How does God be alive to start with?

So asked Jamie (aged 4) when we held an Any Questions session.

Dear Jamie

Thank you for your question ‘How does God be alive to start with?’ I have been thinking since you asked me about how to give you a clearer answer.

I would like you to imagine you are a domino like this!

All dominoes come in sets. People can play the game Dominoes but often they stand them on their end in a row. If one domino falls onto the next, then that one falls down, and so they all fall down one by one.

I hope you can imagine being a domino – in ‘Domino World’. All you know about is how dominoes live. Being a wise domino you are quite sure that if a domino stand on its end – it will stay that way – unless something or someone causes it to wobble (the wind, a finger, another domino…). You are quite sure that if a domino falls over it has been pushed by something else.

This is how life is like in the real human world. If a car moves it is because petrol is being burned, if a book falls down when dropped it is the earth’s gravity pulling it, if there’s a picture on the TV it is because there is electricity going into the set. And the same seems to be true for life – animals and plants have animal and plant parents. So I suppose that’s why people ask ‘Who made God?’ or ‘Where does God get his life from?’ They are asking the question ‘if there is always something that causes an effect – what caused God’?

Let’s go back to ‘Domino World’. Imagine you were a wise domino and you saw a row of dominoes in front of you: there are so many that you cannot see the beginning of the line or end the end of it. They would all be standing upright, not moving at all. Then off in the distance you see them falling down, and one knocks down another; you see them all fall one by one- as far as your eyes can see.

Now what would you, a wise domino know?

• 1.      That something had started the dominoes falling down
• 2.      That whatever had started the dominoes falling down, it was not a domino. It was a different kind of thing to a domino, because, remember, dominoes by themselves don’t move.)

Now even a wise domino would probably not be able to explain much about other kinds of things (such as boys!) – but he would know that something quite different him had started the dominoes falling, however many thousands of dominoes were in the line.

Perhaps you can begin how in the same way to see now that a different kind of being to animals and plants had to start our universe going. Of course God is that different kind of being – and he is certainly more different to us, than we are to dominoes. And if God is a different kind of being – then perhaps he has always existed.

So I can’t give a complete answer to your question; but I don’t think that should bother us too much. If God is a wonderful as Jesus taught us, then there will be things about him that we can’t fully explain. But what we do know does make sense.

Two last thoughts:

• ·        carry on asking questions like these. Perhaps you will find a better answer than all the people who have puzzled over these things before us.
• ·        remember that Jesus was the smartest man who ever lived, and that he made sure that he taught us things we really need to know about God: how he made us and loves us like the best parent, and wants to help us live our life to the full, loving God and caring for other people

Thank you again for this question – I hope I have helped you at least a little.