Is life nothing more than a roulette wheel? Are the life circumstances you and I face nothing more than random, chance events bouncing into our lives like a ball randomly spins on a roulette wheel? A roulette wheel is driven by chance. In fact, if it’s not, they say the wheel is rigged. Is life on planet earth rigged, with an overlying purpose and sense of meaning, or is it nothing more than a random, purposeless roulette wheel, where the ball arbitrarily stops wherever it happens to?
We’ve been in a series called WHAT DO CHRISTIANS THINK? In this series we’ve been trying to explore the basic beliefs that make up the Christian faith in a way that both irreligious people and Christians can understand. You see, each religion and philosophy in the world offers it’s own unique way of making sense out of life. You might picture every religion and philosophy as a jigsaw puzzle, with each puzzle piece representing a specific belief within that particular belief system. All the puzzle pieces in each philosophy and religion are designed to fit together to present us with a coherent way of making sense out of our lives. So the Christian belief system presents it’s own unique picture, while Islam presents a different picture, Hinduism and Marxism present their own pictures, atheism and the New Age movement present their own pictures and so forth. The question is: Which picture conforms to the way things really are, or--to put it another way--which picture is true? I can no more arbitrarily pick and choose beliefs from different belief systems than I can randomly take puzzle pieces from different jigsaw puzzles and expect them all to fit together and present a meaningful picture. The basic beliefs we’re talking about in this series are related to each other like puzzle pieces, and together they form a coherent belief system that Christians believe most accurately explains life.
So far we’ve looked at what Christians believe about God, and what Christians believe about the Bible. Today we’re going to talk about what Christians believe about the world...is it merely a product of random and purposeless forces like a roulette wheel, or is the world something more?
Now to talk about what Christians believe about the world opens up a deep conflict that’s gone on for almost 500 years. I’m referring to the conflict between religion and science. The roots of this conflict go back to the 1500s, when a Polish astronomer named Copernicus suggested that the sun rather than the earth was the center of our universe. Back then an earth-centered universe was a religious dogma, so Copernicus’ claim sounded like heresy to the church back then. A few years later an Italian astronomer and physicist named Galileo took this idea another step and argued that the planets actually revolve around the sun. The Church condemned Galileo for his view and kept him under house arrest until his death in 1642. The Roman Catholic church finally cleared Galileo, but this came over 300 years after he’d died.
Since then the conflict between religion and science has continued to rage. This battle reached a fever pitch in 1859when Charles Darwin wrote The Origin of Species. The birth of Darwinian evolution seemed to drive the wedge between religion and science even deeper. Yet it’s impossible to develop a coherent world view without eventually seeking to resolve this tension. As C. S. Lewis once said, "Faith and science form part of a whole. They are intimately related." This morning we’re going to explore five key concepts that Christians believe to be true about our world.
1. God Created the Universe (Genesis 1:1)
The first verse of the Bible is the Christian’s starting point:
Genesis 1:1-- In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (NIV).
This verse tells us that before anything else in the universe existed, God was there. The Hebrew word translated "created" here means to make something new, something that hasn’t existed prior to the act of creation (Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament 1:127). So while we as humans can make things with pre-existing materials, this word focuses on creating something with no pre-existing raw materials. This applies to "the heavens and the earth" which tells us that God’s creative activity isn’t just related to our planet, but that it applies to the entire universe, to every solar system that exists; God is the sole originator of all reality other than himself (Cranfield, The Apostles Creed 17). This tells us that the universe is not eternal, as some physicists like Stephen Hawking have suggested, but that it had a specific beginning point.
Now it’s impossible to speak of Genesis 1:1 without commenting on the creation-evolution debate. I think that to say the conflict is between creation and evolution is far too simplistic. This is because no one who believes that God created the universe disputes that evolution occurs on some level. No one denies that variation occurs in living creatures, and that this variation seems to be a way to adapt to their environment. No creationist would dispute this fact. No...the debate is much more complicated than simply between creation and evolution. The real debate is over two different ways people view reality; it’s really a conflict over two different philosophies of life. Charles Colson says, "Darwinism begins with trivial changes in the color of moths and the size of finch beaks--which no one contexts. But then it leaps to the metaphysical assertion that life is the product of completely natural, purposeless causes" (Christianity Today 8/12/96, p. 64). Here we’re introduced to the roulette wheel universe, that blind, random natural forces that rule our world instead of God. So the fundamental conflict isn’t so much over science as much as it’s a conflict over what lies behind science. The National Association of Biology Teachers claims, "All life is the outcome of unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable, and natural processes that are random and undirected, without plan or purpose" (Christianity Today 8/12/96, p. 64). This claim is that behind science is the roulette wheel, nothing more. That’s a metaphysical statement of belief, not a statement of scientific fact, because it makes a claim that’s outside of what science can test and verify.
