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What I Believe
I'm assuming you clicked on this
link because you are curious about what I believe here at My Game
Company, and why my beliefs motivated me to write computer games
for children. So here's what I believe:
1. There is a God
First, I believe there is a God.
There are intelligent, rational reasons for this belief that have
nothing to do with religion. In fact, I believe we have more
evidence for the existence of God than any generation that has
come before us. There are a lot of things I could cite as
evidence, but I'm not trying to write a book here, so these should
be sufficient:
- Biology. Our knowledge of
how the human body works is perhaps one of the best proofs for
existence of God. Take a look at this brief video
that illustrates the unseen molecular processes that are going
on in every one of your cells in your body all the time.
Specifically, it shows how white blood cells sense and respond
to their surroundings. The video was created by XVIVO, a
scientific animation company near Hartford, CT, who worked
closely with Alain Viel and Robert Lue of Harvard University.
The scientific authorities who contributed to this project
vouch for the fact that this video is a completely accurate
rendering based on all of the known data about internal cell
processes. Whenever I watch this, I just can't see how anyone
can deny the existence of a Creator. It's so obvious to me
that these processes were designed by Someone, and not the
result of something random.
- Laws of nature. The
universe is ordered and governed by mathematical laws. Richard
Feynman, a Nobel Prize winner for quantum electrodynamics,
said in his book The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a
Citizen Scientist, "Why nature is mathematical is a
mystery... The fact that there are rules at all is kind of a
miracle." The very fact that the universe is governed by
mathematics suggests that it was designed by a Creator.
- The Earth. Its size is
perfect - if it were smaller, an atmosphere would be
impossible, and if it were larger its atmosphere would contain
free hydrogen like Jupiter. It's distance from the sun is
perfect - any closer and we would burn up, any further and we
would freeze. And it maintains this perfect distance even
while rotating around the sun at a speed of almost 67,000
miles per hour and rotating on its axis. Its moon is the
perfect size and the perfect distance from the Earth for its
gravitational pull, which prevents the ocean waters from
stagnating but doesn't spill over across the continents. Its
hydrologic cycle is perfectly designed to deliver purified
water to sustain plants and animals, and to recycle that water
so that we never run out. In short, it certainly appears the
Earth was designed by Someone specifically for its
inhabitants.
Of course, if someone doesn't want
to believe in God, they can easily find a way to rationalize or
explain away anything I write here, no matter how obvious or
factual. It doesn't matter how much evidence I cite. But when I
consider things like this, it seems so obvious to me that there
must be a God. And I think that anyone who sincerely wants to know
whether or not there is a God and takes the time to examine the
evidence with an open mind will inevitably come to believe in the
existence of God.
2. You can know God
Okay, so once I accept that there is a
Creator God, I can look at His creation and deduce some things
about Him and what He is like:
- The complexity of the universe
tells me God has an infinite intelligence
- The power in the
universe tells me God is infinitely powerful - He has to be if He
is the source of that power
- The laws of nature that govern
the universe tell me he is a God of order and consistency
- The massive diversity in animal
and plant life tells me God is imaginative and creative
Further, I can conclude that God is
not some impersonal force, but rather a personal being. Only a
personal being has intelligence and imagination.
But even though I can know some
things about God and what He is like from His creation, the
question is: can I know God personally? Some people would say no, because God exists at a
level that is infinitely far beyond us. And they would be right -
unless, of course, God chose to reveal Himself to His creation.
Over the centuries, there have been
a lot of books that claim to have come from God. But when you
compare them, even though there are some similarities on the
surface, they teach conflicting ideas and they contradict one
another. That certainly doesn't fit with what I know about God
from His creation: that He is a God of order and consistency. One of
these writings might be genuinely from God, but not all of
them can be. So if God did reveal Himself to His creation and it
were written down, how can I know which writing (if any) is legitimate?
