God is a Spirit.
One of the most debated concepts in the theoretical sciences concerns the origins of the universe. Even the most devout adherents to the so-called “Big Bang” idea will concede the inherent incompleteness of the concept. After all, what went bang? How did a universe of things come into existence in the first place?
I’ve used the illustration of a candy bowl many times to highlight this problem: If you enter a room and there is a bowl full of M&Ms, you would never in your right mind take the position that M&Ms just up and appeared out of nowhere. You would rightly conclude that someone put the candy in the bowl.
Our universe is full of candy. Who put the M&Ms in the bowl?
Scientists struggle with explaining “what was there before there was anything” because science is limited only to what can be observed. In that case, science will forever struggle with this question and will never come to a decision that resolves every possible conflict, simply because the actual answer is something that cannot be observed.
God is a Spirit.
Jesus states that clearly in His conversation with the Samaritan woman (John 4:24). God is a Spirit and as such is not constrained by the limitations of the physical universe. The physical universe had a beginning. Everyone—from the most devout atheist to the believer in any god imaginable—concedes that our universe had to have, at some point, come into existence. Even if you want to argue, as some scientists do, that our universe exists in some kind of a cycle of creation, destruction, and creation again, you still must concede that something started the cycle. That’s a truth that has been accepted going back to the days of Newton and the laws of thermodynamics.
God, however, is the great exception to Newton’s laws. God is a Spirit. He is not natural. He is not physical. As such, He can exist in a way this universe cannot: God has always existed and will always exist. In that way, He is the way it is possible for the physical world to come into existence: He was here to make it so.
This universe is here. It came from somewhere. There is no natural/physical explanation for its existence because anything you might offer up as the source of life’s creation must, itself, have a source of its creation. The chicken/egg paradox has no answer in this physical universe.
God is a Spirit. That’s the answer.
~ Matthew