This summer, I attended a writers’ conference in St. Louis, where the keynote speaker opened the event by describing our artistic talent as a product and reflection of God’s. He encouraged writers to use our talent God so that we might point others to Him. God, he said, is the first and greatest artist who created everything, the source of all beauty and wonder in the universe.
He then moved on to speak of those who would deny the Creator with their own works, who “take great pains to shut down anything that suggests” the existence of God. I was struck by his take on their absurd and appalling arrogance, their disgusting and delusional defiance:
They devalue life at its inception. They confuse the divine order of creation in the Garden of Eden and they call it intersectional personal identities. They enshrine money, sex, and power, and kick God out of their throne rooms. They desecrate the Creator who painted the cosmos with light and who called it good. They take the excrement of their debauchery and shove it in God’s face, declaring their creation better.
And though he was speaking to a room full of Christians, it was nevertheless a good reminder of how irreverent and unappreciative our society is towards the Creator. We don’t just refuse to see the glory of God in what He’s made; we take pride in our own vastly inferior work – like a preschooler throwing feces on the Mona Lisa and then shrieking of how we improved it. God gave us a masterpiece, a work of art, to enjoy and appreciate and even have the privilege of using and developing on our own. But how do we thank Him? How do we use it? As if denying His work isn’t bad enough, we defecate on the canvas and then have the nerve to call it an improvement.
How true is this of our current age?
To be sure, it’s true of every age. We tend to exaggerate how bad (or good) the world really is at any given moment. But we’re certainly living in a time when people have less concept of right and wrong – less concern for what it even means – than has possibly ever existed. The glory and grace of God is spat upon now with more rage and wider support than has been true for at least a millennium and perhaps all of human history. (After all, the concept of atheism is fairly new.) Our society laments and denigrates traditional values like marriage, religion, and responsibility – not because we have better ideas, but because we hate anything that can be seen as a part of God’s plan. We reject every good thing or the principles on which they stand. And what do we have with which to replace them? Narcissism. Emptiness. Nonsense. Filth.
We promote and practice the slaughter of unwanted children for our own personal gain. We celebrate public displays and deviant forms of sexuality, even and especially where children are concerned. We unite behind government leaders who reward compliance to their tyrannical worldview and punish independent thought. And all the while, we’re increasingly hostile to anyone who believes in a God of righteousness (as too intolerant), justice (as too strict), and mercy (as too forgiving).
Our society defends the mutilation and sexualization of children, but how does it react to nicely dressed, well-behaved churchgoers who celebrate their Creator with humility, reverence, and dignity? By calling them hateful, bigoted, extreme (and without a hint of irony). Christians – or anyone who rejects the insanity of our times – are vilified for believing what is good and normal while rejecting the vile and nasty. To quote the prophet Isaiah: good is called evil and evil good.
But this sad and insulting thought is not the end of the story. As our keynote speaker – writer, publisher, and literary agent Steve Laube – went on to say, “their victory is premature,” for God still reigns. And though we reject him, He hasn’t left us to simply wallow and drown in our vomit, however much we might deserve it. Instead, He stepped down into human history and said, “I’ll show you how it’s done. I’ll offer you a way out. I’ll demonstrate my righteousness and justice by punishing sin, but I’ll demonstrate my love for all of you by taking the punishment in your place.” All we need to do is accept the gift.
This is old news – and not just to Christians. There are many in the world who know the story and simply find a way to avoid it, to reject it outright or ignore it. Dare I say, even many Christians are indifferent to the idea. To paraphrase Steve Laube, they’ve lost all sense of wonder for the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. And I suspect that’s because we have such a small idea of God.
To be fair, it’s hard to grasp the concept of an infinite, almighty God. He’s outside time and space, which is literally beyond our capacity to even fathom. But in creating the universe – that masterpiece within which we exist and come to know Him – our Creator has given us something that at least begins to help us see His greatness. In Laube’s words:
Our galaxy is 100,000 light years across. So if you start on one end, travel the speed of light, it’ll take you a hundred thousand years to get [to] the end of your journey. Last year a new galaxy was discovered… It is 16.3 million light years across. Ours is a hundred thousand. In our galaxy is 100 billion stars. In that galaxy are one trillion stars.
And these are only two – two – of the galaxies in our universe. Some scientists estimate there could be as many as two trillion separate galaxies, each one of which might cover these unfathomable distances. In other words, if we imagine the Milky Way at the center of the universe and pretend we’re traveling all the way to the edge, it could take at least hundreds of zillions of years to do so. That’s how big the universe is believed to be – not by worshipers of God, but by secular materialists. As a layman, I may not have the means to confirm or deny this fact; but as a Christian, I see no reason to dispute it.
Think about what this means for the Creator. It means he really is too much for us to even comprehend. And that comes with a whole new set of implications.
Someone I met at college once said he thought the universe was the only way we could truly understand the vastness of God, and I’m inclined to agree with him. In fact, I’m inclined to believe that’s why it’s here. Recently, I heard two Catholic commentators debating the existence of aliens in a theistic universe. One of them asked why God would make such a massive universe if we’re the only living things in it, to which the other replied – profoundly and (I believe) correctly – “For His glory.”
This makes sense, from a Christian perspective, because the universe isn’t just huge. It’s perfect for us. As has been argued in books like “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist” (by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek), the universe operates in such a way as to be just right. This is known as the fine tuning argument: if any of the myriad factors of the universe’s operation were even slightly different, none of us could ever have existed. Many will say it only appears that way because we’re here to see it. But that misses the point. It’s mathematically ludicrous to suppose our universe would’ve come into existence by accident.
Returning one last time to our keynote speaker, he told of how he tried to relate all of this to his grandson (whom I believe he said was five years old at the time). In so doing, he said that God held the entire universe in the palm of His hand. In response, his grandson looked at him with wide eyes and said, “Grandpa! What does he have in his other hand?” The crowd laughed – myself included – but it was an unmistakably mind-blowing thought.
Obviously, the idea of our universe resting in the actual, physical hands (or hand) of God is an illustration to help us visualize and comprehend. But that’s the whole point. It’s what makes the statement so moving. Illustration or not, this entire universe is here because of God. And it’s only a small part of what God can do. It doesn’t even begin to reveal His greatness. If we find the size of this universe mind-blowing, we should let that inform our opinion of God.
When we let the universe point us to God (as it clearly should, according to Romans 1), we begin to see Him as the Creator of all things, who is worthy of all praise, as the old song attests.
O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder Consider all the worlds thy hands have made, I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, Thy power throughout the universe displayed, Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee: How great thou art!
To quote David’s prayer from Psalm 8:3: “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him?” (Incidentally, Steve Laube also referenced this verse in his speech.)
But in fact, God is mindful of us. That’s why He looks down from His heavenly throne, into our little universe – past trillions of galaxies with hundreds of billions of stars – into our little Milky Way, our little solar system, our little third rock from the sun, and focuses His attention on such insignificant specks as we are: because he wants us to know not only how big He is, but how important we are to Him.
That’s why the God of infinity became one of us, born as a baby in Bethlehem to suffer and die in our place on the cross at Calvary, so that we might have eternal life with Him. The God who holds all things in the palm of His hand wants to bring us home to be with Him. We can know this vast and unfathomable God as our friend.
There’s a gospel song that sums up this entire message by asking, “How big is God?” and answering, “He’s big enough to rule this mighty universe and small enough to live within my heart.”
Think Truth 