When I look at all of the different
religious writings, both their content and their background (who
wrote them, how they came about, how they were preserved, etc),
only one book gives sufficient evidence to convince me that it
came from God: the Bible.
I could cite a lot of reasons why I
believe this is so, but here are a few:
- The Bible accurately
describes God. The God it describes matches up with what I
know God to be like from creation. The fact that God is a
personal being and not an impersonal force rules out a lot of
Eastern religions and New Age beliefs.
- The Bible accurately records
facts. First, the Bible accurately records historical
facts. There are many
non-religious historical texts that confirm the Biblical
account. Also, archaeological discoveries have confirmed many
previously disputed historical events recorded in the Bible,
such as the Genesis story of Joseph, the fact that there were
systems of writing in existence when Moses wrote down the Ten
Commandments, the Babylonian culture recorded in Daniel, etc.
Second, the Bible is accurate
when it touches on scientific subjects. Here are just a few
verses that are sufficient to illustrate the point.
- Job, the oldest book of the
Bible, describes the suspension of the Earth in space in Job
26:7b: "He hangs the Earth on nothing."
- Job mentions the fact that the
air has weight (something that was not proven scientifically
until just 300 years ago) in Job 28:25: "When He
imparted weight to the wind and meted out the waters by
measure".
- Job also describes the
hydrologic cycle in great detail in Job 36:27-29: "For
He draws up the drops of water, they distill rain from the
mist, which the clouds pour down, they drip upon man
abundantly. Can anyone understand the spreading of the
clouds, the thundering of His pavilion?"
- Ecclesiastes 1:6 describes the
circulation of the atmosphere: "Blowing toward the
south, then turning toward the north, the wind continues
swirling along; and on its circular courses the wind
returns."
- Isaiah 40:22 describes the
shape of the Earth as spherical, centuries before people
thought that the Earth was spherical: "It is He who
sits above the circle of the earth". The word
translated "circle" is also translated
"circuit" or "compass" in other
contexts, and indicates something spherical, rounded or
arched - not something that is flat.
- Leviticus 17:11 describes the
value of blood: "For the life of the flesh is in the
blood". In 1616, William Harvey discovered that blood
circulation is the primary factor in physical life,
confirming what the Bible recorded almost 3,000 years
earlier.
- It is a proven fact that a
person's mental/spiritual health is directly related to
their physical health, something which King Solomon wrote
about in Proverbs 17:22: "A joyful heart is good
medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones", and
in Proverbs 14:30: "A tranquil heart is life to the
body, but envy is rottenness to the bones."
The Bible writers commented on a
number of scientific principles long before they were discovered
or proven scientifically. To me, that is certainly one big
indicator that the Bible came from Creator God and was not
invented by man.
Contrast this with a lot of
religious writings, like those of the Greeks and Romans, that
have very fanciful or mythical accounts of what the universe is
like and how it works. I don't think anyone believes those
accounts anymore, but there are some modern scientists who
believe in an Intelligent Designer and find the Biblical account
of creation to be scientifically sound.
- The Bible accurately predicts
history. Most impressive to
me, is the accuracy of fulfilled prophecy, something that I
don't find in any other religious literature. In Isaiah 41:23,
God issues a challenge to other gods: "Declare the things
that are going to come afterward, that we may know that you are
gods". God also defined some conditions for His challenge
in Deuteronomy 18:21-22 and Jeremiah 28:9: any and all
prophecies must be 100% accurate in their predictions. Anything
less is evidence of a false god. God Himself accepted His own
challenge, and He predicted hundreds of events to happen in the
future. His predictions are not cryptic or vague but are very
detailed and precise, and many of them have already come to
pass. I can easily verify the accuracy of the Bible's
fulfilled prophecies by comparing them with recorded
history.
What's even more interesting are
events that have happened in just the last century that were
predicted by the Bible: the rebirth of the nation of Israel in
1948, the worldwide return of the Jews to their homeland, the
centralization of a global economic system, the sudden explosion
of knowledge and technology, the moral decline of society
(people are lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful,
proud, abusive, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unforgiving,
without self-control, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of
God, etc), and more.
