker. (Downers Grove, Ill., InterVarsity Press, 1979).

Sire, James W. Why Should Anyone Believe Anything at All? (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 1994).