The belief system that’s behind statements like these is a way of looking at life called naturalism. Naturalism is simply the idea that nature is all there is, that the material is all that truly exists. A naturalist denies that non-physical realities like God and human souls exist, they claim that the only purpose of religion is to make people feel better about life. A person can’t be a naturalist and also believe that God is real. To the naturalist, nature itself is the roulette wheel, and everything in our world is both a part of the roulette wheel and a product of the roulette wheel. There are plenty of scientists who are not naturalists but naturalism is the dominant dogma within the scientific community and major universities today.
In contrast to a naturalist, a creationist is simply a person who believes that God created the universe (Johnson, Reason In The Balance 74). U. C. Berkley professor Philip Johnson says, "The primary point is not how long it took God to create, or whether he created things abruptly or gradually, or whether the first chapters of Genesis are to be interpreted literally or figuratively. These are all important issues in their own way, but they are secondary. The primary issue is whether God created us at all. The naturalists say that our creator was not...God, but a combination of chance events and impersonal laws" (Christianity Today 1994). Debates over whether the days in Genesis were literal days, or the earth’s age are in-house debates among creationists.
In contrast to this, consider Richard Dawkins, the world famous zoologist at Oxford University (Reason 76-77). Dawkins is best known for his book called The Blindwatchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design. Dawkins admits that living things give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose, that even a single cell contains more informational than all the volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Yet natural selection, claims Dawkins, is the blind watchmaker--which is simply another way of calling the nature a roulette wheel. So the appearance of design is an illusion. Dawkins says that this eliminates the need for a creator and makes it possible for him to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.
Yet Christians would say that living beings give the appearance of design because they were designed. This is the first key concept. Since God created the entire universe, we can find evidence of his creative design everywhere.
Rather than dismissing the appearance of design as an illusion, the result of nature’s roulette wheel or some blind watchmaker, Christians claim that this appearance of design isn’t an illusion but the fingerprint of God on his creation. Darwin himself admitted in The Origin of Species, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down" (CT 4/28/97).
In the fall of 1996 a biochemist named Michael Behe wrote a book that demonstrated just that. Behe’s book Darwin’s Black Box suggests that the cell couldn’t possibly be the product of numerous successive, slight modifications because the components within the cell are irreducibly complex. That simply means that the cell is a system of several interacting parts that all contribute to the basic function of the cell. Behe uses a mousetrap as an analogy, that like a cell, a mousetrap is irreducibly complex because you need all five parts for a mousetrap to work. You can’t catch a few mice with a platform, then add a spring and catch a few more, and then add the hammer and improve it even more, but all five parts must present for a mousetrap to function at all. Similarly all the components of the cell must be there for a cell to function, which makes it impossible for the cell to be the product of gradual, successive changes over long periods of time.
Christians think that the universe is a result of God’s creative design, that’s our first key concept.
2. Humans Bear God’s Image (Genesis 1:26-27)
Now that tells us about the universe, but what about us?
Genesis 1:26-27-- Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them (NIV).
Humans are said to be made in God’s image and likeness. People have debated exactly what this means. Some people say that the image of God is something we have--like the ability reason or to made moral choices, while others say it’s something we do. Whatever it is, the image of God is what makes humans distinctively human, it’s what separates them from the animal kingdom.
The word translated "man" here means "humanity" or "mankind," it’s not man in distinction from woman, but mankind in distinction from the rest of creation. Both men and women are said to be image bearers of God.
This brings us to our second key concept. Since God made human beings in His image, we are unique.
As human beings, you and I are like mirrors made to reflect who God is and what God is like. This means that humans are more than mere animals. Of course like animals we are biological creatures ...no one questions that. But we aren’t mere animals because along with being physical beings we’re also spiritual beings, capable of making moral and spiritual choices.
This conflicts with the assumption of naturalism that humans are merely complex animals, nothing more. A few years ago a scientist named Robert Wright wrote a book called The Moral Animal, where he sought to take the roulette view of naturalism to it’s logical conclusions. According to Wright--who calls himself an evolutionary psychologist--humans are mere animals, nothing more. As with other animals, the sole purpose of life is to pass one’s genetic code to the next generation. This means, according to Wright, that men are genetically predetermined to be sexually promiscuous, because it’s in a man’s best interest genetically to impregnate as many women as possible-- I wonder what his wife thinks of that theory. If we are nothing more than complex animals, then all our thoughts and feelings, our personality and ambitions are simply a result of physical and chemical reactions in our nervous system, whose sole goal in life is to ensure survival of our genetic code.
In contrast to this rather demeaning explanation of life, the Christian faith suggests that humans are first and foremost creatures made in God’s image. This means that humans are unique from all of creation. C. S. Lewis: "There’s no such thing as a mere human." This also means that human life is precious, that it has has inherent dignity and value. We’re not valuable because of how much money we have, what we look like, our quality of life, or what we can contribute to society, but because they bear God’s image.
If people really believed this racism would cease. If people really believed this, the abortion plague in our nation would be healed, the debate over euthanasia would be settled, all because we’d realize that human life is sacred simply because it’s human. So the idea that God made people in God’s image is our second key concept.