For these reasons, and many others,
I believe that the Bible is the true message from God to His
creation.
3. God has something He wants to
say
So what message did God give us in
His Bible? Well, God has both good news and bad news. Since we
can't appreciate the good news until we get the bad news, I'll
start with the bad news.
First the bad news: the world is
in trouble. Serious trouble. It's broken, and it's getting
worse. The Bible says in Romans 8:21 that the world is in
bondage to decay. That means it's breaking down, falling apart,
and is only going to continue to get worse.
The world didn't start out this
way. When it was created, it was perfect. Genesis 1:31 says that
"God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very
good." The Hebrew word translated "good" refers
to both quality and moral goodness. The world started out with
everything working perfectly and with beings that were morally
perfect.
The fact that the world was
created perfect is a reflection of the nature of its Creator.
The Bible says that God is perfect and all His ways are just
(Deuteronomy 32:4). Moreover, it says that God is holy (Psalm
99) and pure - too pure to approve evil (Habakkuk 1:13a). Since
there is no shadow or even a hint of evil in Him, His creation
was naturally perfect.
The problem is that humanity
screwed it up. When God created the first two people, Adam and
Eve, they were perfect. But Adam and Eve chose to sin and they
rebelled against God. In doing so, sin entered the world and
"the creation was subjected to futility" (Romans
8:20). Further, Romans 5:12 says that "Just as through one
man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, so death
spread to all men, because all sinned". We are born as
sinful, selfish people. It's in our nature. Just look at a
toddler - it only cares about its own wants and needs. Every
time we break God's law, every time we violate another person,
every time we exalt ourselves or put down others, every time we
lie or are less than truthful, we demonstrate our moral
imperfection. The Bible says that "all have sinned and fall
short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).
In choosing sin, we have made
ourselves God's enemies. The Bible says that "God is
avenging and wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on His enemies.
The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and the Lord will
by no means leave the guilty unpunished." (Nahum 1:2-3a).
And what is the punishment? Romans 6:23 says, "the wages of
sin is death." But it isn't just referring to a one-time
physical death. Jesus said in Luke 12:5, "fear the One who,
after He has killed, has authority to cast into hell". Hell
is a place of torment (Luke 16:23), darkness (Jude 1:13),
weeping (Matthew 22:13), and everlasting destruction (2
Thessalonians 1:9). Death for sin refers to an eternal death, in
which the sinner experiences the just and unending wrath of
Almighty God for his sins.
Lest we think we're somehow good
enough to escape this death sentence, here's God assessment of
the human race: "They are corrupt, they have committed
abominable deeds; there is no one who does good. The Lord has
looked down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if there are
any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned
aside, together they have become corrupt; there is no one who
does good, not even one" (Psalm 14:1-3).
Even though the punishment for
sin is death, the good news is that you and I can be forgiven.
That amazes me! But the Bible is clear about this: God is a
forgiving God. The Bible says of Him: "For you, Lord, are
good, and ready to forgive, and abundant in lovingkindness to
all who call upon you" (Psalm 86:5). Micah 7:18 says
"Who is a God like You, who pardons iniquity and passes
over the rebellious act of the remnant of His possession? He
does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in
unchanging love."
God loves us, but our sin
separated us from Him. He would be perfectly justified in
sentencing all of us to hell and being done with us, but God
doesn't want that. He is not willing that any should perish (2
Peter 3:9).
But our sin presented God with a
dilemma. In His love, God longs to be with us. But His perfect
moral purity and His perfect justice requires satisfaction.
Someone had to pay the price of death for the sins we commit.
John 3:16 says "For God so
loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that
whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal
life." God sent His perfect Son, Jesus, to die in our
place. But get this: Jesus said in John 10:30: "I and the
Father are one." Jesus was none other than God Himself!
