In the Apostles' Creed a Christian confesses, "I believe in God the Father Almighty." Many consider the idea of God to be a problem. This prompts them to ask various questions about God which may be considered simple by some. One day a mother sat with her four-year-old girl. The child was watching a cartoon on television. She asked, "Mommy, who made the cartoons?" Her mother happened to see the credit line, "Hanna-Barbera." "Who is Hanna-Barbera?" "Just some people," the mother explained. "Who made the people?" A little annoyed, the mother answered, "God made the people." "But, Mommy, who made God?" By this time her mother lost her patience and her temper and screamed, "Carrie, go play!" Shrugging her shoulders, the child sighed, "Gee whiz! Ask a simple question!"

We have some "simple" but profound questions to ask about God. Is there really a God? Where did God come from? What is God like? Can we know him? Where is God? If we go to philosophers, we get a variety of answers. Sartre speaks of the silence of God; Heidegger of the absence of God; Jaspers of the concealment of God; Bultmann of the hiddenness of God; Buber of the eclipse of God; Tillich of the nonbeing of God; Altizer of the death of God. In contrast, the creed speaks of the almighty fatherhood of God.

Martin Luther gives the best definition of a god: A god is that on which one should rely for everything good, and with which one can take refuge in every need. Thus to have a god is nothing other than to trust and believe in him from the heart -- or, as I have often said, that only trust and faith in the heart make both God and a false god. If your faith and trust is right, then your God is right as well, and again where the belief is false and wrong, then the right God is absent, too. For the two belong together, faith and God. So that to which you give up and hand over your heart is truly your God.

In summary, then, Luther tells us what makes a god: "Whatever, then, your heart clings to or relies upon, that, I say, is properly your God." In other words, your God is whatever or whoever comes first in your life.