The Age of (Lazy) Skepticism

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

These are the first words of Jesus in the gospel according to Mark and I find it very interesting that the first command that Jesus gives is “repent” because that literally means “to think again” or “to rethink”. I say I find it interesting because it is not rare to find people who view Christians as people who do the exact opposite – who don’t think and refuse to think. And while I will not deny that there are Christians who give support to this view, I will submit that this problem is not limited to Christians but is fast becoming the default condition in the world in which we live. You could call this the age of skepticism, where people are encouraged to question but NOT to take the time to seriously think about the question. There is a skepticism that encourages thought and discovery but that is not the kind of skepticism that you will see flourishing today, where people are content to pass through life without seriously considering the big questions of life. An example might help - two men are both skeptical about the existence of the state of Michigan. They both have one or two good reasons for this skepticism but here is where they differ: one of the men uses this skepticism to delve into the evidence, to search out for the truth, to find answers to the hard questions while the other uses his skepticism to disregard the question altogether, to stop seriously thinking any more about the issue, relying on that one reason to support his choice.

Here is the point, regardless of whether or not you say you believe in Jesus Christ, have you thought about it? I mean really thought about it? Have you read and considered the words of Jesus himself? Have you read and considered ANY of the writings of the many great thinkers of the past – Christian and non-Christian? Have you used your skepticism to search out the truth, to stimulate thinking? Or have you become content living the rest of your life without seriously investigating whether or not your beliefs are true? Whether or not your beliefs correspond with reality? Jesus believed that his words, his life, his worldview would hold up under serious thinking. He commands us to think again about life. To think again about serious questions related to our existence. To think again about a life spent with him. Will you?

Isaiah, Chesterton, and Isaiah

If I had my two year old son's energy and youthful sense of wonder, I could probably run a marathon every day.  I would never get tired, and it would never get old.  The way he runs back and forth across the same path on the floor over and over and over; the way he can keep singing the same song without it ever getting old; the way he can keep asking for the same book every night; and his ability to continue to be entertained by the same episode of the same children's show over and over again--it reminds me of something G.K. Chesterton said.

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
-G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

 I don't know the details of how God creates and sustains creation, but I believe we do see a faint glimpse of his infinite power when we see the vitality of children.  Even more astonishing is that we human beings have the least wisdom when our energy is at its peak.  Yet God not only has infinite power, but infinite wisdom to go along with it.

Have you not known? Have you not heard?  The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.  He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.  He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.  Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.
-Isaiah 40:28-31

 Awesome.

Who is God?

I heard a quote recently that had more truth in it then I initially thought. It was similar to the following: A dog looks at his owner and thinks, “This person feeds me, and houses me, and protects me, and loves me… he must be god.” A cat looks at his owner and thinks, “This person feeds me, and houses me, and protects me, and loves me… I must be god.”

 

While humorous, I was brought to think on the radically different lifestyles that emerge out of the two mindsets presented here. The first of course being a life of gratitude, obedience, and joy with the second being a life of entitlement, stubbornness, and bitterness. And while it may be relatively easy to go through life without ever consciously thinking, “I must be god” it is certainly much more difficult, if not impossible, to go through life without subconsciously believing it. I would say it is especially true in this service centered society in which we live where people (or machines) do things for us all the time. But this kind of society also allows us to see this subconscious belief - where we will destroy phones, scream at ATM machines, and curse out slow drivers because “We are god and are entitled to get what we want!!!”

 

This is why the first step to get out of this mindset is to realize and fully believe that “we are not god.” Yes, we have a lot of things that nearly fulfill our every wish. Yes, we have people all around us who constantly serve us but the only reason that we have any of this is because other people took pity on us and helped us. It started when we were born into this world as a helpless infant and it has continued to this day. If other people did not take pity on us and help us nothing that we have accomplished would have been possible. We just don’t often realize it, as Dallas Willard explains, "People often do not want to accept that they can only live on the basis of pity from others, that the good that comes to them is rarely 'deserved.'"