Someone had to pay the price for our sins, and God volunteered
to take the punishment Himself. He took on human form, lived the
perfect life that we could not live, and died in our place so
that we wouldn't have to. And three days later, he rose from the
dead, proving that not only is He God but also that His
sacrifice was sufficient to satisfy God's wrath.
All we have to do to be forgiven
is to "repent and believe" (Mark 1:15). To repent
means to turn from your sin, to change your mind about your
behavior and accept what God says about it. True repentance
involves grieving over sin (2 Corinthians 7:9), being repulsed
by your sinful behavior (2 Corinthians 7:11), and making
restitution to those who were hurt by your sin (Luke 19:8). To
believe means believing what the Bible says about who Jesus is
and what He did on the cross (John 1:12), and that He rose from
the dead (Romans 10:9).
On March 3, 1987, I made that
choice. I repented of my sin and believed the gospel of God for
the forgiveness of my sin. Since then, I've gotten to know the God
who forgave me, and I've learned a lot about Him and what He did
for me. I'm not perfect, but I am very thankful for all He has
done for me, and my desire is to use my gifts and abilities to
serve Him.
As I mentioned on my About
page, I gave up a stable career and a large salary as a software
developer in order to write computer games for children. God has
gifted me with programming skills, art skills (which I'm improving
all the time), and story-telling skills, and I now use those
skills to write clean games for kids. I do it first and foremost
to honor Him. So Fashion Cents features a doll that is modest and
doesn't look like Barbie, Dirk Dashing doesn't use weapons that
kill or punch his enemies, and the dictionary used by my word
search game Word Play doesn't include foul or obscene words. This
is how my beliefs influence the games that I write. I'm not
preachy or pushy in my games about what I believe, but my beliefs
determine the kinds of games I will make and the kinds of games I
will sell on my site.
My beliefs also determine the way
in which I run my business. God tells me in His bible, "Be
holy, for I am holy." So I do my best to be honest and
upright in my business dealings, to be truthful in my advertising,
to respect personal privacy and safeguard my customers'
information, to treat customers fairly and courteously, and to
operate my company with integrity. I review all of the games on my
site and assign a rating so you'll
always know exactly what you're getting before you download a
game. And I go out of my way to support my customers when they
have a problem.
Conclusion
I believe there is a God, and that
you can know Him, and that the only way you can know Him is
through the Bible.
One more thing: I know this
question will come up, so let me answer it head-on. I believe
Jesus is the only way to heaven. I know that may offend some
people, and it will probably cost me some customers, but I'm not
running this business to get rich. As I said, I do this first and
foremost to honor God, and He values truth and honesty. So I have
to be honest with you about what I believe. Jesus said in John
14:6: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one
comes to the Father but through me." Because Jesus said this,
and because the Bible clearly teaches that Jesus is God (the one
true God), I believe this automatically disqualifies every other
religious system as a way to get to heaven. If Jesus is who He
claimed to be (God), and if God Himself said He is the only way,
then there's no higher authority to contradict Him.
John 3:36 says "He who
believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the
Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him." A
preacher I admire, Dr. James MacDonald, says: "Hell is not
deep enough to contain the wrath of God upon those who reject His
only provision for your forgiveness. 'It is a fearful thing to
fall into the hands of the living God' (Hebrews 10:31). The
outrage of God, the wrath of God that will never be satisfied will
be poured out on those who reject Christ as the only way to
Heaven." God offers forgiveness freely, and if you say,
"No, I'll go my own way, I'll get up there on my own",
you'll deeply offend the One who owns the heaven you want to go to
and the One who paid the price so you could go there.
I don't say this to be
disrespectful to those who believe differently than I do. My
beliefs aren't something that I made up. It wasn't my idea. If it
were up to me, I'd probably let all kinds of people into heaven.
But I'm just a fallen human like everyone else, so I can't fully
appreciate what it means to be perfectly holy or how offensive sin
is to God. All I can do is be faithful and true to the message
that God has given.
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