Category: Knowing God in Creation

Just Be Where You Are

Posted on by Michael Wine

Where shall I go from your Spirit? Where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. Psalm 139: 7-10

All of God is everywhere. Every surface and space holds his perfect attention and gaze.

I sometimes like to go out of the way to a mountain or field where there are no people. I look at the trees or animals or bugs, and realize that God has never left this place. He’s always been in this forest, caring for the ants and squirrels and grass that man gives no thought to.

I imagine it to be similar to taking a vacation to a distant country, only to find upon arrival that your closest friend is already there waiting for you, welcoming you with a smile and a hug.

It also makes me less stressed about the world. Not that we each don’t have a role to play, but we are not as “mission critical” as we may often think. God is still everywhere, and with Him running things, it will a turn out alright.

What a relief to know that I’m not supposed to be everywhere, controlling everything, because God already has it covered. I can just be where I am today; where God is too.

Some things we can’t understand

Posted on by Michael Wine

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:9

The ways of God are far away from ours. A great distance separates the way God acts and thinks and the way we act and think.

And yet arrogant man often presumes to know the mind of God. They say things like, “If God loved me he would do x.” Or, “If God loved me he would not have allowed x to happen.”

But the ant doesn’t understand why a human does what he does. An ant knows nothing of iPhones, computers, taking kids to school, driving a car or anything related to being a human.

How much less can a human understand the mind of God? The distance from earth to heaven is far greater than the distance from me to an ant.

The Liberty of Rats

Posted on by Michael Wine

There is a growing belief in the idea that this world is not just a result of random evolution but is in fact designed to be a simulation – a Matrix-like computer program. Some proponents of this belief are Elon Musk (founder of Tesla) and Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert).

The advantages of this belief, it seems to me, are that it allows someone to admit that the world is designed in a way, while avoiding all responsibility to the designer. What better conveys the idea that – nothing matters, there is no ultimate accountability to a higher authority, do whatever you wish – better than the word ‘simulation’?

What is striking to me is how powerful this concept is in explaining someone’s life experiences. For a simulation is really another word for a story. And your personal experience often feels like an unfolding drama. You have dreams, expectations, enemies, plot twists, great victories and stunning defeats. Strange coincidences happen that make life appear planned, predetermined, simulated.

And of course, as a Christian, I wonder why these people do not take the concept to it’s logical conclusion. If life is a story, then there is a story teller. It’s obvious. The Bible contains the record of the narrative of God’s story. We are living it right now!

But it has recently occurred to me that while the proponents of the ‘simulation’ may indeed accept that a designer is behind it all, the designer does not necessarily have to be the God of the Bible. It could be aliens, some other being we cannot conceive of, or even ourselves from the future. In short, a false God.

It was then that I, somewhat disappointed, realized that this simulation idea is nothing new at all. It is just another form of idolatry. It is simply saying that the world we live in, this amazing, dramatic, story-telling world, was made by someone other than God. It is no different fundamentally than Baal worship.

Of course it’s packaging is new. Instead of saying, “This is your god. Worship him.” The simulation encourages people to worship themselves, because reality is an illusion. The so-called gods really don’t care what you do morally, they are just curious about how we behave. They are just like scientists studying rats in a cage.

Some would, it seems, prefer to be rats.

Trusting God is True Wisdom

Posted on by Michael Wine

Have you entered into the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been revealed to you, or have you seen the gates of deep darkness? Have you understood the expanse of the earth? Tell Me, if you know all this. Job 38:16-18

It can be stunning to discover how little one knows about the world. In the above verses, God’s questions do that for Job, one of the wisest men of his day.

The book of Job is thousands of years old. Yet, God’s questions are still ringing in our ears.

In spite of our submarines and scuba divers, we know so little of what goes on deep below us ‘in the recesses of the deep.’ Consider the fact that only a few months ago, a new species of fish was discovered.

It has been estimated that when just considering the oceans, 65% of the Earth is unexplored.

But forget the oceans, what about the earth? Has the entire land mass of the Earth been explored? Do we know all there is to know about the planet? Obviously not. For starters, here is a list of fifteen places that are mostly unexplored still even with our more advanced technology.

The point is, thousands of years after Job was written, we still have nothing to say to answer God.

But God is not done. He makes our limitations even more apparent with His next question: ‘Have the gates of death been revealed to you, or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?‘

Death. It is the greatest enemy of man. No matter how hard we try, we can’t escape it. We have never unraveled its mysteries, proven what happens after death, or found a way to ultimately escape it.

So let’s stop pretending that we are so wise and intelligent. Let’s stop ridiculing others about their lack of scientific knowledge, as if we have it. Let’s stop demanding that God justify Himself when He allows bad things to happen in this complex universe that we cannot begin to fathom.

The simple truth is, we are clueless, helpless, and small. And God is all-wise, all-powerful, and ever-present. The most intelligent thing to do, would be to trust Him without question.

Why did God make clouds?

Posted on by Michael Wine

Have you ever gazed up into the cloudy sky, as I am now, and wondered why God made the clouds?

They obviously give rain to the earth, watering it and providing for His creatures that He made.

But why did He specifically choose clouds to do this? Why not some other way? Why make a world so dependent on water to begin with?

One thing is clear, God has an imagination that is beyond compare. Clouds were His idea. He didn’t see something like a cloud and think to Himself, “Oh, that’s good! I’ll use that in my world.”

No, He just popped it into existence from nothing but pure imagination.

Besides His imagination, I also notice that God built the world in such a way that parts of His creation care for other parts. The clouds give rain. The sun gives light. Both are required for plants to grow. Plants produce oxygen for humans to breath and are food for them to eat.

Humans take care of everything really. God made us to be able to do that. And through all this God is pleased. He likes it when His creatures share in His work of tending His world.

Information Points To God

Posted on by Michael Wine

The fact that there is information in the universe indicates that there is a source for that information.

No one, in their right mind, would look at a primitive cave drawing and conclude anything other than that drawing was done by a person with intelligence.

In the same way, no one decides that a page of computer code wrote itself, without the involvement of a programmer.

And yet, when people consider the DNA code of a human being (though it is far more complex than any cave drawing or computer code in existence), they seem to think it evolved; that there was no creator who sourced that information.

“Biology is different than machinery.”

“Mechanical processes are obviously designed, but biological ones are not.”

While it is undoubtedly convenient for people who wish to ignore a creator God to use such hand waving assertions, they are far from convincing.

The fact is that information, which is immaterial, cannot fit within a materialist world view that says matter, time and space are all that is. Information has to come from someone with the information. Information has to come from a conscious being. It has to come from God.

But perhaps, some might say, the information we perceive is actually “read into” the physical world by our brains. Meaning we are the ones seeing information and interpreting it from the physical world. We are both the source of and the receivers of the information.

But how could we find real, meaningful, ordered information in the universe without it already existing there prior to our discovery of it? And how could it already exist without our involvement, unless God created it?

Even if this argument made sense, which it doesn’t, how would the material universe produce (through a random physical process of evolution) a human brain capable of interpreting information that doesn’t exist yet, because there is no brain capable of seeing it?

You see, this doesn’t solve the problem of where the information came from. It simply kicks the can down the road. The information is not in the universe, its in our heads (which are parts of the physical universe… shhh!). And yet we still don’t know where it came from. Such a fantastical tale is better suited to Marvel comics than science books.

God did it again!

Posted on by Michael Wine

Another day! The sun came up. I can hear the birds outside. It looking like an especially beautiful one today. The sky is bright and blue. The morning air is cool.

How glorious is our God, who causes the sun to rise, and fly across the sky each day? What a wonderous world He has made for us to live in.

The heavens declare the glory of God;
    the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
 Day after day they pour forth speech;
    night after night they reveal knowledge.
 They have no speech, they use no words;
    no sound is heard from them.
 Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
    their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.
It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
    like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
 It rises at one end of the heavens
    and makes its circuit to the other;
    nothing is deprived of its warmth.

Psalm 19:1-6

Ours is a sleeping world.

Posted on by Michael Wine

Sleep is so strange. Why is it that we need to be unconscious every day in order to function when we are conscious?

Being awake is inherently stressful. Our daily activities demand resources from our bodies that we can’t pay continuously.

There is so much variety in God’s creatures; birds that fly, horses that gallop and run, giant elephants and swimming fish. Among humans there is staggering variety in culture, language, and appearance.

But we all need sleep. We cannot continue living the stressful, wonderful life we have without paying the price of sleep. It is a universal activity among living creatures.

The Bible talks about sleep as God’s gift in Psalm 127:2: It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.

It is vain because the work we do while on a sleep deficit is low quality. Sleep actually makes our work more productive and better. God gives it to us to help us, not hinder us.

Why didn’t God just make us to not need sleep?

I have heard people ask this. But the question is a little strange when you think about it. Why did God make day, a time to work and see what we do and be productive, and night, a time to sleep? Why did God make food to replenish our bodies and give us energy? Why did he make beautiful sunsets and trees and the sky?

All of these things fit together and are connected as part of God’s creation. God could have made us sleepless, but then he wouldn’t have made us. He would have made something completely different. But God made this world not a different one (that we know of). And this world is a sleeping world, at least half of the time. And it is good.

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. Genesis 1:31

Evil and the Sky are Alike

Posted on by Michael Wine

In an earlier post I said, “…if God is all-merciful, how can evil not exist? For if there was no evil in the world, God would not be able to show mercy, and therefore not be Himself. He would not be God at all.”

Is this actually true? Someone responded and told me that the above could be clarified to be more accurate in the following way: God would not be able to show Himself to be merciful without the existence of evil. He would still be God, still be Himself. But His mercy would not be on display.

After thinking about this I believe it is correct and a good clarification to make. After all, God has existed for all eternity past. It is hard to imagine God existing in some sense ‘before’ time itself. This is because the very word ‘before’ cannot be used in the normal temporal sense.

However, the fact remains that for all eternity, God is. And for all eternity, God is merciful in His nature, even without a physically instantiated creation capable of doing evil and receiving mercy. Therefore, God would still be the merciful God that He is without the existence of evil in the world.

But here is the key: God did create the world. Why?

That question is far to large for me to fully answer. But by reading the Bible from a big picture perspective, and as argued by great Christian thinkers such as Jonathan Edwards, John Piper, and the writers of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, we see that the reason God created was to display His glory. In other words, it was to reveal Himself for who He really is, in all His glory.

Take, for example, Psalm 19:1 – “”The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands….” Creation declares His glory. That is why (albeit extremely oversimplified) He made the world.

So why does evil exist in the creation that God made? For the same reason as the sky. They both exist to magnify God, to display who He really is. Without evil, God could not display the wrath that he has toward sin. And, to get back to my original point from Romans 11:32, He could not display His mercy.

If God did not allow evil to exist in the world, it would go against His own purpose for creating anything! And that is something God cannot do.

The vine dresser.

Posted on by Michael Wine

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine dresser. John 15:1

When last we looked at this verse, we considered how Jesus called Himself the True Vine.

Jesus goes on to call His Father, the ‘vine dresser.’

Vine dressers tend to the vine. They prune it, care for it, train it. They are the ones who have a plan for the vine. While the work of life and fruit production are done by the vine directly, the vinedresser is alway there. Without him, there would be no vine.

It is fascinating to ponder the relationship between Jesus and God the Father in terms of the relationship between a plant, and its gardener.

Like any analogy or metaphor, there is a point to the comparison. So what is the point here?

First of all, the point of having a garden, or a vine to tend, is to produce fruit. The method for producing fruit is the vine. The vine, then, is the point. Without the vine, there is no garden at all. Jesus, then, is the main thing. He is key, the master plan. Everything focuses on Him.

The vinedresser, or gardener, is the one who plans the garden, plants the vine, desires the fruit, works to make it happen. The gardener wills the garden to be.

Jesus is the plan. The Father is the planner. Jesus is the work. The Father is the will. Jesus is the Word spoken. The Father is the Word speaker.

For me, as I consider this dynamic, I suddenly realize that I am breathing. I’m alive today. And so are you. Which means, we are somehow part of the plan.

If God the Father did not want us to be here we would not. He is in control, always tending the Vine, always bringing about His master plan. And we are included, for better or worse.