 

I say this is the first step because I think coming to this realization produces a question. And that is, “If I am not god, then who is?” or in other words “If I am not meant to live for myself, then who am I meant to live for?” And while there have been many answers given to this question I agree with what the Bible says in Deuteronomy 4:39, “Know therefore today, and lay it to your heart, that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other.” There is one God and He is who we were all meant to live for.

The Lord has given us everything that we have – He has given us the ability to work, eat, sleep, laugh, and play. He is the ultimate provider and the giver of life. The question is how will we respond? Will we presume that this life that has been given to us is our own, that we are god? Or will we “ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name” and live a life of gratitude, obedience, and joy unto Him? This is the good life that God wants for us and the life that Christ calls us to with the words, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

"Those Christians and Their Morality..."

“[T]hink of us as a fleet of ships sailing in formation. The voyage will be a success only, in the first place, if the ships do not collide and get in one another’s way; and secondly, if each ship is seaworthy and has her engines in good order. . . . But there is one thing we have not yet taken into account.  We have not asked where the fleet is trying to get to…”

-C.S. Lewis

Modern people feel pretty strongly about morality.  But based on the above analogy, we aren’t thinking very carefully about this subject (despite our feelings) if we haven’t answered at least three questions: (1) How must I live to avoid hurting others? (2) How must I live to avoid hurting myself? And (3) what am I made for?  Most people begin and end with the first question.  We often say it is okay to “do whatever you want as long as you’re not hurting anyone.”  But as Lewis goes on to explain, the second question is equally important.  How can you expect the ships to steer carefully to avoid colliding with one another if each ship is in such bad shape that it can barely be steered at all?  In other words, how can I avoid harming others if I don’t have any control over myself?  So some people will admit that you shouldn’t do things that are bad for you.

But is that enough?  Is it okay to do whatever you want unless you hurt yourself or someone else?  Returning to the ship analogy, we must first be able to explain why the ships are in the water at all.  Is there a destination?  Is there a purpose?  If not, the first two questions have no ground to stand on.  By neglecting to think about question no. 3, we’ve left out something essential to our ethics—the foundation!  How can we say the ships shouldn’t collide with each other if we don’t know why the ships are in the water to begin with?  Perhaps they’ve decided to destroy each other, like warships.  Perhaps they feel as if they were made to destroy each other.  Or worse—perhaps they feel that they were built to seek victory at all costs.  If you think I’m just exaggerating, consider the suicide bombers, kamikaze pilots, or the 9/11 hijackers of our world.  Could we condemn their behavior?  Could we condemn the cut-throat mentality of corporate America?  And how about people who set themselves on fire for political reasons?  What could you say to such a person? “Your life has no purpose.  So do whatever you want… but not that!”  The existentialist philosophers have been unable to provide any coherent answers.

As a Christian, I believe that morality must be grounded in the creator.  There is room for social and personal ethics, but they will only take us so far.  As 1 Corinthians 8:6 says, all things exist for God.  He is our foundation.  Without him, morality is subjective and arbitrary, and whoever has the most power wins, right or wrong.  But with God as our foundation, we will begin to find real, coherent answers to our moral problems.  Each one of us will feel uncomfortable with this at some point.  But if we are seeking a source of truth that transcends each individual, isn’t that exactly what we should expect?

In His Image

I'm sure that all have had a moment in their life when they were dealing with feelings of inadequacy.  As men, we constantly wonder, am I good enough?  Do I have what it takes?  We fear failure simply for the fact that it shows others that we couldn't do it, we weren't enough, we didn't have what it took.  The same goes for our spiritual walk.  Every time we hit a bump in the road or take a detour and fall into sin we end up feeling like we failed.  Even Paul experienced this so much so that he went on to say, "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.... For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.... What a wretched man I am!" [Rom 7:15-18,24]

How many times do we look in the mirror, seeing only the sin that seems to keep us down, and think of ourselves as wretched men?  Some of you might say not enough and others might say all the time.  While the first response might point to someone who has yet to acknowledge their sin and give it up to Christ, the latter would suggest someone stuck in a narrow view of themselves wherein they only see their sin and are forgetting that Jesus died to cleanse us of the sin in our lives.  Scripture says, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." [Rom 3:23]  The problem lies in that we live in a fleshly world when we were made for a spiritual one.  Too many times I think we don't read Rom 7:18 slow enough to realize that it is through our sinful nature that good does not dwell in us.  That doesn't mean good is never found within us.

