Be Prepared...to Give an Answerনমুনা

BE PREPARED... TO GIVE AN ANSWER

DAY TWO

The conversation that night was only getting started, and not because I encouraged it.   My friends wanted to dive in deeper, frankly, because they sensed my lack of depth on the subject matter.  They were holding court.   

“So let’s just start from the beginning”, another buddy chimed in.  “If there even was an actual beginning.  Yeah, I know what the Bible says, ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,’ blah, blah, blah.  But how do we even know that the God of the Bible is, as we are told to believe, the Creator of it all, from the Milky Way down to the mosquito?"    

“I just believe it,” I forcefully replied.  

He looked at me as if to say, That’s all ya got?   “So God just out of the blue, or black, or whatever, did all this why…?  So that we could experience war, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime and corruption?  I mean, that’s basically what the history of mankind has given us.  Wow, thanks God.”       

From the sound of it he had plenty of ammunition to fire at me, as where I pretty much had a chamber full of blanks.  I wanted to respond, but just looked at him like a deer in the headlights.  

Life doesn't give us do-overs, but as I look back on that moment, I wish I had one.  Had I known then what I know now I just couldn’t have remained silent.  I don’t think the Spirit within me wouldn’t have allowed it.  

I would have likely shared some relevant verses in scripture with him, but then, that probably would not have been my first go-to, not with these guys..       

No, first, I might have shared this thought-provoking analogy that someone once shared with me:  

“Imagine you are walking through the woods and you find a watch lying on the ground.  What would your first thought be?  That random factors over time just happened to form it and then coughed it up from the ground?  That stray bits of metal chanced to assemble themselves in a way that just happened to be useful?  That springs and cogs and countless other watch parts were just formed with no purpose and then were joined accidentally, eventually forming a fully functioning and accurate instrument that could measure time?  Of course not!  You would have assumed someone had dropped it.  This is because of its obvious design features.  The precision and intentionality of the mechanism betray a purpose, a plan.  There must have been an intelligence who conceived of the watch and its workings and then created it..”  (paraphrased from the William Paley book, Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, 1802)     

And then I might have even shared a scientific fact or two I’d learned along the way about God’s awesome creation, like...

* if the axial tilt of the earth was any greater or lesser, the surface temperatures would be too harsh (hot and cold) to support life as we know it, 

* Or, on a more personal, down to earth level, did you know that human tears of joy and human tears of sadness have two completely different chemical makeups?

* And how about this wild fact?  An individual’s DNA is long enough to extend to the Sun and back six times around. 

And these are just a few of the thousands of scientific FACTS that scream God’s Creation happened with a purpose in mind, a purpose to sustain life on our little planet alone, a purpose with us in mind, giving us the ability to move about and to think and feel and reason and experience beauty in nature and music and thought… and to laugh and to cheer and to love.  Pretty awesome, huh? 

“Think about it,” I would have continued, “We were destined to be born—a miracle in and of itself—at a specific moment in history, at a specific location on this life-sustaining planet (the only one in the Universe of which we are aware) by specific parents who loved us enough to help get us to this very specific point in time where we are here shooting the bull and shooting darts, enjoying God’s creation.. Maybe, just maybe, the purpose of this moment – from before the beginning of time – was this specific discussion that we are having now – about God – and abut why we're even here to begin with..”

“And what would that be?” I'm sure somebody would have asked.      

And I would have smiled and said, “Jesus summed it all up for us:  Our purpose here is  to  love the God who created the Universe and everything in it with all our heart, and with all our soul and with all our mind.  And to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.  I’m thinking if the majority of us did this, there would be far, far less atrocities in the world.”        

And then, I might have shared my story, the story of how I actually knew the Creator on a very personal level, and why I loved Him so much. 

It's too bad this conversation never took place.  It could have been the spark that ignited a spiritual fire in one of those guys.  Since then, though, I've had hundreds of conversations just like it, almost verbatim, and with each one I feel I'm a little better at sharing and/or defending my faith.

If you are where I was fifteen years ago, that's okay!  Today is a great day to start growing in the knowledge of our faith.