A Proof of God from Reason

I enjoy taking snapshots of the glorious work of God. The one below is a snapshot of reason/logic. (All of these snapshots point back to the existence of their Creator.) Here’s how:

1. REASON EXISTS.
2. REASON REQUIRES A TRANSCENDENT INTELLIGENCE.

Conclusion: A TRANSCENDENT INTELLIGENCE MUST EXIST.

1.     REASON EXISTS.

This hardly requires any support. In fact, any argument against the existence of reason requires reason.

2.     REASON REQUIRES A TRANSCENDENT INTELLIGENCE.

There are several reasons for this. Reason is absolute, universal, and immutable. It must be immutable. If it isn’t, it would be like measuring with maple syrup. It must also be universal or it should change from state to country.

These qualities cannot be accounted for by a universe of molecules-in-motion. They can only be accounted for by an immutable and universal Cause – something that transcends this universe.

Reason is like the operating systems of a computer, all of which had to be intelligently created. While humans created operating systems, humans could not have created reason, since reason predates humanity. Also, the operating system must be intelligently fine-tuned to the computer if it is to be functional. Amazingly, reason seems to have also been intelligently fine-tuned to this world.

Besides, the humanly created systems are always being improved, while reason remains as is and yet is adequate for all of our enterprises, whether in China or Alaska.

Conclusion: A TRANSCENDENT INTELLIGENCE MUST EXIST.

Praise His glory, all you His creations!

This same proof can be constructed for every law of science. All are elegant, immutable, and universal. All reflect a Supreme Intelligence!

Wisdom in Captivity to the Immediate

Modernity has taken wisdom captive. Each age does this. The new “wisdom” now serves self-indulgence. An article entitled, “15 Things Not to Apologize for in Your Relationship” counsels couples that they need not apologize for every nisdeed. Here’s an example:

• You can be a bitch without your coffee. We aren’t going to change certain things about ourselves. You may be cranky… Being honest about it is part of living in a multidimensional, emotion-filled world.

While there are several areas where we can agree, there are others that are problematic. Indeed, we should be honest, and we have some tendencies that we “aren’t going to change.” Nevertheless, we have to take responsibility for our offensive crankiness. It is not enough to merely say, “Well, that’s just the way I am, and you need to accept it!”

While this cranky partner wants you to accept them the way they are, it seems unlikely that they will accept your hurt feelings, as if they are entirely your responsibility. Meanwhile, your cranky partner expects you to give them a free-ride.

However, I can sympathize. I too am cranky. I’d like to be able to tell my wife to “get over it. You need to accept me just as I am.” Well, she does, and I am grateful for this, However, I have to also own the fact that I have hurt my wife with my crankiness and apologize. Amazingly, she always accepts my apology. This process clears-the-air better than anything else ever could, giving us a fresh start.

This new “wisdom” also recommends that we can carry on a secret no-cost, no-fault romantic thought life with the visiting handy man:

• If you were single, there really might be something between the two of you. Just think of all the home-improvement projects that would get done. But seriously, a little what-if-ing is normal and nothing to be sorry about.

Mentally fantasizing about an extra-marital romantic relationship might be “normal,” but is it wise? Are there hidden costs? Does this secret, fun thought-life represent a betrayal of marriage? According to Jesus, it does:

• But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (Matthew 5:28)

Jesus also warned that what we have in our hearts and minds will eventually spill over into words and actions:

• You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. (Matthew 12:34)

Consequently, it will only be a matter of time before we will pay a price for the secrets of our heart. Just look at how porn destroys relationships! What will happen if we conjure up the handy man as we make love to our husband? Are we then not living a double-life? And how will this hypocrisy affect us? Our relationships?

I don’t know if our modern progressive gurus consider such things. For many, the moment is all that counts. However, while our philosophy should be a telescope to give us foresight, too often our lives and wants shape our philosophies/religions to serve the immediate. We have commandeered “wisdom” to serve our indulgences.

