Is God a god of our imaginations?

by Rob Lundberg

Some folks might say, “Don’t talk to me about the Bible. Of course they are going to say that there is a God. But what if God is just a creation based upon people’s imaginations or some deep felt need, so that they can feel like they are cared for?”  Those who have embraced this objection toward the existence of God have been influenced by a strong intellectual current that has been around for the last couple of centuries.

The origin of this objection comes from the influential German philosopher, Ludwig Feuerbach who pontificated this idea that God was made in the image of man and that God was a creation of the human mind.  And then Sigmund Freud also contributed to this “A theological dogma might be refuted to a person a thousand times, provided however, he had need of it, he again and again accepts it as true.”

So is religion then just a psychological prop for the weak minded?  Is it merely a crutch for spiritually weak?  Let’s get to the real issue of this objection with a few questions pertaining the character and nature of the God of the Bible?

Consider the nature and the character of the God of the Bible. If you and I were to make up our own god, does it make sense that we would created one who would demand us to be holy, righteousness and self-sacrifice?  Is it reasonable to demand justice, if we ourselves would turn out to be our own standard of justice? Of course not!

Here is another question. What about the New Testament writers, would they and the writers of the First Century church have created a God who condemned them for their hypocrisy? Would a zealous disciple have invented a Messiah who calls His disciples to sell all that they have to the poor, and follow Him to their deaths? I think not!

The skeptical delusion is self created. For the skeptic who believes that the authors of the Bible manufactured their God out of a psychological necessity hasn’t even read the Scriptures very carefully. That same skeptic has a human centered and self-created view of a god that does not exist.

Atheists will often describe their view of God, making an appeal to their authority that the God they have in their mind is the same as one believed by Christians. The proper way of thinking this through is that there is a knowledge of God in everybody, but we are prone to create the view of God in our minds that is foreign to the One revealed in the Christian Scriptures.

What is the reality of this objection?  If we were to invent a god that would prop up our spirits, like Feuerbach and Freud propose, we would not create one who called a Mother Teresa to spend her life picking dying people out of the gutters of Calcutta just so they might die with dignity, knowing they were loved. We would not create a god that would call a Billy Graham to go all over the world and preach a gospel message and call people to repent of their sins.

No, we would invent a god of superstition — the god who forecasts our future and can be persuaded (or bribed) through prayer or chanting or seances to do our bidding.  We would create a god who never condemns but only condones our most selfish inclinations and desires.  We would invent a god that would reflect something like a New Age deity.

But that is not the God who exists. This is not the God of the Judeo-Christian faith.  It is an anti-theist delusion.  The God of the Bible and the Judeo-Christian faith is a God who demands everything from us — most of all that we confront and not flee from reality and in return desires a personal relationship with us through His Son Jesus Christ; in whom meaning and purpose can be found.

_________________________________