Floyd Reports

Lance,

So many admired you for all your great cycling accomplishments, and multitudes were disappointed to learn your achievements were tainted with cheating. But, Americans are a forgiving people; and most will eagerly accept your apology.

We who are Christ-followers have all been where you are, Lance. We have all sinned and fallen short of the expectations of God. Running to Oprah to record a national apology is futile if your apology is meant to rebuild your lost reputation. True repentance must be accompanied by pure motives. Trying to cleanse yourself in Oprah’s dirty pool of therapy will not bring peace to your soul. It’s like trying to clean our hearts with dirty water taken from our hearts.

Your rush for therapy is a microscopic revelation of what is really wrong with America. We have grown comfortable seeking therapy from humans who are just as fallen as we are. The greatest sin in America today is the idea that we can come to repentance without a Mediator, the belief that repentance has no personal cost or sacrifice and that we can be converted to Christianity without the shedding of blood.

Lance, true forgiveness that will bring closure to your sin of dishonesty and relief and comfort to your soul will come from Christ, not Oprah. Seek him while you still can.

Photo credit: Cain and Todd Benson (Creative Commons)

Imagine you were going to a book signing for the 700-page bestselling historical mystery thriller novel you were reading and found that the person signing the books was a 7 year old second grader. You would leave without getting an autograph. Why? You would not believe that a seven year old child, no matter how precocious, could write what you are reading. Because the effect (a 700-page bestselling historical mystery thriller novel) was not commensurate with the cause (a 7 year old child).

This is what evolution is: a series of effects so much greater than the causes that if we were to see them in real life, we would immediately reject them.

We are expected to believe that random mutations over millions of years could and would produce complex living systems that have eyes, brains, hearts, intelligence, and self-awareness. There is nothing in our experience that would suggest that anything like this is possible. In fact, all known laws of science, like entropy and thermodynamics, tell us that things decay or deteriorate when left to themselves. Houses don’t build themselves, and tools left outside for years will rust or become unusable.

But why is all this so important? What difference does it make if you think aliens left organic compounds here, or a God created all this, or if everything just happened all by itself?

The first and obvious reason is that it answers the question: is there a God? Those who say that all this could have and did happen all by itself essentially dismiss the concept of a Supreme Being. They see no reason to believe in anything beyond what they can see, feel, taste, or, in scientific talk, what they can observe and measure.

If life was/is just a chance occurrence of chemical compounds that ends with physical death, then life has no meaning beyond what we choose to give it. And everyone is free to choose what meaning that is, if any. Life ends at death, and there are no prizes or rewards to the winners.

Science can analyze a human being and tell you how much carbon, water, hydrogen, etc. exists in a body; but it cannot tell you if that life has meaning or purpose.

Scientists are often quick to dismiss the idea of God because they deem it unnecessary and unprovable, yet they resort to a faith in natural processes to create things beyond what they with all their intelligence cannot.

If there is a God, I would certainly expect that He would be beyond human comprehension and measurement. Scientists look for proof of something that by definition would be greater than everything that exists. They feel justified in rejecting the concept because they can’t fit Him to their experiments or see Him with their eyes. I submit they need look no further than themselves to see the work of Someone who is vastly more intelligent than all our accumulated knowledge.

Acknowledging that there is a God changes everything. On the other hand, rejecting the idea also changes everything. This is the pivotal concept that shapes our lives.

If life (our lives) is just the result of random chemical interactions, human life just isn’t that important anymore. Nations that have rejected the idea of God were instrumental in killing millions of their own citizens because they didn’t fit into the plans of those who were in power.
The survival of the fittest becomes the law of the land, and everyone has to look out for themselves first.

If there is a God, then life, our life, was intentional. Life is valuable and has meaning and purpose. What meaning and purpose?

This leads to the second reason why the question of evolution is so important. If life is intentional, if we were made and not chance occurrences, then we would expect that there are certain laws to our existence.

Science recognizes natural laws, laws of physics and chemistry, laws that tell us how things work in the physical realm. But are there laws that tell us how life is supposed to work?

You can’t buy so much as a toaster without getting a long booklet from the manufacturer telling us how the thing works, how it is meant to work, what the inherent dangers are, and how to get the most use out of it.

But what about life? Are there rules that we ignore to our detriment? Did our Manufacturer give us an instruction manual to tell us how this is supposed to work? Or do we spend our whole life trying to figure out what is best, only to realize on our death beds how we could have done things better?

This is what a religion is. It purports to tell us what life is all about. You don’t study a religion long, however, before you see how vastly different its conclusions are about a lot of things. Religions are close on some things, but most have mutually exclusive teachings on many important issues.

Does this mean that truth is unattainable (and all religions are essentially equally valid) because we don’t know enough to be able to decide between them? No. It just means that like everything else in life worth having, you might have to put a little effort into searching it out.

One last reason I would like to submit here why the issue of evolution and God is important is that, if God did indeed create the world and life, it is very possible, as more religions teach, that we are in some way accountable to God for our lives. The details vary from religion to religion, but the first place to start is that the idea that what we do with our lives is important in ways we can little imagine should wake us to the pursuit of what things in life really matter.

I know some people will think I have tried to make too much of this issue of evolution and God and that I reach conclusions that don’t have enough ‘proof’ behind them. The fact is life is not like a job where you have orientation and are given the company handbook with all the rules inside.

Our lives are pretty open-ended. We can do pretty much what we want in how we live our lives. We eat what we want when we want, choose a spouse or not, and make all kinds of choices everyday without somebody looking over our shoulder and telling us what to do.

Life is also short, and there is no rehearsal. This is it. We are not going to get the absolute certainty of everything before we have to make choices on how we will live our lives. In this short article, I hope I have clarified some of the questions we need to ask.

Photo credit: atheism (Creative Commons)