Predestination is not the Real Offense

Predestination is not the Real Offense

The teaching of predestination/election can be troubling, but it shouldn’t be. It merely teaches that humanity is downing, and therefore, God has to jump in to rescue them. However, God is even more gracious than that. He rescues those who are His enemies (Rom. 8:5-8; 5:8-10) - those who even refuse to be rescued (John 3:19-20; Rom. 3:10-16). What is so bad about that? Nothing! Instead, it’s called the “Good News!”

I think that what many Christians really object to is not predestination, but instead the doctrine that requires predestination – our depravity and rebellion, our universal rejection of the light (John 3:19-20; 1 Cor. 2:14). Consequently, since we will not choose God, He must choose us (John 6:40-45; 15:16), if any are to be saved. But we find this dismal assessment of humanity both unbelievable and offensive!

Is humanity really that bad? Not according to us! But we do not see the inner man. We – even the most spiritual - are duped by appearances. The prophet Samuel certainly was! God had to warn him against judging according to the “outward appearance” (1 Sam. 16:7).

Perhaps all of us judge superficially, and therefore cannot appreciate the depths of sin and God’s abhorrence of it. Jeremiah had a hard time accepting God’s dismal evaluation of Israel. God therefore challenged him:

• “Go up and down the streets of Jerusalem, look around and consider, search through her squares. If you can find but one person who deals honestly and seeks the truth, I will forgive this city.” (Jer. 5:1)

Jeremiah too had a high estimation of humanity, especially of his own kind, and thought that it would be easy to find one honest man:

• I thought, “These are only the poor; they are foolish, for they do not know the way of the Lord, the requirements of their God. So I will go to the leaders and speak to them; surely they know the way of the Lord, the requirements of their God.” (Jer. 5:4-5)

Because Jeremiah had had a high estimation of the educated Israelite, he found God’s assessments and judgments unbelievable and unduly harsh. However, Jeremiah found that all Israel was in rebellion against the Lord. Even his own family wanted to kill him for bringing the message of God. (It is interestingly to note that even though Israel’s rejection of their God had often included every Israelite, the Prophets never blamed God for their rebellion.)

However, once Jeremiah began to see the extent of human rebellion, he too began to reassess humanity and affirm God’s righteous judgments. In fact, he began to plead with God not to forgive.

If we could only see the extent of human rebellion and our hatred towards the Savior, perhaps we might really regard predestination as Good News, which it truly is, and appreciate the extreme generosity of God’s mercy.

It is imperative to understand these depths of our hatred of the light, our enmity against God, however offensive this might be. When we understand the extent of God’s forgiveness of our sins in light of this, we will be truly grateful. Failing to perceive this, we tend to disregard God’s grace.

Jesus was invited to a top-of-the-line pharisaic lunch. A woman He had forgiven entered uninvited and anointed His feet in expensive oil. The host was appalled both by this woman and that Jesus allowed this base creature to touch him. Jesus therefore explained that she was more blessed than the host: “He who is forgiven little, loves little” (Luke 7:47)

The woman loved much because she knew that she had been forgiven much. Often, we do not know the extent to which we have sinned and have been forgiven and, therefore, love little and disdain God’s just ways. If we only understood the extent of Christ’s forgiveness, we would not be offended by God’s judgments, knowing that they are just. Instead, we’d fully accept the Bible’s judgment that sin deserves death (Romans 6:23; Deut. 27:26). We would also gladly embrace whatever mercy that God might offer – predestination.

There is also another danger when we fail to appreciate the extent of our rebellion against the light – boasting! For my first 15 years in Christ, I believed that I had chosen Christ and not the other way around. Why had I chosen Christ? I had convinced myself that it was because I was more spiritual than others. In doing this, I exalted myself and looked down on others (Luke 18:9-14). Consequently, I had to suffer for years before I could recognize that I had been boasting and that this had been offensive to the One who had given me the faith to believe.

