I was born and grew up in a faithful Catholic family and had the enormous benefit of a good Catholic education.
Belief in God was, in a sense, the unspoken foundation of our family’s life and equally the foundation of the schools I attended. And of course, in the Australia of the 1950s and 1960s, belief in God was also the “default position” of almost everyone, even if formal religious practice was already beginning to decline.
In the Australia of 2019, this unquestioned belief in God is no longer as widespread as it was and many people of faith now find themselves challenged by what we might call the “practical atheism” of some of their family members, their friends, work-colleagues, and the wider society in which we live. And so we find ourselves asking if faith in God is reasonable, or sustainable, or relevant in today’s world.
Whenever I reflect on these things – and I often do – I find myself reflecting on two things: One is a verse from the psalms, and one is a thought from one of the great Christian writers of the early Church.
Psalm 8 invites us to reflect on the beauty and wonder of the world around us.
“When I see the heavens, the work of your hands,” writes the psalmist, “and the moon and the stars which you arranged, who are we that you care for us, mere human beings that you keep us in mind?”
Some people see the unimaginable complexity and size of the universe, and the tiny part of it which we occupy, as an obstacle to belief in God.
For me, however, the extraordinary nature of the creation, about which we seem to discover new wonders almost every day, points unfailingly to the existence of the Creator – and reminds me not to let myself fall into the trap of thinking that I or anyone else can ever fully grasp the depths of the mystery of this creating God.
Saint Augustine of Hippo, the great theologian of the fifth century, invites me to turn my attention, from time to time, away from the greatness and vastness of the creation to the other place where God is to be found: in the depths of the human heart.
Saint Augustine captures beautifully something of this mystery in some famous words he addresses to God in prayer. They are found in the “Confessions of Saint Augustine”, an autobiographical work.
“You have made us for yourself, O God,” Augustine prays, “and our hearts are restless until they rest in you”.
Here, Saint Augustine catches what I believe is a universal human experience: that sense of restlessness, of always looking for and striving for something more.
Reflecting on his own journey through life he offers a response which my own experience confirms: that the God who made us intends, because of His great love, to fulfil all the longings He has placed within us.
As another of my favourite spiritual writers puts it: “God creates in human hearts a huge desire and a sense of need, because he wants to fill them with the gift of himself” (Monica Boulding, The Coming of God).
Why believe in God? Because, at least for me, it is the only way to make sense of the world in which I live, the people whom I encounter, and the depths of longing and hope within me that I refuse to believe are destined to be for ever unfulfilled.
From pages 4 to 5 of Issue 19: ‘Why Believe In God’ of The Record Magazine