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