By: Eli Ayala
Does God have a mustache?
No, God does not have a mustache. The questions assumes that God has a physical body and looks something like a human person. But, God does not have a body. God is spirit (John 4:24). And he is not simply spirit, he is everywhere present and so he is a spirit without limitations with respect to his location. In a profound sense, as a universal all-encompassing spirit, there is no such thing as “over here” or “over there“ for God. God is not limited to specific locations. All references to God in the Bible that give the impression that he has body parts (the right hand of God, the arm of the Lord, etc.) are anthropomorphisms; which is a linguistic device that it used to attribute human characteristics to God for the purpose of conveying something about how he relates to us, but they are not to be taken in a woodenly literal fashion.
Do animals go to heaven?
Not likely. Its difficult to be dogmatic on this as the Bible does not speak to this issue in any explicit fashion (at least to my knowledge). But there does not seem to be any indication that animals have an aspect to their being and nature that survives physical death. This is not so for human beings who were created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26). Man is composed of both a body (physical) and a soul (spiritual). Upon death, man continues in an immaterial disembodied state in the presence of the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8) awaiting a future bodily resurrection. Nothing is indicated in scripture that animals will experience anything like this. Now, that is not to say that in the New Heavens and the New Earth (Revelation 21) there will not be animals. There very well may be animals in the “New Creation,” but that is not to say that these animals are the same animals that had physical life in the world prior.
How do we know that Jesus was raised from the dead? How do we know that people didn’t make it up? If the people that claimed they witnessed it are dead, then how do we know it actually happened?
First, we need to make a distinction between how we “know” Christianity to be true (which entails the truth of the resurrection of Jesus) and how we ”show” Christianity to be true. We “know“ Christianity is true and hence profess our trust in the risen Christ, by the regenerative work of the Holy Spirit (His Spirit bears witness to ours that we are children of God) (Romans 8:16). However, we “show“ Christianity to be true through argument and evidenced. How we go about this can differ depending on the specifics of what we are talking about. If we are discussing the truth of Christianity as a worldview, then I may want to argue that the truth of the Christian worldview is true by the impossibility of the contrary. The Christian worldview is the only worldview that make sense out of logic, knowledge, science, mathematics, and history. However, if someone wants to know the details about the specific historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, we can appeal to historical data points that are best explained by the fact that God raised Jesus from the dead. In essence, there is an objective body of facts that we can point to as evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. And, we can argue more broadly, that the Christian worldview is necessary to even make sense out of historical investigation itself. So, while historical evidence is support for our overall Christian worldview, historical evidence alone will never establish the certainty of our knowledge of Christianity’s truth. However, I am convinced that if we argue presuppositionally, that the Christian worldview is necessary for the very intelligibility of history itself, we can ascertain a certainty for the truth of the Christian worldview via a transcendental argument.
What is the point of living life? If God knows everything we are going to do, then what’s the point of living?
The purpose of our life has nothing to do with the needs of God. God is self-existent and self-sufficient. In Psalm 50:12, God says, “If I were hungry, I wouldn’t tell you…” The fact that God created man and knows everything that man will do (Because he ordained all that man will do) does not mean that life is meaningless and purposeless. God, as an all-knowing and rational being never does anything arbitrarily and without reason. In Ephesians 1:11 we are told that God “works all things after the council of his will.“ God has a “council” within himself and a “will” that he is working out, and this council and will encompasses “all things,” even the actions of men. The point of living is for our benefit, not God’s benefit (He was fined before he created man). When considering our purpose I will simply echo the Westminster Shorter Catechism: To glorify God and enjoy him forever. Our purpose (regardless of God’s foreknowledge of what we will do), is to worship our maker and enjoy him within the context of an eternal relationship.
Is there time in heaven?
I think there will be time in heaven. I understand time as events which stand in a “before and later than relationship.” Because there will be events occurring in heaven, there will always be a before and after than relationship between them, and therefore, time will be experienced. Now, that being said, this is not to say that time will be experienced in the same way it is experienced here and now on earth. And we will want to make a distinction between “time” and “eternity.” God is eternal in the sense that he has neither beginning or end (Psalm 90:2). Human beings are eternal in the sense that while we had a beginning, we will have no end (as we will be with Christ forever in the New Heaven & Earth). However, the nature of God’s eternity is different than ours in that he is without beginning or end, and he existed before there were “events“ that could stand in a “before and later than” relationship; that is to say that God is timeless (existing without time).
How can God know everything? Wouldn’t it be difficult for God to know who is who?
God knows everything because he is omniscient. His omniscience is one his attributes. It is God’s very nature to know all things. To ask the “how” question here is to ask “How can God be God?” The answer is that: He just is. As God said of himself in Exodus 3:14, “I Am that I Am.” There are no reasons external to himself that explain how and why God is the way that he is. Apart from being omniscient, God is also omnipotent; that is to say that God is all powerful. Being all-powerful, it is not “difficult“ for God to know who is who, for there is ”nothing too difficult for him” (Jeremiah 32:17). Nothing is too difficult for a being that is all-powerful, for such a being has no limitations.