On the contrary, upon the creation of man, God called us good.  In Romans 6, Paul says that only those who forsake the flesh and walk in spirit will see God.  While it's good to recognize this and understand that without the spirits' guidance, and certainly without Christ's blood, we would have no escape from sin, dealing with this problem is usually more difficult than simply acknowledging it.  It is, however, a good starting point.  In fact, it is the only starting point.  Paul doesn't simply stop at pointing out the sinful nature but, instead he continues on , saying, "Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!" [Rom 7:25]  Likewise, Romans 3 goes on to say we "are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ." [Rom 3:24]

I must clarify at this point that my purpose in writing this is not to give you some three step program on how to resist the flesh.  Anyone who tries to box the walk of faith into a system is missing the point.  Rather, my hope is that you will gain some perspective into who you are, or can be, through Christ by taking a look at what man was created to be.  The enemy would love it if we simply got stuck at looking at how far we fall short of the life we were created for that we fail to ever actually take so much as a glimpse at that life.  Many times we get so caught up in how much of a wretch we are and how much sin this flesh of ours has caused us to do that we neglect to remember one big important factor.  We were made in His image!  HIS!  As in the God almighty of the universe.  The creator of all things.  The alpha and the omega.  The great and wondrous hosts of hosts.

What are the implications of truly accepting this and holding on tightly to that fact?  Consider a sculptor who sets out to create his masterpiece.  Upon completing his work I would imagine he would take much pleasure in admiring it.  Now say shortly after he makes it, someone else comes along and places a scratch on it.  Would it no longer be his masterpiece?  Would he still not love it?  I would venture to say yes.  After all, the sculpture is a reflection of the work of the artist and not the vandal.  In the same way we are a reflection of our creator's work in us.  We were not made to sin but rather to reflect God's grace to the rest of the world much like Moses did upon being in the presence of God.  Therefore, I urge you to view yourselves as masterpieces of the one true God.  While we are full of scratches from this fleshly world, God still saw His original design as good and us as worth redeeming.  Thus, we have Christ, of whom we should hold on to, who is continually restoring us to our intended condition so that we may truly be the image of God for which we were created to be. 

The Self Centered Life

In his book, Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis points out the following: 

There is a difference between a life that is selfish and one that is self centered: for in a selfish life my mind could be directed toward a thousand things, not one of which is myself. The distinction is not unimportant. One of the happiest men and the most pleasing companions I have known was intensely selfish. On the other hand I have known people capable of real sacrifice whose lives were nevertheless a misery to themselves and to others, because self-concern and self-pity filled all their thoughts. Either condition will destroy the soul in the end. But till the end, give me the man who takes the best of everything (even at my expense) and then talks of other things, rather than the man who serves me and talks of himself, and whose very kindnesses are a continual reproach, a continual demand for pity, gratitude, and admiration.

This quote struck me because in my experience I have found that it is terribly easy to fall into a self centered life that is not selfish at all. For example, take a man who spends every minute of his life doing things for others. It would not appear that such a man was living a self centered life. However, he would be if he was thinking of himself the entire time he was doing those things. It is important to note that this is NOT the kind of life that Jesus lived or that he wants us to live. Yes, he did live his life doing things for others. But no, his mind was not fixed on himself, but on God the Father the entire time. It wasn't a selfish life, AND it wasn't a self centered life. And THIS is the life that he calls us to as well when he commands us to, "Follow me". So I encourage you to reflect on your life. Who/What is it that dominates your thoughts? How would you classify your life? Selfish? Self centered? Or Christ-like?

And I believe that the true question is not whether your life is self centered or not because lets face it, to a certain extent we all live a self centered life. The better question would be whether your life is becoming a more self centered or less self centered kind of life. Do you find that God is on your mind more than he was before, or less? Do you find yourself more concerned with what God thinks of your actions and less concerned with what other people think or the opposite. Are you becoming more like Christ or less like him? As Lewis pointed out the selfish and self centered lives will inevitably end in ruin. However, Jesus himself demonstrated that the Christ-like life will endure and flourish even beyond the grave.

