Is There A God?

This question may help shed some light on the distinction I draw between religion and theology. As far as organized religion is concerned, the question is rhetorical. “Of course there’s a God. We’d be out of business if there wasn’t.” Theology’s most honest answer to the question, however, is grounded in agnosticism. “I don’t know.” Here the fork in the road comes early in the journey. Religion proceeds on the basis of expouding and elaborating upon a given belief. Theology, on the other hand, is faced with a more empirical challenge of figuring out how to go about answering the question. Thus, atheism truly falls under the umbrella of theology just as surely as agnosticism or theism. I have been blessed all my life by wise and loving parents who never, to the best of my recollection, imposed their beliefs upon me. This may come as something of a surprise to those who know that my father is a Methodist minister unless they also know that his ultimate calling is as a theologian. Those of us who experienced his ministry gradually realized that we were being asked the question “Is there a God?” and furthermore were expected to “show our work” as justification of the answer we arrived at. This was truly in the spirit of John Wesley, founder of Methodism and himself a theologian minister. Wesley’s quadrilateral of Scripture, Tradition, Experience and Reason was posited as the way to intelligently and rationally go about answering the question. During the years of my ministry, when I would put forth the fundamental question of theology, parishioners nervously asked, “Are we even allowed to ask such a thing?” My answer then and now is not only are we allowed, but we must. Regardless of your age or station in life, I put to you that your relationship with God cannot be as rich and fulfilling as it could be until you first ask the question.