3. Everything Has Value (Genesis 1:31)
This leads us to a summary of the creation account in Genesis 1.
Genesis 1:31-- God saw all that he had made, and it was very good... (NIV).
The picture here is of a master artist standing back to admire his masterpiece. As he looks at the end product of his labor, joy floods his heart, and he says, "Yes...that’s what I wanted to make." Everything within God’s creation is declared to be very good. Sometimes Christians forget about Genesis chapter 1, especially since the rest of the Bible talks so much about sin and what went wrong in our world. Yet Genesis 1 forms the backdrop of everything God says about sin, that creation was originally created very good, free from corruption.
This brings us to our third key concept. Since God declared His entire universe good, everything in it has value.
Like an artist’s masterpiece, every part of creation was specially designed by the creator for a specific function. Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne says, "Beauty consists in patterns of order. Total chaos is ugly. The movement of the stars in according with regular laws is a beautiful dance" (Is There A God? 54).
This means that you’re valuable. Not because of what you do or how hard you’ve worked, but simply because God made you. Of course there’s this problem called sin that we’ll talk about in just a minute, but you matter to God. The value of God’s creation is the third key concept.
4. Sin Has Corrupted God’s Good Creation (Romans 8:20-22)
Now we turn from the utopia of Genesis 1 to the tragedy of real life experience in the New Testament.
Romans 8:20-22-- For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time (NIV).
This passage is a commentary on what went wrong in Genesis chapter 3. When the first man and first woman rebelled against God their choice had cosmic consequences. Suddenly all of creation was subjected to frustration, no longer did it function the way it was designed to function, but it was subjected to the natural consequences of rebellion. Now the universe exists in a fallen state, like a once beautiful lake that’s been so polluted that it’s now toxic. One day God will release the created universe from this bondage to decay, but until then creation groans in it’s unnatural, polluted, fallen condition.
Here we find a fourth key concept. Since God gave us the freedom of choice, the entrance of sin into the world has corrupted God’s creation.
What was once a sin-free zone of innocence and goodness has become a toxic waste dump of sin. God’s image is still within us but it’s been damaged, like a mirror that’s been shattered. Now people are capable of doing the most horrible of things, like the guy accused of injecting his 18 month old son with the AIDS virus because he didn’t want to pay child support or the teenagers killed at an elementary school in Pomona this last week. Like the guy who shot himself this week and the TV producers who broadcast such a horrible act into our homes. Just as the terrible pollution of our world is related to us, so its liberation is also related to God’s work of freeing us from sin.
This cosmic fall that corrupted the universe didn’t make God’s good creation a bad creation, but instead it corrupted God’s good creation making it stand in need of cleansing. The fallenness of our world is the fourth key concept.
4. God Holds It All Together (Col 1:17)
Finally we come to a very straightforward claim about Jesus Christ in the book of Colossians.
Colossians 1:17-- He is before all things, and in him all things hold together (NIV)
This statement is part of a poem about how Jesus Christ, through his death and resurrection, has brought about the promised of freedom from the corruption of the fall, not only for men and women, but for the entire universe. In the context of describing the greatness of Jesus, the statement is made that in Christ all things are held together. This statement tells us that nothing in the universe is self-sufficient, but everything relies on God through Jesus Christ for it to continue working.
Now if there’s a way of looking at life that denies this truth called Deism. You don’t hear much about deism these days, it was especially popular in the 17th and 18th century. Some of our national heroes were deists, like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine. If naturalism believes in a blind watchmaker, then deism believes in an absent watchmaker. Deists believe that God made the universe like a watchmaker makes a clock, once it’s wound up, the watchmaker leaves it alone. So Deists believe that once God created the universe, he set into motion the laws of the universe, and is basically uninvolved in life today. God made the roulette wheel and got it started, but left it to spin on its own.
This verse suggests a very different picture, that God not only created the universe but he actively sustains it as well. Consider the difference between an electric drill and a power saw (Millard Erickson, Christian Theology). An electric drill usually has a locking devise in it, so once I press the switch, I can engage the locking devise and no longer apply pressure to the switch. Once I engage the locking devise, I could set the drill on the ground and leave...which is exactly what Deists believe God did after making the universe. Power saws on the other hand don’t have that kind of locking devise, so I have to apply continuous pressure on the switch or the saw turns off. That’s the way God continues to hold the universe together.
The technical term for this is God’s providence. Now this leads us to our final key concept. Since God actively holds the universe together, He is personally involved in our lives.
God’s hand is guiding our lives, continuously applying pressure to make sure his purposes get fulfilled in our lives and in our world. This means that there are no accidents in life, only appointments. Every problem that confronts us is an opportunity cleverly disguised as a problem that God has allowed, and God is intimately involved in helping us through these opportunities. God is never off duty, never preoccupied, never asleep or on vacation, but he continuously and personally cares for us.
Conclusion
What do Christians believe about the world? Really it’s quite simple: We believe that the universe is God’s world. God created it, He made humans in his image, He called his creation good, He gave us the ability to choose, and He actively holds the universe together.
