Why do we need God?

Why do we need God? I was asked this question by someone after writing a blog article. I didn't answer, but explained it had inspired me to write an article about it. So I've been thinking about this. When looking at other answers, from other people, faiths and perspectives, there is no distinct answer. People tend to explain the benefits of knowing God, rather than answering why we need God. And when I stopped and thought about it, it is difficult to answer. It's a bit like asking why does a flower need the sunlight?
My Dad mentioned, "It's like asking why do we need a father?" So why do we?

To my mind, this question takes us back to the dawn of humankind. Whether or not you believe in evolution, there came a point when humankind became consciously aware of their environment and sought answers. The ideas they had are well known as passed down via the Torah, Bible, Enuma Elish, Rig Veda, Upanishads, the Tao, amongst many other ideas and writings. Many of the perceptions are similar, and I don't want to digress, for that is an article in itself. However, we have to consider the time and environment when those thoughts were in their infancy, even before being written down. If we were to write something now to explain creation, within our contemporary settings, as if we were suddenly aware right now, with technology around us, what would we ask? Why am I here? Where did the Blu Ray player come from? How did we get silicon chips? Why are these things here? Who put the sky there? How did all this come about? So regardless of the time or setting, we would always have these questions.

The crucial, pivotal point is, I believe, the moment we seek answers in relation to our awakening consciousness as a race. Changes occur over time, like declining types of animals, changes in weather patterns and the morphing of landscapes. Ice comes and goes, droughts, darkened skies from possible celestial impacts and/or volcanic activity. Then someone asks, "Why?" This then leads to seeking any connection between events. At some point another person thinks,"I wonder... If I ask for this [ ___ ] to change/stop, will it?" (The blank could filled in by weather, land, situation, disease, etc.) Then, there appears to be a response, and it is an answer. For example, you pray for rain and it happens. From this, three schools emerge; belief, superstition and coincidence. The believers believe, ask/pray and get answers. The superstitious try to recreate the same conditions to stimulate a response. The non-believers see it all as coincidence, a fortunate happenstance.

So what is my point here? We want to know, to ask, to find the answers. One could say that the schools mentioned before can be consolidated into two areas, faith and science. However, we have scientists who have faith and for many years science has been investigated by different faiths. Both schools seek answers. In our contemporary setting, science can aid the atheist's opinion and faith/God aids the opinions of the believers. We can only explain a tiny amount of what we observe and understand and science helps us investigate many aspects, but compared to what is out in the cosmos we know very little. Many theories exist and they are only ideas, conjecture, possibilities. So we ask lots of questions to seek answers so we can know for sure. Like children we constantly ask, 'Why...?" So non-believers look to science for answers, whereas believers look to God for answers. However, the two are interchangeable.

At one level we could say that we need God to answer the questions. On another level it could be suggested that we need God to understand our place in the universe, help define our purpose. One may say we need God as the ever present provider. It could also be said that, in comparison to the parent/child relationship, we need God as our parent. After all, the Bible suggests we should be as children, to receive God's kingdom. Rabindranath Tagore said, "Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man," & “From the solemn gloom of the temple children run out to sit in the dust, God watches them play and forgets the priest."

The institutions of religion need God but what about the individual? Everyone has their own perspective on who or what God is and how they need / do not need God. As for myself, I believe we need God to help us understand our place and purpose, to provide for us and as Saint Teresa of Ávila wrote,
“[God] has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours,
no feet but yours,
Yours are the eyes through which to look out [God's] compassion to the world
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good;
Yours are the hands with which he is to bless men now."
I also think we are all part of God, each of us a vehicle to view existence in this realm. Through our many eyes God looks on at events.

So, going back to the original question, "Why do we need God?" can we actually find an answer? Do we need God?

Just for a moment, I'd like to compare God to time. Without time, everything would happen at once, so time is present so there is some kind of order. Time is also relative, and one body can observe time at a different rate to another, yet both observation points observe the same event, and my point is that God observes things from one point of view and we view things from another, yet both witness the same events. In this example, God is time, as well as being a viewer of time; time being like a string of continuity. So the same question arises here, do we need time? As I write this article, experiments in quantum physics indicate that the future affects the past, which indicates a predetermined future and no free will, an argument that has been going on for a long time. We know we have choice, but do we? Has the future outcome affected our choice even though we are unaware of it? In a realistic sense, we make conscious decisions but also acknowledge that we don't know the outcome, such as "I know I will have dinner, but what I'll have to eat has not been chosen."

Now, you are probably asking why I have taken a detour here in this post, but here is why. The questions, do we need God and do we need time, are the same. We know the future exists, but are unsure of its properties and whether or not it affects our choices. Likewise, we can say God exists but are unsure of God's properties and whether or not God affects our choices.

So, why do we need God? Only time will tell.