Have you ever been caught off guard by a child’s incredibly insightful yet surprisingly simple question? It often happens at the most inconvenient times, leaving you scrambling for an answer that bridges the gap between complex concepts and a young, curious mind. Kids have a knack for cutting to the chase, and their seemingly straightforward questions can often unveil profound mysteries.
One such question, frequently posed by children and pondered by adults alike, is: “Where Did God Come From?”
It’s a natural question to ask. In our everyday experience, everything has an origin. Your smartphone was manufactured in a factory. Your home was built by construction workers. You were born to your parents. If everything we know has a beginning, it’s logical to wonder about the origin of God.
However, the Christian perspective offers a different answer. It posits that God did not originate from anywhere or anything. Instead, God has always existed. This concept of God’s eternal existence is central to Christian belief. The Bible expresses this timeless nature of God by declaring Him to be “from everlasting to everlasting” (1 Chronicles 16:36).
Where did God come from? “The Christian answer to this is that God didn’t come from anything. God has just always been there.”
Yet, grasping the concept of eternal existence is challenging for both adults and children. How can something exist without a beginning?
Understanding Eternity Through Metaphor
The difficulty in comprehending God’s eternal nature stems from our own experience of time. We are temporal beings, confined to the present moment. We cannot revisit the past or experience the future directly. This linear perception of time makes it incredibly difficult to imagine something existing outside of its constraints, “from everlasting to everlasting.”
To aid in understanding, consider the metaphor of a book and its author. A book has a defined beginning and end, starting with page one and concluding on the final page. A character within the book would find it nearly impossible to conceive of a reality existing before page one or after the last page. However, we, as readers, know that a world exists beyond the book’s narrative – the world of the author.
The author exists before the book’s inception and continues to exist after its completion. From the author’s perspective, the entire story is present, from beginning to end. The author is not troubled by a tragic event on page 87 because they are aware of the resolution in the final chapter. The author transcends the timeline of the book itself.
Where did God come from? “The author exists before the book was written and will continue existing long after the final page.”
Characters within the book could potentially come to know their author if the author were to write himself into the story. C.S. Lewis, in his exploration of faith, highlighted this very concept. He suggested that for Shakespeare and Hamlet to meet, Shakespeare would have to initiate the encounter. Hamlet, being a character within the play, could not bring about such a meeting on his own. Shakespeare, as the author, possesses the capacity to enter his own narrative and create a dialogue between himself and Hamlet.
Similarly, Christians believe that God entered human history in the person of Jesus Christ. This act of divine self-revelation allows us, the characters in the story of humanity, to know the Author of our existence.
While the question “Where Did God Come From?” has multiple facets, two key points emerge. First, the Christian answer is that God is eternal and uncreated. Second, even though grasping eternity is challenging, metaphors like the book and author can provide a helpful framework for understanding a reality beyond our temporal experience.
Tracing Back to the Beginning: Two Fundamental Choices
Let’s delve deeper into the question of origins. If we trace the history of the universe backward in time, we inevitably arrive at a point of beginning. Cosmology, the study of the universe’s origin and development, supports the idea that the universe had a starting point.
As we contemplate this ultimate beginning, we encounter two fundamental possibilities. Either the universe arose from absolute nothingness – spontaneously popping into existence without any prior cause – or something eternal, something capable of creating a universe, has always existed.
While the notion of something existing eternally can be difficult to grasp, the idea of the universe spontaneously arising from nothing presents even greater challenges to our understanding of reality. It seems more plausible that an eternal, powerful entity existed and brought the universe into being, rather than attributing the universe’s existence to sheer nothingness.
This leads us to consider the reasons for believing in God as the eternal creator of the universe.
God as the Best Explanation for the Universe
Consider the objects and phenomena that populate our world – smartphones, trees, airplanes, and even ourselves. All these things share a common characteristic: they came into existence at some point in time, and their existence was caused by something else. Smartphones are manufactured, trees grow from seeds, airplanes are built, and humans are born. Nothing simply appears out of nowhere without a cause.
This principle of causality, that everything that begins to exist has a cause, can be logically extended to the universe itself. Not only is the universe composed of things that came into existence, but scientific evidence suggests that the universe itself had a beginning. One compelling piece of evidence is the second law of thermodynamics, which describes the universe’s tendency toward increasing entropy.
“The sun and stars are diffusing their energy outward in an irreversible process, to where, eventually, they will ‘burn out.’”
The energy in the universe is constantly transforming from usable forms to unusable forms. Stars, like our Sun, are continuously radiating energy outwards in an irreversible process, gradually depleting their usable energy reserves. This process indicates that the universe is not in a state of equilibrium and is moving towards a state of disorder and energy dispersal, known as entropy.
Imagine an hourglass with sand continually flowing from the top chamber to the bottom. Could such an hourglass have been running forever? Logically, no. If it had been running eternally, all the sand would have already flowed to the bottom an infinite amount of time ago.
Similarly, if the universe had existed eternally, and energy has always been dissipating, the universe would have already reached a state of maximum entropy – a state of “heat death” where no usable energy remains. However, the universe is not in such a state, indicating that it has not existed forever. The consensus among cosmologists is that the universe had a beginning.
“The evidence is in, and the consensus of cosmologists is that the universe didn’t used to be here.”
So, we have a universe that had a beginning and therefore requires a cause. How did the universe come into existence? Is it plausible that it simply popped into being from nothing? A more reasonable explanation is needed.
Examining the Possible Explanations
Could the universe have caused itself? This is logically contradictory. For something to cause itself, it would have to exist before itself, which is impossible.
Could the universe have been caused by another universe or a hypothetical “universe machine”? While speculative theories about multiverse scenarios exist, there is no empirical evidence to support them. Furthermore, even if such a universe machine existed, the question of its origin would simply be pushed back – what caused the universe machine? The fundamental question of ultimate origin remains.
Alternatively, the ancient explanation offered in the book of Genesis, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” continues to resonate, even in light of scientific advancements. As previously discussed, everything that begins to exist has a cause. God, by definition in classical theism, is eternal and uncaused. Therefore, God does not require a cause.
Considering the options: 1) the universe spontaneously arose from nothing (logically problematic); 2) the universe caused itself (logically impossible); 3) the universe was created by a hypothetical, scientifically undetectable universe machine (unsupported by evidence and merely postpones the question of origin); and 4) the universe was created by an eternal, uncaused God – the latter option emerges as the most coherent and logically sound explanation.
Where did God come from? “God, by definition, is eternal; he needs no cause.”
Perhaps the most profound question we can ask is, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” If there is no God, and the universe had a beginning, then the existence of the universe becomes a profound mystery with no satisfactory answer. However, if God exists, the existence of the universe becomes understandable as the creation of an eternal, powerful being.
While the concept of an eternal, uncaused God may stretch our comprehension, living in an awe-inspiring, life-permitting universe that arose from nothing seems even more perplexing and difficult to accept. The existence of the universe itself points towards a Creator, an eternal God who has always been.
