2.10.21

Finding God In A Grain Of Sand

Warrior Camp Apologetics Training (WCAT)

Ever wonder what would happen if you and I had less and cherished more? If a fish had experience in a puddle, would it better appreciate the ocean? I’m not advocating self-imposed poverty. I’m just curious if, like the spoiled child, our abundance, far from guaranteeing our joy, may opportune a threat to it, if the compass of our internal gratitude and ability to appreciate, doesn’t already point North. And more importantly, how do the dynamics of abundance and scarcity affect our view of God and our recognition of His reality in this world? Netflix offers video on demand. Walmart offers grocery pickup. And Amazon has made free 2 day shipping seem as constant as the Law of Gravity. I’m not complaining or faulting their hard won achievements. (I’m grateful for them, and give them a high 5 for their creative and impressive success!) I’m just suspicious of what happens inside of me when expectation is over-inflated, runs wild, and appreciation becomes less.

Appreciation is not something we’re born with. It’s cultivated, and doesn’t come naturally. You have to train it. Fight for it, and doing so somehow goes against some grain down inside of us. We’re not born grateful. Spend any time with children, and you’ll quickly discover little Johnny kicking his truck to the curb so he can fight over Sam’s play dough. Then, literally moments later, when Sam has lost the tug-o-war, overcome his tears, and is now distracted in playing with the truck, Johnny finds that the play dough has instantly and almost magically lost its luster. He wants his truck back, and heads will roll if necessary. Our propensity to value what we have and demand what we don’t, are both flawed from birth, and in need of retraining. Is the evidence for God in our world so abundant, so surrounding, prevalent and pervasive, that we have become acclimated to it, taken it for granted as if it could not possibly be otherwise with or without God, much like the fish takes the ocean for granted, and fails to comprehend that the world in which he swims could have been otherwise? The new atheists (not all atheists) are particularly hostile, and many claim there is no evidence for God’s existence. Really? I’m not into name-calling, but I can’t help but think of the proverbial tone-deaf child who has lost his ability to appreciate his amazing Birthday festivities, because he is profoundly spoiled. Though the gifts are numerous and generous, he will not be satisfied. His sense of appreciation is warped and grossly malignant. Selfish expectation seems to always outpace any possible fulfillment. Appreciation reaches an all time low and expectation reaches an insane high. No gifts can satisfy, however valuable and abundant they may be. Who is at fault? Are the gifts lacking in some way? Or is the child’s ability to recognize and appreciate value at fault? Do modern atheists find themselves in a world so saturated with evidences of God’s existence, that their perspective for discovering God already takes much for granted, and is over-saturated, naive, selfish, clueless, and blind to what surrounds them? The fish can’t truly ‘see’ the ocean’s water all around him, yet his experience would be very different minus the ocean. How easily do we take for granted and fail to truly perceive, comprehend, and appreciate what we have grown accustomed to? Is the new atheist’s vocal disbelief in God a matter of evidence, or a matter of perspective? If the latter, then atheism is not enlightened. Quite the opposite. It is laughable, if not tragic. It is precisely the rich abundance and pervasiveness of God’s fingerprints across the tapestry of creation that risks ‘spoiling’ us. The atheist is as a fish, naively denouncing the gravitas of the ocean in which he swims.

I wonder if our appreciation for the reality of God is not too far removed. As human beings, when our expectations are fulfilled, they tend to pivot, shift, and increase, usually without much scrutiny or accountability. Expectations tend to be unruly, unreasonable, insatiable, and they rarely decline, plateau, or truly enjoy their fulfillment when satisfied. For those who deny the existence of God and demand more and more evidence, do we think they are somehow immune to this same insatiable pathogen? What if their demands say more about their own blindness and insatiable condition, than they do about the evidence for God? Regarding the evidence for God, what if naivete, blindness, and perspective are the problem, and not some lack of evidence? To the naive or blinded, no amount of evidence will suffice. They will not see it, though it surrounds them like the Ocean surrounds a fish. If God is real, then He created the cosmos, and you and I will never know what it is like to live in an atheistic universe. We cannot say, ‘Here is an atheistic galaxy over there, and here is a theistic one here. Note the differentiating qualities between them. See, ours has these unique and identifying qualities, therefore we happen to live in a theistic one.’ There is no remote atheistic corner in the cosmos to which we can compare and discover what the absence of God would be like, and then contrast this with our world and thus criticize the case for theism. There is no part of the cosmos which is ‘God-independent’ that can establish a control, or an empirical baseline for discerning what an atheistic world would look like (if one could exist), and which would then in turn create room for critiquing theism for failure to distinguish itself from this atheistic world. There is no empirical baseline of an atheistic world with which to measure the empirical merit of theism. In the absence of a known control, it is difficult if not impossible to successfully indict theism as neo-atheists love to do. We cannot empirically say, “Here is a sector of the cosmos we know to have originated apart from God, and therefore here is what an atheistic domain looks like. And the rest of the discernible universe is not significantly different from this atheistic domain. Therefore, a universe-creating God does not exist.’ We have no empirical evidence or experience of what such a baseline atheistic domain would look like, even if it could/did exist. We are like the fish in the ocean having one common experience, and not one drop was not created.

(I have premises. We all do and should be honest about them, and it’s hard to have meaningful discussion without at least some basic premises). If the entire cosmos is God’s creation and points to His existence, then we have never experienced and will never know what it’s like to live in a Godless universe. The same sunlight and rain descend upon us all. If baby goldfish could talk, how would one prove to another that their aquarium environment might have been a sewer, or might have never existed at all, apart from the good and creative prowess of their Owner? Can our personified fish fully comprehend some kind of anti-water environment, or not existing? Can they understand living in a sewer when life and swimming in good pure water are all they’ve experienced? Can the neo-atheist have a credible argument against God’s existence while simultaneously having no empirical clue what it would be like to live in a Godless universe?

The evidences for the reality of God abound, and there are no shortage of books, winsome philosophical presentations, research, or examples. On an existential level, the evidence for God can also be found in a sunset, and in the deep feeling you get when you see one. In the profound birth of a newborn baby. At a funeral, when we’re reminded of our gut-level desire for life beyond the grave. In a microscope. Or a telescope. In a song that brings you to tears. Or in the embrace of a loved one during which warmth wells up inside. At the Great Barrier Reef when snorkeling into a living kaleidoscope of shifting vibrant color. On the rim of the Grand Canyon, where people of all languages stand at the precipice in speechless awe. How did all this get here? How did the beauty of nature and the human desire for it, as well as the profundity of the human experience come into being? Why are we so blessed by any of this at all? Why does anything exist? From the microscopic to the massive, do we really need more than this? Are we hard-pressed and experiencing a shortage of evidence for God’s existence? Or does the blame belong to our perspective? Is the evidence truly lacking? Or do we need to remind our sometimes naive, warped and uneducated expectations and re-train them to discover what they likely missed. Namely, that if we pause, take a moment, and honestly look close, we can find God in a single grain of sand.