Today’s Scripture Reading (August 12, 2016): Psalm 136
William Paley, living in the late eighteenth century, argued that the complexity and interdependence of the design of our world, at the very least, hints that there must have been a designer. Paley used the example of a watch. If you had never seen a watch before and you found one laying on the ground, you would not assume that the watch was an accident of the universe. Your first assumption would be that somewhere there must live a watchmaker. The idea was called “The Watchmaker God,” and ever since Paley postulated the idea it has had both its fans and detractors who have come from both inside and outside of our religious circles. The idea of a Watchmaker God became an explanation of God for Deists. Deists see the evidence of God in creation, but don’t necessarily agree with the idea of a personal God who look down and cares for us. Nature proves that there is a God, but he is a Watchmaker God who, as soon as he was finished with creation, walked away and never gave us a second thought – just like a watchmaker creating a watch. When the watchmaker finishes with his creation, he sells it and never sees the fruit of his creation ever again.
Christians who believe in a personal God normally rebel against the idea of a Watchmaker God. Their argument is that God did not walk away. That there is a revelation of God found in the Bible and in Jesus Christ and in the way that the Holy Spirit interacts with us on a daily basis. A Deist rejects all but natural (or nature’s) revelation. But I have wondered if there might be a middle ground between the two beliefs.
I have argued that the Big Bang theory (not the television show) is one of the best friends of creationists. In the Big Bang, we find everything that we believe. The Big Bang says that there was a time when all that existed of this universe was a cosmic filament. All of the universe had been reduced to this one small area. And then something happened – the Big Bang. In a fraction of a second, all that is was created – and created out of nothing - all of the building blocks for the galaxies and the planets and life was present in the Big Bang. The Universe started to expand and continues expanding today.
On our planet, life developed. First microbial life, and then simple cells and plants, followed by fish and birds and reptiles and animals that walk on the ground. Finally, man shows up. Up until this last moment, a Watchmaker God or a Prime mover is all that is needed for our universe to operate. The expertise and the understanding of the Watchmaker are all that is necessary to produce what the Bible calls the first five and a half days of creation. God could have been the Prime Mover who started the process and then sat back to watch the fireworks.
But in creating man and giving him free will, the work of the Watchmaker God ends. Now, what is needed is a personal God who walks in the garden with his creation. Nature testifies to his existence, but only to a certain level. After that, we need more specific revelation; the kind of revelation that we find in the pages of the Bible and in the life of Jesus Christ.
But what cannot be denied is that we serve a God who understands the working of the heavens and exactly how they were created. But he is not a God that through this understanding created and left. He is also the God who loves and sent his Son into creation to redeem it and save it, and it is the love of this God that endures forever.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 2 Chronicles 8
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