The Stepford God

People approach the idea of having a relationship with Jesus in at least three different ways. One approach is to simply reject the idea—to reason that there is no god, or at least not a god we can know. The second approach is an improvement, but not by much. Under this view, there is a god, but not a god with a mind of his own. You don’t follow god. He follows you. The last approach is to take Jesus as he intends to be taken—as Lord and savior. To demonstrate these approaches, I’ve used an illustration that other writers and speakers have used, which is based on the Stepford Wives films. In the 1975 film, the husbands kill their wives and replace them with emotionless robots. The robots look like the wives, but they exist only for their husbands’ personal pleasure. In the 2004 film, the wives aren’t dead, but they might as well be. Their husbands control their minds using microchips.

1. The Stepford God: The Original
God does not speak. We may have reasons to say that there is a god (e.g. the rational intelligibility of the universe), but not a god we can have a relationship with. If God exists, he is not concerned with human affairs. As far as we can tell, he has no interest in prayers, morality, changing people, suffering, death, or the afterlife. These are merely human concerns. If anything can be done about them, it must be done by us. We must build the solutions. And when all of our buildings collapse… well, let’s not worry about that. At least we tried. What we cannot build simply cannot exist. Anyone who says anything different probably isn't telling the truth. And if God says anything different, someone probably put a lie in his mouth. How do we know? Because “the true God” does not speak. How do we know? Well... we cannot be completely sure.  After all, that would make us omniscient! But we think the old philosopher was probably right: “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” But don’t worry. We have replaced him with our own creations, and they will probably work... probably.

2. The Stepford God: The Remake
God is not dead. God is alive and speaking. How do I know? Because he says whatever I want him to say. He does whatever I want him to do. And he gives me whatever I want. If things aren't going my way, I'm just not trusting him enough. But God wants to give me everything I want. He is always on my side, always agreeing with me and never contradicting me. He loves me just the way I am, and he would never try to change me. And he is very concerned with human affairs, especially mine. In fact, he is so concerned that he seems to have no independent will of his own. But he is not dead! I'm not sure why he would need to die anyway (then again, I am worth dying for). But I didn’t kill him... I only put a microchip in his brain.

3. The True God

“[T]his is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. . . . For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” (Jn 17:3, 18:37).

There is a God, and we can know him by believing in his son. Jesus Christ lived, died, and was raised from the dead. As a result, we can have a relationship with God. This means that God is not distant, and we have something much better than an abstraction. We have direct access to the God who created the universe—and he loves us! Yet we do not just call him our loving savior.  We also call him our Lord.  If he is anything less than that, then how could we possibly call him God?

Worldviews: Destiny

"Human life and consciousness requires, by its very nature, a projected future." -Dallas Willard

The fourth question that we will look at in this series is that of Destiny: What does our future hold? It is essential to our existence that we hold onto a vision of what is to come. You could say that we are obsessed with the future, always moving and acting in response to what we believe lies ahead. The future is what gives meaning to our daily actions, its what enlivens and empowers us to continue and persist. It gives us hope. But there is seemingly an end point for each one of us, a finish line for our life. We call this death. The question is, if death is the absolute end for each one of us how can we possibly live with the knowledge that there ultimately is no future for us? We will look at three different ways that we can approach this:

The first is that we can simply ignore it. We can disregard the fact that we will ever die, we can remove it from our thinking. We can live as if this life will go on for eternity, as if death is so far away that it is infinitely minute and thus worthless to even consider. But this won't change the fact that death is coming, and there will most likely come a point where we must consider it and despair is sure to follow. The following excerpt from Jean-Paul Sartre's The Wall (can find it here - http://faculty.risd.edu/dkeefer/pod/wall.pdf) illustrates this point very well - this is from a man who is going to be executed the following day:

"At that moment I felt that I had my whole life in front of me and I thought, "It's a damned lie." It was worth nothing because it was finished. I wondered how I'd been able to walk, to laugh with the girls: I wouldn't have moved so much as my little finger if I had only imagined I would die like this. My life was in front of me, shut, closed, like a bag and yet everything inside of it was unfinished. For an instant I tried to judge it. I wanted to tell myself, this is a beautiful life. But I couldn't pass judgment on it; it was only a sketch; I had spent my time counterfeiting eternity, I had understood nothing. I missed nothing: there were so many things I could have missed, the taste of manzanilla or the baths I took in summer in a little creek near Cadiz; but death had disenchanted everything."

