Sermon Illustrations on Creator — page 2

Who Can Fix Us?

In the early days of the automobile a man’s Model-T Ford stalled in the middle of the road. He couldn’t get it started no matter how hard he cranked nor how much he tried to advance the spark or adjust things under the hood.

Just then a chauffeured limousine pulled up behind him, and a wiry, energetic man stepped out from the back seat and offered his assistance. After tinkering for a few moments the stranger said, “Now try it!”

Immediately the engine leaped to life. The well-dressed individual then identified himself as Henry Ford. “I designed and built these cars,” he said, “so I know what to do when something goes wrong.”

God, as our creator knows how to “fix” us when our lives are broken by sin.

He Can Make Us What We Should Be

John 1:42

When Jesus decided to change Peter’s name in John 1:42, it demonstrated how Jesus looks at men. He does not only see what a man is; he also sees what a man can become. He sees not only the actualities in a man; he also sees the possibilities. Jesus looked at Peter and saw in him not only a Galilaean fisherman but one who had it in him to become the rock on which his church would be built. Jesus sees us not only as we are, but as we can be; and he says: “Give your life to me, and I will make you what you have it in you to be.”

Once someone came on Michelangelo chipping away with his chisel at a huge shapeless piece of rock. He asked the sculptor what he was doing. “I am releasing the angel imprisoned in this marble,” he answered. Jesus is the one who sees and can release the hidden hero in every man.

Hawking, The Cosmos and Its Creator

Job 38:2

Stephen Hawking, perhaps the most famous scientific intellect since Albert Einstein, died March 14 at age 76 -- more than 50 years beyond his life expectancy.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s Disease, tormented Hawking’s body from the time it was diagnosed when he was a 21-year-old graduate research scholar at Cambridge University in England. It eventually chained him to a wheelchair, increasingly motionless and later speechless without the use of a voice synthesizer.

But ALS never imprisoned Hawking’s insatiably curious mind, which roamed freely across the universe from his perch at Cambridge, where he became Lucasian Professor of Mathematics -- a chair once held by his great intellectual predecessor, Sir Isaac Newton, who first explained the principles of gravity.

His courage and persistence in the face of physical obstacles especially inspired me over the years. As a young man, I helped care for my grandmother after she was afflicted with ALS. She progressively lost the use of all her muscles until she could communicate only by blinking her eyes. She died within three years of her diagnosis.

As an astrophysicist and cosmologist, Hawking relentlessly searched for a “unified theory of everything” -- that is, a way to explain the differences between big-picture astrophysics and Einstein’s theory of relativity on the one hand and tiny-picture particle physics and quantum mechanics on the other. Such a resolution, he contended, would help us understand how the laws of physics govern not only galaxies, stars and planets but subatomic particles.

“A complete, consistent unified theory is only our first step: Our goal is a complete understanding of the events around us, and of our own existence,” he declared in “A Brief History of Time,” his renowned 1988 book. It sold more than 10 million copies worldwide and helped explain such complex topics as black holes and gravity to the masses.

Hawking seemed to relish his fame and celebrity almost as much as his scientific pursuits. He traveled and lectured worldwide, traded wisecracks with talk-show hosts and appeared as himself on “Star Trek; The Next Generation,” “The Simpsons” and “The Big Bang Theory.” Several films dramatized his own life, including the “The Theory of Everything,” which won Eddie Redmayne an Oscar for his portrayal of Hawking.

But unlike some celebrity scientists who embrace celebrity more than science, Hawking was the real thing. He made major contributions to theoretical physics over a half-century of work.

Hawking never quite achieved his “theory of everything,” or an adequate explanation of the origin of the universe, and he acknowledged in later years that it might not be achievable. However, he wrote: “If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason -- for then we would know the mind of God.”

An interesting statement, since Hawking rejected the existence of a personal God.

“God is the name people give to the reason we are here,” he said in an interview. “But I think that reason is the laws of physics rather than someone with whom one can have a personal relationship. An impersonal God.”

On another occasion, he said, “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”

Lest anyone doubt his non-religious views, he clarified them in a later observation on his “mind of God” comment:

“Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe. But now science offers a more convincing explanation. What I meant by ‘we would know the mind of God’ is, we would know everything that God would know, if there were a God, which there isn’t. I’m an atheist.”

