Blog

by David Odegard

Editor's note: Please enjoy this previously written post as David focuses on his pastoral ministry during this Advent season.

In some ways Christians are like everyone else: we accept certain things without absolute proof. But although we may not have absolute proof, we do have sufficient evidence to point us to God. Once we arrive at God, we can see everything else. God is light and by Him we can see everything. Without God, nothing can be seen; humanity gropes in the darkness looking for answers that they do not have the capacity to receive.

I was born and raised on the High Plains in Montana. My dad took me hunting for mule deer my entire life. Montana is blanketed each year in snow, ice, and extreme cold. Mule deer hunting is conducted by driving around in the vast treeless plain, squinting into the snow for deer that might be half a mile away.

So often in my early years, my dad would point out into the undistinguished snowy nothingness and say, “There they are, can’t you see them?” but I couldn’t. I would sight down his arm and pointed finger to the exact location that he was pointing to, but all I could see was snow. Then one day, I saw them. I could never un-see them. Thanks to my dad, I have been successfully hunting mule deer for decades.

You may remember your math teacher trying to get you to understand how to do a certain problem. You weren’t getting the concept and then all of a sudden—comes the dawn—you got it! You were never able to un-see it thereafter. Life had changed and so had the synapsis of your brain. You grew.

Life is like that. Our parents and society point out to us what they want us to see. We are taught to view the world in a certain way. Then later we take off the lens that they placed in front of our eyes and we take a good look at reality for ourselves and we realize that life is not so neat and tidy.

Evil exists.

Or perhaps if you were raised to be an atheist, you realize for the first time that the world seems to show evidence of design. Some people struggle against this unveiling of the eye, preferring to just put the glasses back on and play by the rules. Others stare intently into the creation itself and demand from it an orderly answer. This is called science. And you may be surprised to learn that it was invented by Christians (at least the scientific method was invented by Christians). Science is an outgrowth of the Christian worldview.

The Bible invites us to view the world in a particular way, too. We Christians believe that we can look into the created universe and learn many important things about God, and then by extension, ourselves. We can learn, for instance, that He is a mathematical genius. He is exact in His design. Imagine the meaning of the moon orbiting the earth at exactly the right distance from earth to be precisely the relative size as the sun to make a perfect eclipse. Coincidence? Perhaps. But these kinds of phenomena happen repeatedly when studying creation, and they underscore the evidence of a benevolent, precise Creator.

Creation reveals that there is a God; the Bible tells us His name! It is not a big rational leap to believe that if such a God exists that He could create the universe, that He would also be able to communicate to you and me. He could animate the prophetic view of old and reach into His own creation to relieve humans from the bondage of their own decisions. Evil exists, but God has not stayed in heaven sending letters by way of prophets only. He loved human beings so much that He became one. This, too, is God revealing Himself to us. This is God entering into the suffering world that we endangered in order to save it and remake it.

Now think of a popular alternative. Atheism teaches that the universe spontaneously occurred one day. Nothing exploded and something happened as a result. This absurd statement can never be a scientific statement. Atheists really believe that everything came from absolutely nothing.

Stephan Hawking says in his book, The Grand Design, “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.” But this is utter nonsense. This is not a scientific statement at all. Gravity describes the interplay between combinations of matter and energy. When a genius utters nonsense, it is still nonsense. Certainly gravity can shape the matter that exits already, but it cannot bring that matter into reality—that is absurd.

Atheists believe in that absurdity and try to force it down other people’s minds. The result of atheistic thought is that there is no ultimate meaning in reality, no ultimate morality or justice, no reason to live. There is only despair on one hand or baseless optimism on the other.

The practical benefits of a Christian worldview, like a healthy mind and heart, a purpose in life, a hope for justice at some point in our existence, and a sound basis upon which to conduct scientific experimentation, are vastly preferable. They also happen to be true.

This being my first blog post with Worldview Warriors, please let me say that I look forward to an engaging discussion of these and many more topics to come. Blessings! And may the God of all peace open your heart to receive the gospel.

This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration.  All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved.  Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.