However, there is another option if we don't want to simply ignore it. We can vicariously continue through our fellow man. We can take "my future" and move it to "our future". The future of man or the future of this earth. Yes we will die but the human race will remain and go on to multiply and flourish. We can take heart that our race will not die out and we can do our part to ensure that it continues. But even here, the despair will set in when we realize that our race and our universe has an expiration date - eventually everything will collapse and there will be nothing left of any of us.

Is it inevitable then? Are we doomed to live in the dread and despair that death brings?

 

Absolutely not! There is third option that does not end in despair but in joy and it comes when we place our trust in the only person to ever defeat death, that is Jesus Christ who has "abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel." He says that "Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die." Jesus Christ ensures our future and by doing so he gives meaning and hope to us right now. And when we die we will enter into the "joy of our Lord" (Matt 25:21), our bodies will be transformed into glorious ones (Phil 3:21), and we will rule with Him forever and ever (Rev 2:26, 3:21).

As such the follower of Christ is not afraid of death as others are (see http://www.dennyburk.com/chavezs-last-words-and-yours/) but can experience death with confidence knowing that better things await and can presently live a life full of love, joy, and hope that is only found in the one and only eternal God.

Worldviews, Morality: What is good?

In Plato's dialogue, Euthyphro, Socrates asks the title character whether that which is pious is loved by the gods because it is pious, or whether it is pious because it is loved by the gods. In other words, Socrates wishes to know if something is pious merely because the gods have ordained and determined it to be pious or is there actually a universal understanding of piety that the gods recognize and thus love.

I would say the same question could be asked of morality. Is something good, or evil, because God has stated that it is good, or was it good to begin with, and thus God recognizes and supports its goodness?

Morality in a Post-Modern World

The prevailing belief in our post-modern culture supports the latter proposition: Good exists in and of itself, and if there is a god, that being must recognize and support the existence of that good. Defining good, however, is much more difficult. In fact, this worldview has often refused to define that which is good, and instead chosen to focus on decrying that which is evil. Evil, of course, would be anything that harms or injures another individual who did not deserve to have that harm occur. Evil would include murders, thefts, assaults, defrauding, and a host of actions which cause pain and hardship to those who are undeserving. Good, as an undefined opposite, is simply everything else; those actions that do not directly cause harm or injury to other individuals. Thus, in popular culture, good is often left undefined, and in our increasingly post-modern culture, is a decision of each individual's conscience.

Religious Morality

In opposition, the vast majority of world religions would say that good does not exist in and of itself, but instead, by the decrees and determinations of God. That means that something that is good is only that which God has determined and decreed to be good; that which is evil is that which God has determined and decreed to be evil. In this worldview, there is a strict code of morality. There is no room for personal determinations or decisions on conscience. Instead, there is only a clearly defined code of moral law.

The Biblical View of Morality

However, God's view of good is starkly different from both of these views. The Bible doesn't tell us that something is good because God determined it to be so or because it was good and God recognized it as so. Instead, the Bible simply tells us that God -IS- good. In other words, that which is good is that which is from God, serves God, and pleases God.

For example, when the rich young ruler addressed Christ as "good teacher," and asked Him how to inherit eternal life, Christ's first response was, "Why do you call me good? No one is good - except God alone." (Luke 18:19) In this passage, Christ did not deny his deity. Instead, he merely refuted the young man's statement. The young man believed that Christ was good because of his value and wisdom as a teacher. Essentially, he believed that Christ was good because He could discern the moral code that would grant eternal life. But Christ's initial response was simple: there is no good, except for God. It's fitting, then, that Christ answered the young man's question with the simple command to "Follow Me."