Hawking, then, represented the consensus view of modern science, which sees itself as the successor to religious faith, since science supposedly sheds the bright light of reason on things only faith could explain in earlier times. He saw himself as one of the new priests of reason, having dethroned the old priests of faith and superstition.

That view saddens me, coming from such an inspiring figure. A creator was unnecessary to creation, Hawking concluded, since the universe might have had no beginning at all. Speculating about what came before the universe for him was like speculating about what is north of the North Pole. The universe is a closed system. Closed, but possibly without beginning or end.

That contradictory view requires more faith than Christianity. The shepherd king David’s awe at the vastness of the universe -- and worship of the one who created it -- stirred him to declare to the Creator in Psalm 8 that He made man “a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.... O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

Stephen Hawking, like every man and woman at the close of life, is now discovering which view is correct.

Who Owns the World?

World ownership, as Frederick F. Shannon observes, is a matter of spiritual capacity. The true owner of the world is the soul capable of appreciating it. Individual response to the eternal love and wisdom is owning it.

As an illustration, consider a magnificent organ. Who owns it - the person who made it or the one who paid for it? The organist himself? In reality the person who holds an indisputable title-deed to that organ is the man most capable of enjoying the music.

As Shannon says, "God leases the universe to all who can pay for it by the invisible coin of appreciation. Deity hangs a sign in the window of every star, on the leaf of every tree, on the face of every flower, on the peaks of history, on the souls of immortal men and women - and that sign reads: 'For Rent!' The only rental fee is the capacity to enjoy."

Who Owns the World?

World ownership, as Frederick F. Shannon observes, is a matter of spiritual capacity. The true owner of the world is the soul capable of appreciating it. Individual response to the eternal love and wisdom is owning it.

As an illustration, consider a magnificent organ. Who owns it - the person who made it or the one who paid for it? The organist himself? In reality the person who holds an indisputable title-deed to that organ is the man most capable of enjoying the music.

As Shannon says, "God leases the universe to all who can pay for it by the invisible coin of appreciation. Deity hangs a sign in the window of every star, on the leaf of every tree, on the face of every flower, on the peaks of history, on the souls of immortal men and women - and that sign reads: 'For Rent!' The only rental fee is the capacity to enjoy."

A Doctor's Testimony

Here is the testimony of a medical doctor: "In an anatomy room, a dead body meant nothing to me. I could not visualize the man or woman it might have been. Life left few records on the immobile face. For weeks I worked, and each day the wonder grew. Then one day I was working on an arm and hand, studying the perfect mechanical arrangements of the muscles and tendons, how the sheaths of certain muscles are split to let tendons of other muscles through, so that the hand may be delicate, small and yet powerful. I was all alone in the laboratory when the overwhelming belief came: a thing like this is not just chance but a part of a plan, a plan so big that only God could have conceived it. Religion had been to me a matter of form, a thing without conviction, but now everything was an evidence of God-the tendons of the hand, the patterns of the little butterfly's wings-all are a part of God's wonderful design."

The Wonderful Recreation

John Ruskin was walking along the streets of London one rainy day when he noticed the great quantities of mud at his feet. The thought occurred to him that it would be interesting to have the mud analyzed to find out exactly what inorganic elements were in it. This was accordingly done, and it was found that London mud consisted of sand, clay, soot, and water. He was struck by the fact that these are the very substances from which our precious jewels and gems are formed.

>From the sand come the onyx, agate, beryl, jasper, amethyst; from the clay come the sapphire, ruby, emerald, topaz; and from the soot, the diamond. London mud composed of precious jewels! Man cannot transform the mud into those glittering points of light, but God transforms and recreates the mud-poor, sinful, wayward humanity-into redeemed souls who sing a new song and carry with them glad tidings of great joy!

Who Made You?

"Who made you?" someone once asked a little girl. She replied, "God made me that much," indicating with her two hands the ordinary size of a newborn infant, "and I growed the rest myself." The little girl said this in her simplicity. Profound thinking must surely lead us to the same conclusion-that God made us for He made all things. But we may be tempted to think that we have done a great deal ourselves, not acknowledging even God's providential care.

