Life's Big Questions

The top three internet search questions about God and religion according to research are: Does God exist? Why is there evil and suffering? Does life have a purpose? In an age when the internet promises to answer everything, it is ironic that so many are still confused about these age-old, fundamental issues.

When Paul went to preach at Athens, he entered a world of skepticism and ignorance. Greek philosophers gave a lot of answers to every question but couldn’t decide if any of them was the right one. The Bible says the people of Athens and visitors “spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing” (Acts 17:21). They were, as Paul says in II Timothy 3:7, “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.“

It was there in this ancient city almost 2,000 years ago that Paul addressed the three questions people struggle with today:

1. Does God exist? Paul deals with this question when he says that nature gives the answer. “God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though he needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all all things” (Acts 17:24-25). If these super intelligent philosophers knew that men’s hands made the idols and their temples all over the city of Athens and throughout the Greek world, then they could have known and ought to have realized that the One who made this universe must be the eternal, all-powerful, Supreme God. In fact, Paul quoted from their revered writers who said this very thing. “For in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring’” (Acts 17:28). Nature proves God today as clearly as it did then (Psalm 19:1–3; Romans 1:20).

2. Does life have a purpose? The answer is in Acts 17:26-27: “And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from every one of us.” The purpose of life is not to please ourselves. It is to seek the God who made us and find and love and obey him. If this is not a person’s ultimate goal, His life will be empty and without meaning regardless of what he may accomplish in life.

3. Why is there evil and suffering? Paul didn’t go into a long discussion about this perennial concern, but he did point to a fact that helps us to live in such a world. He said that God “has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead” (Acts 17:31). God doesn’t explain the answers to all of our questions about why there is so much sin and pain. But there is a judgment day coming. God will set things right. Every man will be judged according to his deeds. The evil that men seem to be getting away with will be punished in the end. Also couched in this verse is the death of God’s Son which is His ultimate answer to the problem of evil.

Truly “there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecc. 1:9). The answers have been there in the Bible all along.

Kerry

West End church of Christ • August 17, 2025