In this universe, if something happens, then something must have made it happen.  If you hear your doorbell ring, it means that someone is there pushing the button.

So, take for example, if there was a Big Bang, the question arises, who or what caused the Big Bang to Bang?

And if God did it, who made God?

However, this shows a misunderstanding of God.

In this universe, we are constrained, limited, by our dimensions, up / down, left / right, forward / back.  And another dimension we are constrained by, is time.

However, God, who made the universe, is by definition, not constrained by its rules, because he is outside it.  He doesn’t have dimensions.  He is not limited by space – up / down, left / right, forward / back.  He is everywhere.  And he is also not limited by time.  He has always existed, without beginning and without end.

He always has been – he just “is”.  This makes sense of the name that he calls himself.  When Moses asked him his name, God answered “I am”.  He always was, and he is, and he always will be, so he is – “I am”.  In the past, people have proposed that the Hebrew for “I am” might be pronounced “Jehovah”, modern experts think it might be more accurately pronounced as “Yahweh”.

This also makes sense of what Jesus said about himself.  He said to some people that Abraham (who lived around 2000BC), was looking forward to Jesus’ day (John 8:56).

The conversation continues (John 8:57-58):

“You are not yet fifty years old,” they said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!”

“Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham existed, I am!”

Jesus is saying here that he existed before Abraham did and he finished off by saying “I am”.  An expression related to the Hebrew name for God.  And his listeners got the point – they wanted to stone him for equating himself with God.

In the Greek language in which the New Testament section of the Bible was originally written, Jesus’ words were “ego eimi”, a very emphatic way of saying it.

Now, if a normal person said they were God, they certainly would have a very large “ego”.  They might even be called an egomaniac.  But is this true for Jesus?  If he is in fact God, then he is just telling us the truth about himself.  He was very careful to only tell the truth about everything else, so it seems likely he was telling the truth in this case too.

That means that Jesus is the God we were originally talking about, the one who is outside this universe, not limited by its dimensions.  The one who caused the universe to come into existence, and since we are part of the universe, he also caused us to come into existence.

That means that we are totally dependent on him, and answerable to him for how we live our lives in the universe he has made.

So, the question that we all need to answer is, have we, personally, and corporately (all together), trashed his creation and treated our fellow creatures as trash, or have we been following the rules that he has made and that he placed in our consciences when he made us?

Sadly, none of us live up to the standard that Jesus has set, we don’t even live up to our own standards.  And so, we need to humbly approach him, and ask for his mercy and forgiveness.  Thankfully, this is a request that he is only too happy to grant.  He will also grant our request for him to help us to go on living in a way that does live up to his standards.