Can you prove that God exists? No, at least not in a way that would compel anyone to make an act faith on the basis of a mathematical or scientific argument. God can’t be proven in that way, albeit these “proofs” point to some important things. The existence of God can’t be empirically proven because God doesn’t work that way. God doesn’t appear in the world as the conclusion to a mathematical equation. God, as we know through the way Christ was born, comes into our lives at the end of a gestation process.
That also describes how faith is born in our lives. God never dynamites his way into to our lives with a force so powerful that we can’t resist. The divine never takes us by storm. No. God always enters the world in the same way that Jesus did on the first Christmas. God is gestated in a womb and appears as a helpless infant that has to be picked up, nurtured, and coaxed into adulthood. The presence of God in our world, at least within the dynamics of the incarnation, depends upon a certain human consent and cooperation. For God to take on real flesh and power in the world we must first do something. What?
The answer to that lies in the way Jesus was born. Mary, Jesus’ mother, shows us a certain blueprint, a pattern for how God is born into our world and how faith is born in our lives. Impregnation by the Holy Spirit; Gestation of God within one’s body; The agony of giving birth. How do you prove to anyone, yourself included, that God exists? You don’t. The object of our faith and worship doesn’t appear as a compelling proof at the end of a rational experiment. God has to be gestated into the world in the same way as Mary did all those years ago at the first Christmas. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Giving Birth to God” December 2001]