There is a question that is being hotly debated right now that’s pretty much dominating the news and threatening to perhaps tear our country apart and the debate is scary and uncomfortable but maybe it’s a good thing because we’re wrestling with an important question … perhaps the most important question of all: What is life? An appropriate topic for Mother’s Day, amen?
When I was about 10 years old, I took my father’s BB gun and was playing with it … which I wasn’t supposed to be doing. It wasn’t very powerful or very accurate. My brothers and I used to chase each other around and shoot each other with it. It stung a little bit and left a red mark … that was about it. One day, I took aim at a squirrel that was climbing down the big cherry tree that we had in the backyard and, much to my surprise, I hit it in the eye. It took a long time to die … or at least it seemed like a long time to me … probably a half hour … and I probably should have put it out of its misery but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it … so, I cried and waited until it finally died and then I buried it.
During that time, as I watched it die, I was deeply disturbed by what I had done. I had taken a life. That squirrel was just going about its day when I ended its life … and there was nothing that I could do to fix it. God gave it life. I took it away. And I didn’t have the power to give it its life back and it broke my heart to think that I had taken away the most precious thing that that squirrel had … life.
Psalm 8 is a celebration of the Creator and Giver of Life. “O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!” (Psalm 8:1). It describes the works of God’s fingers … the moon and stars. It praises God for His creation … the sheep and oxen, the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, the fish and all the creatures that live in the sea (Psalm 8:3, 7-8). And then it praises God for making us … who crowned us with glory and honor and gave us dominion over His creation and the responsibility to take care of it. And yet, David raises the question: “what are human beings that You are mindful of them, mortals that You care for them?” (Psalm 8:4).
Last week I said it was important for you to paint a picture of God because that picture determines how we relate to God. As we are going to see, what we believe about what God sees when He looks at us can also deeply affect how we see ourselves and the world and those around us with whom we share dominion over God’s creation. Are we just some accident? Some random lump of cells? Or are we fearfully and wonderfully made by a Divine, Loving Creator?
Let’s start with the premise that we are just random accidents. There is the theory that all life rose out of some primordial ooze made up of a slurry of chemicals. A lucky combination of the right chemicals. It would have to be random and an accident because chemicals are just substances. They don’t have thoughts or feelings. It’s not like some carbon and nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen were just swimming around in this primordial soup and decided to hook up and form something as sophisticated and complex as a human being. While these chemicals could possibly exist in large amounts, the odds of them getting together in just the right combination to form simple sugars and proteins … though not impossible … would be mathematically astronomical. But let’s give these theorists the benefit of the doubt. Chemical chains form. They combine with other chains and become more involved, more and more complex but at what point do these chains form thought? At what point did they acquire the desire and the drive to re-create themselves and survive? At what point did these chemicals cross the line from being inert to “living” entities? And again, it raises the question of what does it mean to be “alive”?
If we are the result of random combinations of chemicals that somehow evolved into more and more complex combinations that eventually became sheep and oxen, beasts of the field, birds of the air, and all the creatures that live in the seas … what would be the point or purpose of life? Seriously. What is the point of life? To struggle and survive, to grab as much pleasure as possible for as long as possible only to succumb to the inevitable? Why this drive to re-create ourselves over and over again? So that our off-spring can struggle to survive, to grab as much pleasure as possible for as long a possible … producing off-spring who will struggle to survive and produce more off-spring who will have to struggle to survive … but to what end? For what purpose?
But here’s the telling thing! We do struggle. We do produce off-spring because deep in the heart of this so-called random collection of chemicals, imbedded in the very core of our DNA is the hope and the firm belief that there is a purpose to life and that we are constantly evolving and changing and growing towards that purpose. Where did that thought, that deep, deep sense that we, that life, has a purpose come from? A random collection of chemicals? Is our only goal to survive? Is our struggle to survive solely based on our fear of death, of oblivion? Is that what life is all about? We’re just a scared, random accident that will ultimately lose the battle with death and be re-absorbed back into the primordial ooze from whence we came? Is William Shakespeare, right? “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” (Macbeth; Act 5, Scene 5). Is that what life is all about? Random. Pointless. Coming from nowhere. Going nowhere. What is the point of all our struggles, hope, and dreams then if they all come to nothing? What a sad, pathetic, lonely, puny, pointless way to live, amen?
