Every day, we sort the people, events, and ideas that come into our lives. Arguably, the most important sorting that we do is between good and evil. This is important because we use this distinction to guide the choices that we make. We use good and evil to guide our lives.

Good is warm and fuzzy. We like to focus on the good things. Evil is another story. We avoid thinking about it. When was the last time you heard someone, in a conversation; say that something……or worse yet someone……..is evil. It has reached the point where applying the term evil to someone or something is considered rude. We prefer the term ” bad”. For the post today, I will consider all things that are not good as evil.

We tend to see good and evil as a continuum. Some things are more good……..some things are more evil……..than others. This is comforting. It allows us to classify the bad things that we do as less evil than true, full blown evil. We even add a threshold……..actually two thresholds. One of these thresholds is between good and bad. The other threshold is between bad and evil. In practice, the threshold between bad and evil is typically the line between the bad that we do and the evil that others do. Do you think that you are immune? When was the last time that you did or said or thought something that was not good…….and later, looking back, said to yourself, “that was evil”.

This brings us to the first question:

How do we sort between good and evil?

Typical human rules for sorting:

Good helps others…….evil hurts others.
Good helps me…….evil hurts me.
Good satisfies my appetites…….evil denies my appetites.
Good is pleasant……evil is painful.
Good increases my net worth…….evil decreases my net worth.
Good is easy……..evil is hard.
Good makes me happy…….evil makes me sad.
Good is the doctrine of my political party…evil is “them”.

There are more……..but these will do. We use a set of rules like these all day every day. These rules are common…….almost universal. Your personal set of sorting rules for good and evil shape almost every decision that you make.

But, are the criteria that we apply to sort between good and evil valid?

I’m afraid not.

There is a much simpler tool for sorting between good and evil.

Good draws me closer to my creator……God.
Evil eases me away from my creator.

In the final analysis…….in the final sorting, this is the criteria that God will use. It will have nothing to do with your net worth or how pleasant your life was. It will have nothing to do with how confident you are with your position on your personal “Good vs. Evil” spectrum.

Here is the scary part. When people consider their death……and what comes after……..I often hear the phrase. “I’m a good person”. And, this is a terribly important statement. The trouble is this:

Whose criteria for sorting “Good vs. Evil” are you using?

Because one of these sorting methods is not valid.

You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy (God). It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards will do the trick.

Indeed, the safest road to hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

C.S. Lewis, a old demon explaining evil to his apprentice in “The Screwtape Letters”.

Years ago, my family took a vacation on the island of Crete. It was an extraordinary trip. While there, we toured the ruins of the palace at Knossos. This is a giant bronze age complex. As we walked around for hours, we went through dozens of “rooms”. Each room had a sign describing the features of the room and how it was used. The walls were largely covered by frescoes which also told about the history of the palace and the ancient people who occupied it, who they were and what their daily life was like. It was an eye opening education.

But, to understand the palace, we need to look at the recent history of the building. In the late 1800’s, there was a pile of dirt, some rudimentary walls, a collapsed staircase, and a stone chair. A British archeologist, Sir Arthur Evans, began digging into the pile of dirt. As he dug, he began piling up the stones he found. He arranged them into what he thought they once looked like. He painted frescoes. He reconstructed wooden columns that had completely rotted. He rebuilt the staircase. He built walls around the stone chair. He tried to recreate the bronze age palace based on the rubble that he found. But, before long, he had had little to work from except rubble. At that point he should have stopped. But he didn’t. When he ran out of historical data, he kept piling up stones……..according to his best guess as to the original design of the palace. What we have today is, in part, a restored bronze age palace…….and in part, Sir Evans’s creation, a creation based solely on his imagination.

What came next is the problem. Sir Evan’s and subsequent archeologists went through the restored palace and made up stories about how the people who occupied the palace lived. These stories were based solely on the years of reconstruction. The reconstruction was in large part created out of thin air by Sir Evan’s imagination. He called the stone chair a throne. He called the room that he built around the chair “The Throne Room”. And he put a King that he dreamed up on the throne. This tale is taught as history today. The problem is that this tale was largely created out of the imagination of Sir Evans.

Please understand, Sir Evans was not a quack or a charlatan. He was a highly respected scientist. He still is highly respected. He did what scientists do to this day. He began by studying actual physical data. But, when he ran out of data. When he ran out of walls to repair, he began speculating. He built walls out of rubble to fit the narrative that he believed. He created a myth about the Minoan civilization. That myth is taught today as history.

Scientists today do exactly the same thing. They analyse hard data and draw conclusions. But, at some point, they run out of data. They fill in the gaps using assumptions and theories. They craft these assumptions and theories to support the data and the analysis that they have already done. These assumptions and theories may some day turn out to be true…….to be supported by new data. But, until that happens, they are myths. Many of them will never be proven by data and will remain myths.

And there is the rub.

The rub is that the scientists teach the theories and assumptions as fact. And we build our lives around them. Some of them are true. Some of them are myths.

What are these theories….assumptions…..myths:

The flat earth theory
The earth is the center of the universe theory
Darwinian evolution
The missing link between man and apes
The big bang
The expanding universe
Dark energy
Dark matter
Hubble tension

There is a thread that runs through all of this “science”.

