since what may
be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For
since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power
and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been
made, so that men are without excuse. Romans
1:19-20
Three facts are
beginning to form in our minds:
1. There ought to be a
God behind, in and through the universe “If there isn’t a God, we would have to
invent one to keep people sane,” said Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a skeptic. Life wouldn’t add up: it would be, in
Shakespeare’s words, “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing.” There must be a
God.
2. This God, if He is
to be good and trustable, must be like Jesus Christ. Our practice of religion must follow the pattern
of Christ, or come to a halt. There is
nothing else on the field. As a Hindu
said to me: “There is no one else seriously bidding for the heart of the world
except Jesus Christ.”
3. If the very nature
of God is Christlike, then we would expect that He acts in a Christlike way,
not only in the revelation of Scripture, but in His creation as well. In other words, when He made all things, He
made them to work in a certain way, and that way would be according to
Christ. If the Way were written only in
the Scriptures, then we might battle over the authority of the Scriptures—their
authorship, their authenticity, their worth.
But suppose the Way is written in the nature of reality as well as the
Scriptures. Then the Way is inescapable
for everybody.
If Jesus is only a
moralist imposing a moral code on humanity, then of course we can question that
code and His authority. But suppose
Jesus is the Revealer of reality’s nature.
That makes Him different. He not
only reveals that nature of God—He reveals the nature of life. The Christian way becomes not a side issue
but the central issue of life.
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