What makes this view of life so sad, pathetic, lonely, puny, and pointless is what’s missing … and what’s missing is what Psalm 8 celebrates. What would that be? What could that be? Hummm. “O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth” (Psalm 8:1). Who made the heavens and filled it with stars and planets and moons? Who created the beasts of the field, the sheep and the oxen, and gave them life? Who created the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and all the creatures that live on the land and in the sea, and gave them life? Who created us and gave us life?
Let’s say you hold to the Big Bang Theory … that all the material … that all the molecules and atoms … that all the energy of the universe was squeezed down to the size of a BB or a golf ball or, as one theory suggests, the whole universe was condensed or contained in a single atom called the “primal atom” (Cardenas, R. Study.com). Okay … let’s say it started that way. Where did all the material in the primal atom come from? Just popped into existence? Where did the energy come from that caused the initial explosion? “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:1-2).
“… the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep” … sounds like the universe was some kind of cosmic primordial soup until “a wind from God swept over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2) and God began creating the universe and all the life on this planet. A number of researchers and scientists, the most famous being Miller and Urey in the early 1950s, tried to re-create the conditions that existed when the earth first began. The atmosphere on the earth at that time was believed to contain high levels of H20, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen. They combined these elements in a beaker and blasted it with huge amounts of electricity which created a few amino acid chains … the building blocks of DNA. This process of creating organic life from inorganic materials is called “abiogenesis.”
A number of these “abiogenesis” theories and experiments have been performed and studied, but we come back to the same situation. Okay … we’re able to make a few organic compounds from inorganic chemicals in the lab … and that makes sense since all life is made up of inorganic material … so what? We have a beaker with some amino acid residue in them. If we leave them in the beaker for a million … no, a billion years … would they ever organize into complex organisms capable of reproducing themselves independently? Would they evolve into a single living cell let alone a complex, multi-cell organism capable of thought? I doubt it, don’t you?
I want you to notice something, however. In order to form these amino acids, it took an outside force. They didn’t just randomly come together. Scientists had to interject something into the system … like electricity. And we still can’t get past the argument that Someone or Something … had to make the atoms that formed the molecules that formed the amino acids and so on. Someone or Something had to form the electrons that zapped the primordial soup. Something or Something had to deliver the spark that started it all. Scientists claim that the needed spark came from erupting volcanoes … others from naturally occurring atmospheric conditions … you know, from “heaven” which is the work of Whom?
I don’t know why science works so hard to get God out of the equation. If the Big Bang Theory is true, it still speaks to the work of God’s fingers to me. It is impossible to examine the universe, the earth, and not see the creative and precise work of a Divine Engineer whose thoughts are not our thoughts, whose thoughts are weighty … whose thoughts are vast and beyond all our collective imagination. Everything that science has come up with to explain the universe, the possible origin of life, and the complexities of the human body are all proof of the existence of an highly intelligent and highly imaginative Creator.
Remember that squirrel that I shot? When it was dead, something was missing. All the parts were there. Yes … it was damaged but even if I could fix all the damage I still couldn’t bring it back to life. We can repair some damage and, if we do it quickly enough, prolong life but eventually, that spark of life that I took away from that squirrel will go away and can never be put back.
How many of you have read Mary Shelley’s novel, “Frankenstein”? Even if you haven’t, you’re probably familiar with the basic theory or story line. Dr. Frankenstein assembles a human body from different body parts taken from corpses. He is convinced that he can re-animate dead flesh. In other words, create life. He assembles all the parts but … he still can’t do it without help … without out that spark from heaven. Like Prometheus, he has to capture fire from heaven to bring his creation to life. You see … that’s the problem. We can analyze “life” … we can break it down to its most basic bits and pieces … but we can’t put it all together and make it work without outside help … without that spark of life from heaven.