The same had been true for King Nebuchadnezzar, the great Babylonia empire-builder. Understandably, he was convinced that he was great and that his greatness was all about him. However, he had a disturbing dream which changed everything. Daniel interpreted it for him:

• It is a decree of the Most High, which has come upon my lord the king, that you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. You shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and you shall be wet with the dew of heaven, and seven periods of time shall pass over you, till you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will. (Daniel 4:24-25)

For seven years, Nebuchadnezzar lost his mind, thinking that he was a cow. Why had God punished him in this manner? Because of his warfare? Taking Israel into captivity? His treatment of the poor? No! It was simply to learn a theological lesson – that his success wasn’t about Him but about God, who chooses “whom He will!”

At the end of the seven years of grievous suffering, Nebuchadnezzar got the point and gave all of the thanks to God for choosing him. If this pagan, unenlightened by Scripture, was held to account for his boasting, we will, even more so, be held accountable.

Why? Because God actually deserves the credit! If someone gives you a magnificent painting from their studio, you hang it up in your house, and others ask if you had painted this masterpiece, should you take credit for painting it? If you do, would not the real artist be offended? Likewise, if faith is God’s gift to us (Eph. 2:8-9; Philip. 1:29; Acts 18:27; 16:14; 13:48) and if we take credit for it, as I had, would not God be offended?

Instead, it is only fitting to credit God for our salvation and even for the faith to receive it – God’s predestined salvation!

Compassion: Its Philosophical Basis

No matter how diverse our philosophies, everyone seems to believe in the need for compassion. However, while some base compassion on our instincts/feelings alone, others regard these as inadequate. Rather, we need to extend the circle of our compassion beyond the limited circle defined by our feelings, our affiliations.

Therefore, it is not enough to simply feel compassion; we need to also believe and think compassion! But what beliefs will promote compassionate behavior?

Several very popular worldviews deny that humanity is responsible for any wrongdoing. If this is so, then we can’t hold people responsible and therefore resent them for their misdeeds. Instead, compassionate becomes the most appropriate response.

According to one such worldview, we are exclusively the product of nurture and nature. Humanity is basically good and would do the good if we could. Why then do we do badly? Because we are irresistibly driven by these deterministic forces to act badly! Consequently, instead of punishing the wrongdoer, society needs to treat him and eliminate those factors that drove him to do badly.

Closely allied to this worldview is the denial of freewill. If we cannot act otherwise, then we should not be held responsible if we hurt others.

Both of these worldviews also tend to be pragmatic, recognizing that dangerous people must be restrained in prison. However, it is not because they deserve this but because society needs protection.

However, this gives a contradictory message:

• Society must punish you even though you do not deserve this harsh treatment. 

Hence, these worldviews eliminate any concept of justice. Justice is thereby reduced to expedience – what works for the majority. In other words, “We are merely punishing you for our own welfare!” However, this can only breed cynicism, division, and ultimately decay. There is nothing to prevent the outcast from then thinking:

• Well, if you are going to punish me because of your welfare, then there is no reason for me to not punish you for my welfare! 

Besides, without the concept of justice, there remains no way to win hearts and minds. What can we say to those who want to fight for ISIS? “You must not go and fight with ISIS because of our benefit?” When we sacrifice justice, we sacrifice any rationale to appeal to anything higher than base instinct.

These two worldviews also un-dignify humanity. They proclaim:

• You are not a free moral agent. You are not responsible for your actions. In essence, you are no more than a sophisticated bio-chemical machine, something that can easily be discarded if it fails to perform a designated function! 

This opens wide the door to abuse. To un-dignify humanity is also to deprive humanity of compassionate behavior. We might instinctively love animals, but we also eat and cage them. If humankind is just another animal, what then is to protect them from the way we treat other animals? Even the honorable Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Homes, Jr. admitted:

• When one thinks coldly I see no reason for attributing to man a significance different in kind from that which belongs to a baboon or a grain of sand.

However, we walk on grains of sand and use them in the production of concrete. So much for a philosophical basis for compassion!

Serial killers have also figured out that, if we are no more than animals, then the law of the animal kingdom prevails. Instead, of evolution providing a basis for compassion, Jeffrey Dahmer protested, “I would argue that understanding evolution has the opposite effect, let me explain”:

• As far as we know, we only have one life and we share this planet with billions of other life-forms that have the exact same purpose as we do. We're no better or no worse than any other individual, ESPECIALLY not other human individuals.”

