Proving God?

I am a Biology teacher. I am a Worship Pastor. Its amazing how many people think these are mutually exclusive terms. "Do you believe in evolution or do you believe in creation, or is it intelligent design?” I get questions like this all the time. Lots of times I want to answer like Jesus did: “I’ll answer your question if you answer mine” then ask them why they don’t demonstrably care for the poor and oppressed in society. You see, that’s the rub. We spend so much time arguing points that don’t matter and we lose sight of what Jesus really wants - for us to have honest relationship with him and to behave like we are part of his family, and I don’t mean to rebel and be the black sheep of it or to be a spoiled little brat who wants everything our way. The Bible was never intended to be a science book. Is there science in it, yes; there is more history than there is science, but its not even a history book. Certainly poetry abounds in the Older Testament, and those books are intended to be poetry, but it is poetry about Yahweh and His activity in our lives. My biology texts locate scientists in time and geographically, but it is neither a history nor a humanities book. Do I believe in evolution? That’s not the question for a scientist. The question is do I have empirical evidence enough to support something or not - its not about belief, its about evidence. I could go into a long diatribe about how evolution is simply the shift in allele frequencies within a population, and that we have real world proof of that, and that the whole speciation argument is not as clean, but that’s not the point. Don’t hear me saying I don’t believe scripture, you’d be way off base there. I could argue science and scripture all day long, but that won’t change anybody’s mind, and that is the point. We need to learn the lessons of scripture as God intended - and those lessons are not found in natural science.

I want to preface this paragraph with the understanding that I am not arguing either side of a literal or figurative reading of the following stories, I am proposing what I believe are more important issues. Take Adam and Eve: in my humble opinion, this is way more about how a loving God acted to have relationship with us and how we chose our own way. By choosing to be "like God," we really messed up life in paradise. It is way more about how God restored relationship than it is about dust and ribs. It is also about how, even at the earliest of our choices of disobedience, God redeemed, in a highly prophetic manner, and by that kept us from bondage to ourselves and to sin in the garden, guiding us to the worship of Him instead of ourselves. Was the Exodus story more about plagues and miracles or about God freeing his people from bondage and oppression - and giving us the option of worshipping Him? The "why" is more important than the "how." Follow Exodus with story after story of us believing we were “god enough” and doing things our ways, ignoring Him. The story turns to God intervening when we chose his way instead of our own and once again, you guessed it, freeing us from our self imposed bondage and into life and freedom in Him. Even when Yahweh applied discipline to His rebellious children, He had already provided the redemption. Yahweh or Yeshua, the story is the same because the God is the same. God loves us enough to let us choose, though He may discipline us when we need it, but it is always His sacrifice that provides a way for redemption and restoration into positive relationship with Him. So is scripture about plagues and miracles, of history and poetry, of Arks and fire from on high? Well, yes - and no.

We do not need the Bible to tell us THAT God is, rather we need it to tell us WHO God is and that He has done everything, even in light of our obstinance,  to have relationship with us. I do not believe God cares if we can “prove” Him or not, I think if we could prove He exists or that He doesn’t, someone would already have done so. The intent of scripture has never been to reason God’s existence to us, but to reveal His desire for relationship with us.