Who Made God?
Watching Phil Vischer’s Jelly Telly show with my little boy reminded me that accessible apologetics training is for kids, too! In this week’s show, a puppet newscaster hosted a segment called “Buck Denver’s Mail Bag.” At first, I wasn’t too excited about it. But then, Buck said an 11-year old boy asked this question: “Who made God?” What came next was something I’d never seen before: a puppet engaged in apologetics and using the cosmological argument to teach kids!
Buck Denver: Simplifying the Cosmological Argument for Kids
[Transcript] Who made God? Easy answer: No one. You say, “How could that be? Everything I’ve ever known has been made by someone. How could God not be made by anyone?” Well, here’s the thing. Something has to have been not made.
Cause if you start with like, um, your car. Who made your car? Well, it came out of the factory. Who made the factory? Well, it was built by the builders. Who made the builders? Well, their mommies, kind of. And um, who made them? Their mommies and their mommies and going way, way, way, way back. It can’t go back forever. So at some point, it had to start with something that was not made. Something that just always was. That is God. God always was. He was never made. Pretty cool, huh? Something had to have started it all and that something is God. [End Transcript]
This reminded me of William Lane Craig’s wife, Jan, who responded in a similar way to a student who said she did not believe in God. Jan’s quoted in Reasonable Faith: “Everything we see has a cause, and those causes have causes and so on. But this can’t go back forever. There had to be a begining and a first cause which started the whole thing. This is God” (122).
Here’s how William Lane Craig himself responded to the question, “Where did God come from?” He explained, “God didn’t come from anywhere. He is eternal and has always existed. So he doesn’t need a cause. But now, let me ask you something. The universe has not always existed but had a beginning. So where did the universe come from?”
Whether it’s responding to kids, college students or anyone else, it’s not enough to have an answer to the tough question. It’s also important to share it simply—at least at first. If the conversations gets more technical, so be it. But let’s take a cue from Buck Denver and start with something simple.
Wow! This is great, Sir Mikel! I’ve recently been having trouble answering questions about faith coming from my ten-year-old sister. This helps a whole lot! By the way, I was wondering if you could do an entry about time? As in, the beginning of time as we know it and how God fits us into the picture. I’ve been trying to think about it but it’s honestly beyond me. Lol! Thanks! God bless!
Hi, Ea. Glad this helped. God and time? Look for a forthcoming post. Thanks for the comment!
@ Andrea:
I was literally reading C.S. Lewis’ Screwtapes Letters prior to finding this page and in chapter 8 he writes (spoken by Screwtape), “Humans are amphibians – half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.” To me this would imply that God, being wholly spiritual and the only one not made, transcends time. Therefore God is at the beginning and at the end simultanously, there is no time that God is not present nor is there any time he cannot be in.
It would be akin to directing a movie; the movie cannot proceed without a director, the director is there at the beginning, already knows the script, knows how each scene is supposed to play out, is present thoughout the entire production, and is there at the end to see the finished product. God is the director and the universe is his production.
Great quote, Joe. Love C.S. Lewis.
Interesting thoughts. Although I wouldn’t say God “is at the beginning and the end simultanously.” Imagine God with nothing. No space. No time. Now, imagine God with the universe he created. While he’s not constrained by time, he acts in it as he interacts with temporal beings. Jesus died around 30 A.D. Not 30 B.C. or yesterday.
I see what you’re saying with the director analogy. But it takes a director like God to work out his master plan through the free choices of human beings!