Therefore, to be good, something must be related to or in service of God. In Romans, Paul quotes the Psalmist as saying, "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, there is no one who seeks God ... there is no one who does good, not even one." (Romans 3:10-12) Simply put, Paul recognizes that no one is good, and no one does good, because no one seeks after God. Goodness, then, is not something that can tangibly be pursued. It is not something that can be reached or obtained. Instead, goodness is the result of pursuing the will of the only One who is good, God. To be good, then, means to follow and seek after God. It means to obey His will, purposefully and devotedly.

Worldviews: Does Life Have a Purpose?

[A]ll things were created through him and for him. . . . [I]n him all things hold together. (Col. 1:16-17 ESV)

We were made to glorify God. Some skeptics say that there is no God and life is ultimately meaningless. But no healthy human being lives that way. So they say we must construct meaning for ourselves, claiming we can then be free to have more fun. As Albert Camus put it, maybe "the struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart." Here's the problem. If life is ultimately meaningless, everything you experience will be meaningless too.

You may still, in the lowest sense, have a “good time”; but just in so far as it becomes very good, just in so far as it ever threatens to push you on from cold sensuality into real warmth and enthusiasm and joy, so afar you will be forced to feel the hopeless disharmony between your own emotions and the universe in which you really live.
-C.S. Lewis

Continuing to perform a meaningless act does not make it meaningful. Life is absurd unless there really is an eternal, all-powerful God who gives meaning.

[W]hoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. (Luke 9:24 ESV)

This verse reveals a paradoxical truth that is hard to surrender to. We love ourselves a lot! And freedom really is a good thing. But real freedom is not just freedom from. Genuine freedom is freedom for something. Consider the art we admire. No one sees Starry Night Over the Rhone and says, “Too bad Van Gogh imposed his will on that poor canvas.” What makes that canvas so amazing is that it reflects the will of an amazing artist. Similarly, when you submit your life to God, you can experience genuine freedom and fulfillment. If I live to glorify myself, concerned only with my selfish impulses and ambitions, I will shrink into despair and obscurity. But if I live to glorify Jesus, his word guarantees that I will be “raised in glory.” (1 Cr. 15:43).

Why bother with origin?

An imperative part of any worldview is the question of origin: How did we get here? This question has been debated time and time again. Why, then, is it so important as Christians that we know and understand our worldview? Consider Psalm 19:1: 

"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork." 

The psalmist here looks at all the glory and complexity of the world, and attributes it right to God. He cannot view the sky and the heavens without seeing they are a part of God's testimony of creation. The appreciation and respect for God is strengthened when the world is viewed as his "handiwork." We cannot view the world as something that occurred by chance, and God simply as an afterthought. The complexity of the world attests that it was designed. This is best put by this quote from Einstein:

“I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations.”

From examining the most complex aspects of the sciences, it is clear that God's power is boundless and beyond what we humans can fully grasp. We can't comprehend everything. After making that realization, it's no longer a step of "blind faith" to believe the universe was created by God, but we then can see the complexity of the universe as God's handiwork.

Worldviews Apart

Every person has a worldview, a framework through which to interpret the world. When preaching the gospel, Christians should be prepared to present the Christian worldview to people who do not already understand or accept it. Over the next few months, we will discuss how the Christian worldview answers four very important questions:
(1) Origins – where did we come from and why does it matter?
(2) Morality – do good and evil exist, and if so, how do we know?
(3) Meaning – does life have a purpose?
(4) Destiny – what happens after I die?

Whether Christian or not, most people can provide some kind of answer to each question. But do the answers fit together coherently? Have we really considered the implications of our beliefs? Consider the question of morality. Some people say we have beliefs about morality, and they claim that these beliefs are nothing but beliefs. But then they insist that we can and must be good people. Similarly, some people say life is meaningless in the beginning and meaningless in the end. Yet they insist that we search for meaning during the present.

The myth of Sisyphus comes to mind. Are we like the condemned king, endlessly rolling a rock up a steep hill only to have it roll back to the bottom? Or is there something better?