There is an assumption that undergirds it all.

That assumption?

God does not exist.

This is the greatest myth of all. And it will remain a myth until either the non-existence or the existence of God is proven…….by hard data. But……..that may be too late……for us.

Always remember this:

A chain of logic that contains 1,000 bulletproof steps and one assumption……..is an assumption……a theory…….a myth.

The greatest logical error that we can make as human beings?

To endanger our eternity on an assumption………a theory…….a myth.

The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

Paul, 2 Thessalonians 2: 9-11, ESV

The Bible and Christianity explain a lot. But, they don’t explain everything.

Science explains a lot. But it doesn’t explain everything.

Both Christianity and science promise that we will learn more later. Meanwhile, both ask us to trust them. Both science and Christianity ask us to fill in the gaps that they do not explain with acts of faith.

But faith, ultimately, in what?

In the end, it comes down to faith, either in the God of the Bible or in the Great Accident.

God is powerful and active. He can, and will, create and destroy. God loves and cares for us…….for me. Moreover, God has expectations and he places requirements on us.

The Accident can create and destroy too. Experience teaches us that the accident is more likely to destroy than create. The Accident has no expectations. The Accident places no demands on us. Furthermore, the Accident is purely random. There is no intelligence behind the Accident. The Accident does not love us or hate us. In fact, it has no involvement, no relationship, with us at all. In a word, the Accident is completely indifferent to us.

So, we ask the big questions:

Where did we come from?

Why are we here?

Where are we going?

Both the Accident and God offer explanations……..answers to these questions.

But, they give us precious little hard evidence to support their explanations.

Both the Accident and God ask us to trust them. Both the Accident and God require that we fill in the gaps in the data with faith.

In the end, both the Accident and God require us to honor them by acting on faith. They both ask us to build our lives around their explanations and their demands. They both ask us to wager our future on their promises. This amounts to worshiping them.

We have grown up with the idea of the God of the Bible. You can accept his existence or deny him, but we understand him as God.

Here’s the thing.

The Accident, in terms of our relationship with him, in practice, is a God too.

He goes by many names:

Good luck
Bad luck
Karma
Kismet
Happenstance

We look at these two Gods. We weigh their demands and their promises……..and we choose.

We honor…..put our faith in….the God of the Bible.

Or

We honor…….put our faith in…..the Accident.

Both paths are acts of faith. Both paths are, in practice, acts of worship.

God makes demands and rewards us with the promise of eternal joy that grows out of his sovereignty and his love.

The Accident promises nothing but more random events, most of them destructive……..ending with our ultimate destruction…….our death. The Accident gives us nothing. But, here is the key. The Accident demands nothing from us.

We can worship the Accident which demands nothing and gives nothing.

Or

We can worship the God of the Bible who demands a relationship based on love and on his sovereignty…….and, in return, gives us eternal joy.

You can have one or the other.

But not both.

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

Paul comparing God and the Accident, Romans 1: 21-28, ESV

I woke up early this morning. It was still dark, so I got to watch the sunrise over the mountains. I’ve seen this hundreds of times, but it never fails to amaze me. It struck me that most of us rarely see the awesome beauty of the sunrise. Most of those who see it don’t make the connection between the beauty of the sunrise and the God who created it. Most of us see the mechanics of a spinning globe circling a ball of burning gas………and miss the heart of the being that created it. It struck me that our perception of the sunrise is a microcosm of the conflict between secular humanism and Creationism.

The humanist sees a moving ball of burning gas……the result of a giant accidental explosion 14 billion years ago. The Creationist sees the handiwork of an intelligent being who called it all into being for his own purposes. I can only speculate as to God’s motivation. I suspect that he did it all because he wants a relationship with us…….a relationship with me……based on reciprocal love…….a conversation. That conversation is how my day begins.

The central tenet of secular humanism is the complete removal of the Creator from the creation. Many of us embrace secular humanism because we want control of our lives. We chafe at the idea…..the presence……of a creator who has plans for us…….who has expectations of us. In order for the humanist to achieve control, he must accept a creation story that is built on theories and assumptions…….a series of trillions of sequential events, billions of years ago……..events that cannot be documented. You cannot collect data, then analyse that data by applying assumptions and theories, and say that your conclusion is a fact. But, scientists do just that……all day……every day.

This is the core of secular humanism. And, if you close your eyes and hold your nose, if you ignore the gaps, missing links, theories, and assumptions, if you ignore dark matter and dark energy, if you ignore the probability of a human genome consisting of several hundred billion chemical bonds…..each one a random accident……if you can commit those logical atrocities…….you can almost convince yourself that an intelligent creator, God, is not necessary. This is the price that you pay for control.

But, as I sit in my chair this morning, having a conversation with a creator who loves me more than life itself, I have to ask two questions:

What is the secular humanist giving up when he sacrifices that conversation, that relationship……….in order to gain a little temporary control of his life?

What is the secular humanist depriving God of…….in terms of the lost relationship……the lost conversation? This morning, it was about a spectacular sunrise. In a few hours, that conversation will be about things far more important.

Both God and the humanist lose out on the single most important thing in the universe…….relationship.

And that saddens me.

He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

Micah 6:8, ESV