“How do we know there is only one God?”

Ten year olds can ask good questions. And the challenge is to provide an answer that they can understand. This forces you to abandon cliches – you have to grasp the truth and be able to explain it simply. These are all good things.

This evening I was asked such a question by a ten year old.

Last night, Mary rented the move, Life of Pi, and watched it. This afternoon Tiernan came over and she asked if we (Tiernan and I) wanted to watch it, “It's really beautiful in the beginning.” (We have a Blu-ray player and it was the Blu-ray version). We did. We didn’t get to watch much because Isabelle had a presentation at school, but we learned that this fellow, Pi, in his search for God had embraced Hinduism (with its’ millions of gods), Christianity, and Islam. Since this is not a review of the movie (I still haven’t seen all of it), that’s all I will say about the movie. We watched a little then Tiernan and I left for the school house to join the rest of the family for the presentation.

On the way I decided to comment on the movie. “It’s too bad about Pi, that he was confused about God.” I started explaining how Jesus was greater and better than Hinduism with all their gods and Islam and Muhammad; that he was the way to the one, true God. Then the great question: “How do we know there is only one God?”

I have 10 minutes and a question the size of Alaska. How do I answer? Where do I begin? Cliches and platitudes are no good right now. I need to be able to reduce this down to plain and simple terms. Really, an excellent question!

So here is how I answered.

Well, we can’t see God, so a lot of this comes down to who we believe. The God of the Bible, Yahweh, says He is God. He says He looked around and saw that there were no other gods, He was the only one. Now along comes this Vishnu and he says he is a god. Can both be right? (He shakes his head). Somebody is not telling the truth; somebody is lying. Muhammad said he was from God and was His prophet and was sent to show us the way to God. Jesus said he was the way. Somebody is not telling the truth.

So we see that the God of the Bible says he is the only God, that he created everything. How can we tell? One of the things about the Bible is that God gives prophecies about many things. And they happened! The Bible is a really old book, and a long time ago God said he would send a Savior, who would be born in a certain town and to a virgin. And it happened! Do you know who I’m talking about? “Jesus.” Yep. These are some of the ways we can know there is only one God and that the God of the Bible is Him.

A ten year olds’ mind quickly wanders. Suddenly he said, “It would be neat if the gods of the Greeks and Romans were real. I think some of them were neat.” I told him that they knew they weren’t really gods, even though they worshipped them. “Why did they worship them then?” We are having a great discussion as we are driving down Cherry Road, are we not?

I explained about demons and how they are trying to get men to worship them, instead of the true God. “But aren’t demons working with the devil? Why aren’t they trying to get people to worship the devil?” Ah, here is the devil’s #1 goal for you – Get you to worship anything else other than God. He does not care what it takes: a false god, beer, wine, ANYTHING as long as it keeps you from worshiping God. (This was followed by a brief discussion on the relative strength of beer and wine!)

By now we had arrived. So I tried to sum it up.
What’s the devils #1 goal for you? “Keep me from believing in Jesus.”
What will he do to do that? “Anything.”

Then we got out and headed in for the presentation. Isn’t it neat? A great question, and a great discussion during a ten minute Jeep ride! No big to-do. Just life. Sounds a lot like:

You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up