Let the godly sing for joy to the LORD;
it is fitting for the pure to praise him…
The LORD merely spoke,
and the heavens were created.
He breathed the word,
and all the stars were born.
He assigned the sea its boundaries
and locked the oceans in vast reservoirs.
Let the whole world fear the LORD,
and let everyone stand in awe of him.
For when he spoke, the world began!
It appeared at his command…
The LORD looks down from heaven
and sees the whole human race.
From his throne he observes
all who live on the earth.
He made their hearts,
so he understands everything they do…
But the LORD watches over those who fear him,
those who rely on his unfailing love…
We put our hope in the LORD.
He is our help and our shield.
In him our hearts rejoice,
for we trust in his holy name.
Let your unfailing love surround us, LORD,
for our hope is in you alone.
(Select verses from Psalm 33, NLT)
Bill Maher has famously said, “Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don’t have all the answers to think that they do.”[1] Although I’m with the psalmist above and my hope is in God alone, I have a lot of sympathy for Maher’s perspective. In fact, I’ve had a love-hate relationship with the church for much of my life. Some would view me as still working through my stuff, which I’ll admit I am.[2]
Yes, I’m a religious person but I’m certainly not one with all the answers. I do believe wholeheartedly, however, in a loving Creator and my primary experience of God has been through nature, fatherhood, marriage, Scripture, and the cross.
Regarding, the natural world, I agree with C.S. Lewis who said:
If we used [nature] as our only clue [to the existence of God], then I think we should have to conclude that He was a great artist (for the universe is a very beautiful place), but also that He is quite merciless and no friend to man (for the universe is a very dangerous and terrifying place).”[3]
For me, nature points to a Great Artist but the reason I believe in a loving Creator is because of the beauty of human love seen especially in healthy family. There we see beauty in the emotional and sexual union within marriage, and experience deep trust and interdependency between spouses, parents, and children. Interestingly, even when we don’t see these things and experience brokenness in our relationships, we retain an awareness of what things could be or should be. Fatherhood especially has provided me with powerful evidence of a loving Creator who, in Christianity, reveals Himself as “Our Father.”
I remember traveling back down south to our home at Southern Seminary in Louisville, KY in 1993. Our family was returning from a week of visiting extended family back in Southern NJ. We stopped for dinner, and I was sitting across from my oldest son, Matthew Gregory, at McDonald’s. At the time, he was two years old (he is three or four in the picture above), and I had just again settled him on the orange plastic bench he was using as a jungle gym. As I helped him get more fries, he looked up, full of wonder and dependence, and said, “I love you, Daddy.” It was the first time I had ever heard those words from him. My soul leapt, my heart smiled, and I immediately went over to the other side of the bench and, with tears, embraced him and said, “I love you too, Bud.”
Priceless experiences like this, as well as thirty-plus years of intimacy with my wife, Pam, have become indelible reasons of the heart—real evidences at the core of my being—for the existence of a loving creator.
And so, to recap, nature leads me to God the amazing artist, and fatherhood and marriage reveal a God of relationship and goodness. From there, I reason that a loving Creator would not leave us without answers to our most challenging questions:
- Origin: Where did we come from?
- Meaning: What are we here for?
- Morality: What is good and what is evil?
- Destiny: Is there an afterlife and, if so, what will it be like?[4]
The question becomes, then, where did a loving God give us answers to the questions above? We could start with the five major world religions, but which one?[5]
Next
week I’ll pick up here, going further and answering the question Why I’m a Christian.
[1] https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/bill_maher_629355
[2] For more on this, see my four-part post on How I Became a Christian Despite the Church.
[3] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Touchstone,1996), 37.
[4] Although I cannot now locate the exact source, I first heard the information bulleted here in a lecture with Q&A that Ravi Zacharias did at Harvard University.
[5] The five major religions of the world are Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam.