“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.” – Helen Keller
In Matthew 11:25, Jesus praised and thanked God for revealing the truth to the little ones while hiding it from some of the wise and learned. What seems obvious to some may be nonsense to another, which helps to explain why some are oblivious to God’s obvious presence.
To me, God’s general revelation is evidenced in the heavens through the stars and our sun, which is comparable to the fire of God. Like God, we cannot look directly at the sun but we can feel its warmth and presence. With our back to the sun, our shadows are exposed, which remind us of an ever-present darkness that battles the light in this world. But the battle is futile; darkness can never overcome the light. As Dr. Martin Luther King said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
Believing our creation has a Creator is natural as it’s consistent with everything we know to be true. It is not reasonable to think your home had no builder, your computer software had no coder, your car had no designer and your music no composer. Even young Lego enthusiasts realize creations come from creators.
Our Creator is both immanent and transcendent to the universe, which is time (as we know it), space, and matter. He is the immaterial, eternal, powerful, and intentional source of the Big Bang of the universe, which has been finely-tuned for our existence. He is also concurrently in our past, present, and future and long ago, He set the universe into motion according to His plan.
God made us in His image and He filled the world with His love. He creates and He sustains.[1] He knew before time began of the way each blastocyst in his mother’s womb would grow into a human who values love, life, truth, justice, and empathy – or at least knows he should. Unguided evolution does not explain our moral prescriptions or why humans reason, conceive of abstract concepts, apprehend beauty, apply logic, and seek a higher meaning and purpose. The author of creation does. He blessed us with a conscience to properly shape human decisions and we spend our lives adjusting our actions accordingly.
Romans 2:15 tells us that God has given all a conscience, and unless we sear it, it buzzes in our ear as a bee, from which we can’t flee, following our transgressions. “He deserved it,” the bully blurted. “She dressed provocatively,” the rapist reasoned. “They’re not humans; they’re rats,” the Nazi argued.
Have you not wondered by abortion doctors and nurses label infants in the womb “clumps of cells” or “tissue?” They’re relieving mothers of their guilt from the “terminations of their pregnancies.” They’ll never know the blessings their babies could have been to society and the love they had in store for them. Thankfully, mothers who’ve seen ultrasounds of their unborn children often choose to carry them to term.
In the first chapter of the book of Romans, God made it very clear that we have all received a general revelation of Him. He is evident in the cosmos, in nature, and even in our DNA. He coded the human genome, whose 3.2 billion base pairs were recently sequenced by scientists. One wouldn’t deny a mind was behind the words “I love you” if one spotted them written in the sand at the beach. One wouldn’t deny authorship of the Bible, whether or not he or she appreciates its ultimate source. So why would anyone deny a mind was behind the sequence of 3.2 billion “letters” found in the DNA molecule representing adenine (A), cytosene (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T). A book comes from an author, just as creation comes from a Creator.
Consider the perfectly ordered and mathematical Fibonacci sequence, which is evidenced in nature in seahorses, sunflowers, seashells, hurricanes, galaxies, and even our fingerprints! Such design strongly calls our attention to the designer and His well-ordered plan.
Denying the designer is an outgrowth of hubris.
“The first stage of pride is to desert the Lord and to turn one’s heart away from one’s Maker.”[2]
God lets deniers live in the dark as long as they please by hardening their hearts. They then become prone to reasoning without understanding,[3] failing to grasp the truth of God’s Word in Scripture. They are without the fear of God, which is the first step to gaining wisdom about life. Pride always leads to a fall, while humility leads to wisdom.
“In his pride the wicked man does not seek him; in all his thoughts there is no room for God.”[4]
The book of Genesis explains our human condition and why we have the choice to accept or reject our Maker. Genesis explains how God gave us free will and why we must overcome evil in this world. Through our choices and experiences, we grow our spirits to be more like Christ. Through pain, adversity, suffering, perseverance, evil, restraints, and apathy, we grow to appreciate love, joy, gratitude, empathy, liberty, life, justice, and mercy. And we are given the ultimate choice to accept or reject our place in heaven, which God has offered all. In His immense love for us, God gave us the opportunity to be with Him in eternal bliss or reject His love and light to remain in the bitter chill of an eternal darkness in contempt. Heaven is an existence in which we are so intertwined in the Trinity that the very idea of sin is abhorrent to us. Heaven is an existence in which we will fully understand the purpose of this life and its many challenges. Why would anyone not choose to accept the opportunity to exist in the heavenly mode with the power, light, and love of God infused within us?
I understand why Jesus sacrificed Himself for our salvation. Only a first-born Passover Lamb without blemish could pay the ransom for the sins of humanity. A sinner could not free us from our sins just as a murderer is not positioned to free another murderer to absolve him of his crimes. Only a judge can deliver justice and those impacted can forgive.
What happens when the nature of the judge includes both perfect justice and perfect mercy? What happens when sins are worthy of death, yet the judge has granted certain sinners’ eternal life?
Enter Jesus. On Calvary, Jesus reconciled the Father’s perfect justice and perfect mercy, which paid the price for our sins. The power of one. And all we have to do to thank Him is to accept His love for us.
“He must become greater; I must become less.” – John the Baptist
Thank you for your time.
This is an excerpt from a draft of a book I’m writing: The Power of One.
By: S.J. Thomason, Ph.D., Business Administration
[1] Nehemiah 9:6
[2] Wisdom of Sirach 10:12
[3] The Greek words dialogismois and asunetos from Romans 1:21 translate to “a reasoning without understanding.”
[4] Psalm 10:4
Christian Apologist 
Excellent! Love this.
“Enter Jesus. On Calvary, Jesus reconciled the Father’s perfect justice and perfect mercy, which paid the price for our sins. The power of one. And all we have to do to thank Him is to accept His love for us. “
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