Hi, Len. Thanks for commenting here.

This is a fair and good question, and I will do my best to answer it.

The simplest answer to your question is this: because the Bible tells me so. Of course, that begs the question, how do I know the Bible is true? This can be a long discussion, but I'll try to give you a couple of short answers.

- The human belief in morality that transcends cultures (e.g. we believe murder to be wrong) and the idea of good and evil (e.g. we believe abusing a child to be evil and vice versa, someone saving that child from abuse to be good) came from more than evolution (meaning a purely secular evolution, unguided by the hand of God). This idea of morality and good v. evil points to a higher power who instilled these beliefs in us. As a Christian, this is best explained not only by the presence of God but by the teaching that he made us in his image.

- The unnecessary elements of the world point to pure grace and joy. The world is more than pragmatic funtionality. We see beauty and color. We look at sunsets and mountains and oceans; we observe the plethora of colors in flowers or the myriad of types of beetles. It's unlikely that so much variety, and a variety that is unnecessary, would develop out of pure chance. It's more likely that someone created it. And the fact that he created so much beauty shows his love, joy, and grace as well as his power. Jeremiah 32:17 says, "Oh, Lord God, you did indeed make heaven and earth by your mighty power and great strength. Nothing is too hard for you!"

- As to the truth of the Bible: We have internal evidence (meaning it claims to be true and inspired by God) and external evidence (meaning both the age and number of documents that work together to make up the Bible and outside sources that confirm the truth of the historicity in the Bible such as kings in the Old Testament or the existence and death of Christ in the New Testament). The story of the Bible says that God created the world, that he created humans as pre-eminent in creation and to take care of the world, and that he said all this was good. Humans messed up, and this lead to death: physical death of creation (including humans--we experience this every day), emotional death (another thing we experience!), spiritual death (we rebelled against God), and relational death (a death between humans--as demonstrated in power-mongering, wars, and fights between spouses, siblings, and friends--and a death between man and nature--we continue to fail to take care of it and instead take advantage of it, and nature wars against us with tsunamis and tornadoes). But God in his love decided to redeem the world. Most of the Bible is concerned with how God redeemed, is redeeming, and will redeem the world. In the end, he does. Any beauty and life and goodness we experience now is but a glimpse of the beauty and life and goodness in the redeemed world.

- Finally, I believe because of my experiences. This is my strongest reason for believing, yet the hardest to explain. I have to be honest, I haven't always wanted to believe. I've even tried not to believe! (I think a good book that shows this quandary is the novel Cloudstreet by Tim Winton.) But I can't shake it. Or perhaps God won't let me shake him. I grew up in a Christian home and see the presence of God in everything--in Mother Teresa's work to save children, in the blossoming of a flower, in the love of my husband. None of this is possible without God. You may ask, how do you know your husband loves you? I could list the reasons: he tells me, the way he touches me, the way he serves me, the way he brags about me to others, the way he asks me to join his life and work. And all of those reasons are important, but to some extent, it's unexplainable. It's the same with God. I know he loves me because he tells me so in the Bible, because he's done so much for me, because he's asked me to join his life and work. But in some sense, it's unexplainable. In this area, I'd point to the work of Kierkegaard.

Perhaps that wasn't as short as I hoped it would be! I'd love to know what you think about God and spiritual matters.