If you’ve ever been present at a person’s death, you witness something strange and wonderful … something clearly leaves them. It’s not the same as watching it in a movie or on TV but that is what they are trying imitate or convey when they show a person dying. Something leaves the body. There is a spark of life one minute and then … nothing. The spark is gone. Life is gone. All the parts could be there … you might be able to “shock” someone back to life or fix the damage, but eventually the “spark” of life leaves for good. There is something about life that is clearly more than just a collection of parts or chemicals, amen? The chemicals that make up our bodies don’t produce the thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the ambitions, the desire to survive that that spark … that breath of life … does. And, again, the Bible beautifully describes the source of that spark: “… then out of the ground the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground” (Genesis 2:7) … hummm … He did what the scientists have tried to do … He took the raw materials that He used to create the earth. He breathed into our nostrils the breath of life; and then we became a living being (Genesis 2:7). “And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth,” everything that is alive contains the breath of God … the “breath of life” (Genesis 1:30). Take away that breath of life and we return to the dust and dirt that we came from, amen? We decompose and return the elements that we were made of back to the earth to be used again and again and again but the spark … that divine spark that made us uniquely us … that’s a different story.
The fact that we are driven, obsessed to explore the universe and to find out where we came from is proof, as far as I’m concerned, that the spark within us divine. Why do 99.99% of the people ever born and 99.99% of all the people today believe in an “afterlife”? Why have so many religions, so much of literature hope and dream and posit the idea that there is more to this life than … well … just this life? Is it just a furtive hope based on our fear of death and oblivion? Are we just chasing after shadows and empty hope?
Nope! Jesus was fully human but He was also fully God and He said, as we discussed last week, that the Father … God … is in Him and He is in the Father … God. The physical part of Him died but the part that was and is divine … that was and is eternal … and the spirit … the breath of God that dwells in us … that gives us life … that is eternal too. The spark of life that lives within us yearns to return to its source … the Father with a capital “F.” Listen to the beautiful way that the Apostle Paul explains the yearning of our souls to return to its source. “So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away” … that is these bags of chemicals that make up our physical bodies of flesh and blood … “our inner nature” … that of the soul or spirit … “is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure” … the same honor and glory that David described in Psalm 8, perhaps? “ ... because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal. For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent” … these temporary houses for our eternal souls made out of flesh and blood … “we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling – if indeed, when we have taken it off we will not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan under our burden because we wish not to be unclothed” … to pass from this world in to oblivion … “but to be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. … So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord … Yes, we do have confidence, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2nd Corinthians 4:16 – 5:8).
So, if you believe that we are just random accidents who have no other purpose in this life or in this universe than to survive and pro-create other random accidents, then you’re going to have a view of the universe that doesn’t include God and that, as I said, it is a pretty sad, pathetic, lonely, puny, pointless way to live. Can you imagine being an atheist evangelist? “So what do you have to offer the world, Sir? What is your view of life?” “Oh … we’re just an accident that climbed out of the primordial ooze struggling to survive in a world that has no rhyme or reason to it … just random chance … and then, well, you die. You have no soul. There is no guiding force to the universe. We just eat, drink, and try to be merry and then we die and sink back into the oblivion that we came from.” “Well, Sir! Sign me up.”
What is it about the promises of the Bible that touches so many people? Is it because it speaks to the human condition? True. Is it because it speaks to the heart? Also true. But it also speaks to the soul. Its words strike a deep, deep note within us that is more than Pollyanna, pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking, amen? That Someone took a great deal of time and carefully, lovingly formed us … knit us together in the mother’s womb … and wove into us a yearning to get to know this Someone who made the heavens … who breathed the spark of life in us and the creatures that He gave us to take care of … whose creation causes us to wonder about the One who made it, and makes us ask the question: Who Am I?
You may know the song … feel free to sing it. I put the words in the bulletin. But more importantly, I really want you to pay attention to the words.
[Play “Who Am I?]
Who am I? Yes … I am made out of flesh and blood. I am made out of carbon and water, nitrogen, and oxygen and a whole bunch of other chemicals. But I am so, so much more. I am a child of God. I exist because God breathed His very breath into me and when His breath, His Divine Spark leaves me, it will join with Him and be with Him, the Source of my life, the Source of all life, forever and ever.
Today we celebrate Mother’s Day. It is important, I think, to remember that we don’t create life. We are the means that God uses to create life. We provide the DNA, the chemical blocks that God provided to begin knitting a new life in the womb … but it is God who provides the breath … the spark … of life. And that life, which only God can create … is a life that was created by careful and intentional design … is a life that God is mindful of …is a life that God has crowned with glory and honor … is a life that makes my heart want to sing: “O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is Your name in all the earth.” Say it with me: “O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!”
