“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” (Genesis 1:1-2)
As the Bible opens, it makes no attempt to prove the existence of God. The words of Genesis 1 presuppose that He exists and declares it to be a fact. It asserts that God is the ground of all being and reason. There is no apology or explanation given for His existence. He is. If we are to make any sense of the Bible and the world in which we live, we must accept this as a given. The Bible presents God as the Creator of the universe and everything in it including man. He preserves and sustains all life and is personally interested in the affairs of men. In the Bible, man is led to relate to God in a way that acknowledges his need for Him. Man must be accountable to God, to obey Him, and to depend on Him for His daily needs.
Yet man does not always choose to obey God. The man who does not obey does believe in god, but not the God of the Bible. The Bible describes this person as a “fool”, a term that is not applied to an atheist since there are none in the Bible. The fool may rationalize or create a god of his own, one that he can manipulate. Ancient men made gods in their own image so that they could live in a way that allowed them to do whatever they pleased. They could live outside of God’s holy standard.
Modern man does the same by denying the existence of God altogether. But there are no real atheists. One god many worship is “science”. Science explains all the events of the natural world. Science gives us a measure or control over life and promises happiness, wholeness, peace and prosperity. Another god many worship is “self”. Modern man has set up each individual as authority and interpreter of all that is. This has led to the acceptance and tolerance of a myriad of competing and contrary beliefs about life which has produced spiritual anarchy. Every man does what is right in his own eyes rather than acknowledge that there is one Almighty God who declares absolute truth, who demands obedience, One to whom we are all accountable. And He has shown Himself to be loving, compassionate and merciful as He has revealed Himself in the person of Jesus.