April 19

A supernatural deity is common to all cultures; often a whole family of deities, or deities for different occasions or events.

In the most primitive cultures of which we are able to know something, e.g. aboriginal Australian, Incas, New Guinea natives etc., all subscribe to the notion of at least one deity and, if more than one, then usually one who is above all the others. In ancient cultures, such as Egypt for example, the ruler was regarded as a god; the same applied in the Shinto religion of Japan. Ancient Rome borrowed this idea of deification of the ruler by decreeing the Emperor to be a god.

The idea of God therefore, or the existence of a supreme being, is as old as man himself. In Japan it was the Sun god, in Babylon the Moon god, in all cultures a god by whatever name. It is impossible to find a culture which has no deity to which it is attached. Indeed, the word culture comes from the Latin cultus, meaning worship and so a culture has always been defined by the god it worshipped. Although, in the Christian culture of the West, there have always been those who deny the existence of God, there has also always been a general and widespread acceptance of the truth of God.

This cross-cultural conformity to the principle of a deity confirms what the Bible teaches; that man is made for fellowship with God. Because of that, there is a hole in the soul of unbelievers, an emptiness that they try to fill with other things, but which can never satisfy or take the place of that for which the innermost being of man longs; fellowship with the One True God.

In modern times, particularly in the materialistic west, the concept of God has come to be regarded as a religious superstition held by the ignorant and anti-intellectual. Wiser men have said there is no God; “God is dead” said 19^th Century German philosopher Fredric Nietzsche, although he gave birth to the idea of the “Superman”, from which Hitler developed much of his ideology and this “Superman”, on the face of it, had qualities that in other cultures are attributed to gods.

Much modern antipathy to the idea of God can be laid at the door of the Church. The official policy of 18^th century revolutionary France was that God did not exist; the same policy applied to the 20^th century Soviet Union. In both countries, God was identified with a corrupt Church that was associated with the wealthy aristocratic ruling classes in oppressing the poor and helpless.