I AM, therefore we are. (John 3:1-21)

Commentators have rendered Descartes's first principle cogito ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am"), though a more accurate rendering would be dubito ergo sum ("I doubt, therefore I am"). Philosophers are fond of making propositional statements anchored in their own limited range of perception, especially since the French novel-reading thinker first proposed doubt as the basis for knowledge.

Christians have an entirely different presupposition: I AM, therefore we are. We exist because it pleased God to create us. To put it more personally: I exist because I AM made me, and I have eternal life because I AM re-made me. Our existence is a fact, not because we can reason it out (solipsism), but because the great I AM creator God Yahweh declared it to be so.

Any other starting point is wrong. God is at the center of all things, and He has revealed Himself to us through His holy Scripture, in which He also describes our creation. There is no way to trust the validity or truth of Scripture unless we accept the whole truth of Scripture, and unless we accept it as God's self-revelation rather than the musings of fallible humans.

If the Bible is only a collection of fallible human writings, we are fools to put any faith or trust in it. Faith is an all-or-nothing venture, not a pick-and-choose affair. When we trust the Word of God as our ultimate source of wisdom (rather than our doubt, or knowledge, or philosophy, or whatever), we see that our existence is dependent on nothing else than God Himself, and that our spiritual life issues only from His grace and will.