A boy went flying down the staircase from his room and after finding his mother busy in the kitchen he blurted out a question with great earnest and urgency. Mother he said…is it true what the preacher says at funerals about us when he says we are going from ashes to ashes and dust to dust? His mother pondered the question for a moment and replied…yes that is true son. The boy took only a few seconds to think of his mothers answer and then blurted out…well Ma you better come upstairs real quick because there is someone under my bed but I’m not sure if they are coming or going.
The question of our origins and our final destination has been more than a child’s question to us since history began. The answers we provide ourselves are many and some of them could hardly satisfy a child’s curiosity. We send multi billion dollar space craft to Mars trying to find clues about the origins of life in our solar system. We search religions and the supernatural in quest of the answer to what happens after life. More often than not we sail right by the answers that have already been provided especially if they cannot be scrutinized by our own science or human reasoning.
It seems like one great open ended question that is up for grabs. Anyone can take a stab at the answer thus no answer is regarded more important than another. Since the answers are up for grabs that makes the question seem as if it isn’t very important. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact it is one of the most important questions any individual may ever ask. The answer will determine more about our world than we could imagine.
At this point you would expect me to identify my particular view based on where or with whom I stand. If I start by saying what the Christian view of the origin and final destination of man is you may not even bother to finish this paragraph. Who is not familiar with the biblical view of life and death? Of course there will always be those who just don’t give a damn about where we came from or where we are going. It is not the argument but genuine care for people that cause the true believer not to give a damn that they don’t give a damn. More often than not it would not be expressed this way but maybe it should be.
God does not have a view. If God had opinions and viewpoints we’d all be sunk. We would have to stumble through life like a man driving down a dark mountain pass late at night in the fog on a road with no painted lines to help guide the car. We would endlessly debate the true meaning of the ten suggestions or the beatitudes if you can handle it ideas. We could create a whole new ocean of new religions in which to sink or swim. Drowning would be normal.
God has been very clear about the origin and destination of mankind. He is also makes it very clear that agnosticism, atheism and unbelief in general is a choice not the natural concomitant to the lack of humanly acquired answers about the beginnings or the outcome of life. God says he made the earth and every living creature on it and that one day he will visit it again and hold us accountable for what we have done with our planet and our lives. This is called accountability.
Late in the last century two grand musings were presented to the world that have gained wide acceptance. They are of course the theory of evolution and the idea of interstellar space travel. How convenient that these two answers have come just in time to help a world spiraling out of control to have answers that trump God and handily remove all accountability to him in one sweeping new wind from the devices of the heart section of our philosophies.
If we came from the lonely amoeba swimming about in the primordial ooze and evolved to our present grandiose state, then we don’t have to answer to God. Conversely if we are to just fly off into space and colonize infinite planets to further the human race then we won’t ever have to answer to God after life. There would be no after life but only the continuation of life elsewhere in the great somewhere in the sky (space). Whew! Sounds a lot like the gospel of secular humanity and I can almost hear someone voicing a strong amen from out there somewhere.
God says He is not just telling the truth but He is the truth and that truth was also embodied in his only begotten Son. John14:6 Lies also have a source according to God. They come from Gods enemy the devil. No, not the horned red faced and pitch forked demon from the comics or folklore but the covering and brilliant intelligence the scriptures refer to as “the God of this world” 2Corinthians 4:4. In fact he is not just a good liar; he is the “father of lies” John 8:44. Sure the Devil may be the inspiration for the lies you told your mother about skipping school or the fibs you told your girlfriend about kissing Suzie behind the bleachers but don’t be fooled he has much bigger fish to fry and he is a diligent cook.
The garden variety lies are endless like robbing banks will make you rich and happy, pornography will excite you and help fulfill your otherwise dull life, a great political ideology will finally bring peace to the earth, etc, etc, etc. But just before the judgments of God take place and Christ returns the Devil pulls out all the stops. In order to solidify the world with one mind and one pervasive secular world view he introduces the two most dastardly lies of any generation in history.
The wise of this world think that they won’t let the notion of an unknowable and un-seeable God make fools of them. At the same time they are letting an un-seeable entity (Satan) make monkeys of them in the most literal sense of the word through a vehicle known as the evolutionary model. The god of this world caps off his greatest deception by providing the wildest imaginations with ideas of Klingons, Vulcans and Kardacians living together with humans in a happily ever after world of the future.
Sometimes I wish I could whisk about and visit every person who just sat down in front of the TV to watch an episode of Star Trek or some nature program filled with great swelling statements about what took place four hundred million years ago. And much like the minister I heard about who approached a scoffing prison inmate after he screamed out “there is no God you idiot” I would say “hey, did you know that you were in the Bible?” The prisoner said “show me where I am in the pages of the bible and I might believe in God too.” The minister read to him from Psalms 53:1 “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.”
God has been clear that anyone who seeks Him will find Him. I think we not only know that but we know where to look for him. This idea is given credence every time someone cries out to God when in extreme danger or despair. Never has it been heard that the soldiers crouching in a foxhole encompassed and outnumbered by their enemies decided to call out to the great one cell amoeba of the past or the future brother hood of humans, Kardacians and Vulcans.
