How Do I Know God Is Real (Part 3) by Ryan Snow
In How Do I Know God Is Real Part 1
and Part 2 I wrote about creation or the cosmos
revealing that God is real. We talked about how the undeniable order of all created things pointing to a Creator. Last time we explored Axiological Reasoning, which is a fancy, philosophical way of stating; the existing of a built-in moral code into humanity/how an ingrained sense of Right and Wrong seems to point to a Maker with a similar perspective.
Our topic this time is about purpose; the purpose we are downloaded with from birth. It is called the Teleological Reasoning which in layman's terms means the argument of purpose. It assumes that because of our natural and intrinsic bent towards something greater and love of others by the way things were made, it is reasonable to assume that something else purposeful made us. Life, relationships, family, friendship, etc. are too poignant and meaningful to be purposeless. There is too much interwoven into family function, roles, work and society as a whole to assume it came about randomly. There is a hierarchy in all of creation, a pecking order if you will, that to me, clearly reveals a natural order of things- not the survival of the fittest, but survival of order which sustains a greater purpose. The "fittest" notion does not explain love of unlovable things/people. It does not explain benevolence or sacrifice. What does explain it though is a God who sacrificed for us and purposes us to be with Him and to know Him. It is a Lord that gave up so that we could have, who waits patiently for us to talk to Him- just like we do our far off loved ones.
There is something very intertwined to duty and everything that is made (especially mankind) that seems too orderly and necessary to be a product of natural selection/chance, which I believe infers that we as humans have purpose, we have one before we are born and retain one while we are alive. Ultimately that is what is so important about life, which is why every child conceived has the right to be born and to thrive. Our need for relationship, our need for love and our purposeful design to love and to be loved makes each life valuable.
The thing about God being pro-life is that if He's not, then we wind up in the pitiful state where so many currently are: disillusioned, angry, hateful, selfish, immoral and in the worst cases, suicidal. Life should matter to us because it matters to Him. It means more than my momentary and fleeting preferences, foreign policy, economics, war strategy, bills, etc. because it matters to God and if we value it we think differently about everything else. We create laws that are pro-family, foreign policies that help other countries have a better and more free culture to live in, we spend our money on things that promote life as opposed to things that diminish the family and society, we bring peace where there is tyranny and we equally are as concerned with giving to others because they matter to God as we are paying our own bills or accumulating our own things.
Now I know that might seem like an anti-abortion soap box, well in some ways it is, but it is analogous to what I'm trying to convey regarding the purposefulness of humans, which necessitates One who imbues us with that sense of purpose.
We matter and we have value because something or Someone deems us valuable, deems us purposeful. To sum it up, our sense of purpose individually and as a part of the whole seems to convey clearly the idea of their being something more. It seems to affirm us and cause meaningful life to explode inside of those who believe as opposed to the void feeling we're left with when we think we're only some accident of a random primordial soup or explosion. If for nothing else believing in God gives us hope and causes us purposefully to look at ourselves and our world and try to make it a better place rather than just sitting back and watching it tear itself apart. Love wins!
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Do you believe there is something more to your life beyond your normal experience? That this "something more" is spiritual?