It’s the 3am phone call that every parent fears.
We all know about accidents. We’ve all had accidents……more than we care to remember.
Accidents come in many flavors……but the vast majority of them share some things in common. Something good, possibly something beautiful, maybe even something that you will find it hard to live without, is damaged, destroyed, perhaps even killed.
There is the rare instance of serendipity……..the accident that turns out well. But, let’s face it, you don’t get up in the morning hoping that you will have an accident.
Science has codified this into a law…..the law of entropy. This law says that, barring the input of energy, the disorder in a system will increase. I would add that the energy must be applied in an intelligent manner. If you put enough thermal energy into your house, it doesn’t remodel your kitchen…….it burns your house down.
So what do accidents have to do with Christianity?
Absolutely nothing.
But, accidents are central to the other great religion in our culture…….. Darwinian evolution. There are two key tenets of DE:
A random accident causes an improvement in a living organism.
That improvement gives the organism a competitive advantage that then spreads through the entire ecosystem.
In essence, DE teaches that this entire beautiful, incredibly complicated and interconnected planet and every ecosystem in it are the result of a series of trillions upon trillions of sequential, positively adaptive, interconnected yet random accidents. Sort of like putting a box of hampsters on top of a tower, letting them get hit by lightning or cosmic radiation for a long time and expecting to go back and find Angelina Jolie.
There is no other idea in the entire realm of human thought that asks us to believe that random accidents over time lead to the improvement of a system.
And, in our heart, we know this. Accidents destroy, they do not create.
Accidents are, on balance, even after factoring in the rare instances of serendipity, destructive…….they do not improve anything.
To believe that this amazing world is an accident is the same as getting that 3am phone call……..and reacting with joy because you believe that your son’s SAT score will go up because of it.
DE is clothed in a lot of science. It is also built on a stack of theories, many of which do not have a scintilla of hard evidence to support them. We like it because it allows us to believe that we are the ultimate life form……that we only answer to ourselves. And yet, if we honestly consider our experience with accidents……..we must have some doubt.
These two great religions offer you a choice:
You are an accident……and you can do whatever you please.
You are a child of God who loves you….and he has expectations.
Now choose.
By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.
Paul, NIV
“Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
God, NIV
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew a you, before you were born I set you apart”
God, NIV