It was this understanding that enabled him to kill and cannibalize others.

Moral relativism is another closely-related worldview. It too maintains that our concepts of justice, right and wrong are just human inventions, without any existence apart from our own thinking. We merely invented these concepts because they are useful.

Consequently, this worldview also degrades humanity, even our pursuit of virtue and compassion. After all, if virtue is just someone’s invention, why take it seriously – more seriously than my own inventions?

Serial killer Ted Bundy understood this:

• Then I learned that all moral judgments are ‘value judgments,’ that all value judgments are subjective [it just depends on how you think about them], and that none can be proved to be either “right” or “wrong”…I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited. And I quickly discovered that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the greatest block and limitation to it, consists in the insupportable “value judgment that I was bound to respect the rights of others. I asked myself, who were these ‘others?’ Other human beings with human rights? Why is it more wrong to kill a human animal than any other animal, a pig or a sheep or a steer? Is your life more to you than a hog’s life to a hog? Why should I be willing to sacrifice my pleasure more for the one than for the other? Surely, you would not, in this age of scientific enlightenment, declare that God or nature has marked some pleasures as ‘moral’ or ‘good’ and others as ‘immoral’ or ‘bad’? In any case, let me assure you, my dear young lady, that there is absolutely no comparison between the pleasure I might take in eating ham and the pleasure I anticipate in raping and murdering you. That is the honest conclusion to which my education has led me – after the most conscientious examination of my spontaneous and uninhibited self.” (Christian Research Journal, Vol 33, No 2, 2010, 32)

Clearly, moral relativism cannot serve as a basis for compassion. When feelings fail, this philosophy offers no resistance to our selfish instincts. However, these worldviews argue that if there is objective moral law and if we do have freewill, even in the midst of powerful deterministic force, then we re-establish a basis for moral contempt and undermine compassion.

However, the Reverend Martin Luther King argued that there is another solution. In a sermon entitled “the American Dream,” he stated:

• You see, the founding fathers were really influenced by the Bible. The whole concept of the… “Image of God,” is the idea that all men have something within them that God injected… every man has a capacity to have fellowship with God. And this gives him a uniqueness, it gives him worth, it gives him dignity. And we must never forget this as a nation: There are no gradations in the image of God. Every man from a treble white to a bass black is significant on God’s keyboard, precisely because every man is made in the image of God… This is why we must fight segregation with all of our nonviolent might.

For King, the image of God meant compassion for all. But doesn’t it also mean that some are moral outlaws who deserve punishment and not compassion?

When I was a probation officer, supervising offenders, I would always attempt to treat them with respect, although also with firmness. I knew that I had been forgiven a tremendous debt and was therefore required to treat others with the compassion with which God had treated me.

As any parent knows, compassion also requires correction, even punishment. To raise a child without correction is not compassion. Meanwhile, to reveal to the child your freewill-denying worldview is to teach your child wrongly. It is to say:

• Because you don’t have freewill and could not have done otherwise, I should not punish you. You do not deserve it. However, I must punish you to correct your impulses, which are neither right nor wrong but merely useful or un-useful. But of course, these assessments must change as society changes.

Instead, we need to know that there are considerations and values that are more important than our feelings. Consequently, maturity requires that we restrain the immoral expression of these feelings.

When I wrong my wife, I must take full responsibility and humble myself by confessing my wrong. A morally relativistic confession would not work. I could not say:

• I am truly sorry that I hurt you. However, I did not really commit a wrong, because there isn’t any objective right and wrong. However, you feel bad. Therefore, I am apologizing, even though I haven’t really done another wrong. 

Such an apology is as useful as the freewill-denying apology:

• I am really sorry that I hurt you, but I don’t have freewill and could not have done otherwise. Therefore, you have no right to be upset with me.

Compassion requires taking full responsibility for our actions. Instead, worldviews of mitigation or complete denial are only superficially compassionate. They may look compassionate, but they are unable to achieve the reconciliation required in meaningful relationships. If my wife loves me, her compassion will ask me to take full responsibility.