The Ultimate Proof

A seminary professor greeted his new first-year students with the following assignment: Study the various schools of thought down through the Ages on whether or not it is possible to prove, through reason alone, that God exists. For weeks they waded through the heavy philosophical tomes of Emmanuel Kant, Thomas Aquinas and others, struggling to grasp their ontological arguments, and their cosmological arguments, and all the rest. But it wasn’t easy going and, when the time arrived for the final test they felt ill-prepared. Then, on the morning scheduled for the big Exam, the professor announced that it had been postponed for two weeks. Whereupon, one of the anxiety-ridden students breathed a sigh of relief and exclaimed, “That proves it! There is a God!”

Implied in that student’s remark is a kind of built in understanding that the compassion of God is the ultimate proof of His existence. And, of course, the Lord Jesus comes to us as the Chief Exemplar of God’s compassion.

In…