Not Mere Chance

To think is to grow in awareness. Think as you look at a flower, a sunset or gaze at the starry sky. Someone has said that the unbelieving astronomer is mad. "What do you see?" a friend asked a famous botanist who was scrutinizing a flower. "I see God," was the reverent answer. A Scottish doctor wrote with his finger in the garden soil the letters of his little son's name, sowed cress in the furrows, and smoothed the ground. Ten days later, his son ran to him in astonishment and said that his name was growing in the garden and insisted on his father seeing it. "Is it not a mere chance?" asked the father. "No, someone must have arranged it that way." "Look at yourself," said the doctor. "Consider your hands, finger, legs, feet; did you come here by chance?" "No, something must have made me." "And who is that something?" As he did not know, the father told him the name of the great God who had made him and all the world. He never forgot that lesson.

A Radical Plastic Surgeon Wants To Give You Wings

Job 11:7

"Plastic surgery changes the soul." - Joe Rosen

Joe Rosen is a world-famous plastic surgeon, and an odd man. His specialty doesn't get much respect but in 2000 more than 1.3 million people had cosmetic surgery by certified surgeons, an increase of 227 percent since 1992 (these numbers do not include medically necessary or reconstructive surgeries.) The number of men receiving nose jobs has increased 141 percent since 1997. These figures alone point to the tremendous popularity and increasing acceptance of body alteration, and suggest that the slippery slope from something as bizarre as eyelid tucks to something more bizarre, like wings, may be shorter than we think.

Human wings is precisely what Rosen wants to create. He has already been asked to turn a man into a lizard. He says, "I don't have any problem with altering the human form. We do it all the time. It is only our Judeo-Christian conservatism that makes us think this is wrong. Who doesn't try to send their children to the best schools, in the hopes of altering them? Who objects to a Palm Pilot, a thing we clasp to our bodies, with which we receive rapid electronic signals? Who doesn't surround themselves with a metal shell and travel at death-defying speeds? We have always altered ourselves, for beauty or for power, and so long as we are not causing harm what makes us think we should stop? ... Why do we only value the average? Why are plastic surgeons dedicated only to restoring our current notions of the conventional, as opposed to letting people explore, if they want, what the possibilities are? ... Human flesh is infinitely malleable. People say cosmetic surgery is frivolous - boobs and noses. But it's so much more than that! The body is a conduit for the soul, at least historically speaking. When you change what you look like, you change who you are."

Socialite Jocelyne Wildenstein has dedicated much of her life to turning herself into a cat, via plastic surgery. She has had her lips enlarged and her face pulled back at the eyes to simulate a feline appearance. Is she a freak or the cutting edge of the future?

Carl Elliott, a bioethicist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, recently wrote in THE ATLANTIC about a strange new "trend" of perfectly healthy folks who desire nothing more than to have a limb amputated, and about the British doctor who has undertaken this surgery, believing that if he doesn't amputate the patients will do it themselves, which could lead to gangrene. Elliott wonders whether amputation obsession will morph into another psychiatric diagnosis, whether, like hysteria, it will "catch on." The metaphor of contagion is an interesting one. Multiple-personality disorder "caught on"; hysteria caught on. Why then might not an unquenchable desire for wings or fins catch on, too?

Lauren Slater tries to ascertain clearly, logically, what so bothers people about Rosen's ideas. At first glance, it might seem fairly obvious. For crying out loud, wings. That's playing God. We should not play God. We should not reach for the stars. Myth after myth has shown us the dangers of doing so - Icarus, the Tower of Babel; absolute power corrupts absolutely. Bill Joy, chief scientist at Sun Microsystems, says, as our technological capabilities expand, "a sequence of small, individually sensible advances leads to an accumulation of great power, and concomitantly, great danger." Rosen's response to this: "So are we supposed to stop advancing? And who says it's bad to play God? We already alter the course of God's 'will' in hundreds of ways. When we use antibiotics to combat the flu, when we figure out a way to wipe smallpox off the very face of the earth, surely we're altering the natural course of things. Who says the natural course of things is even right? Maybe God isn't good."

Another objection has to do with the idea of proteanism. Proteus, a minor mythological figure, could shape-shift at will, being alternately a tiger, a lizard, a fire, a flood. Robert Lifton has explored how Proteus has become a symbol for human beings in our time. Lacking traditions, supportive institutions, a set of historically rooted symbols, we have lost any sense of coherence and connection. Today it is not uncommon for a human being to shift belief systems several times in a lifetime, and with relatively little psychological discomfort. We move on. We remarry. Our protean abilities clearly have their upsides. We are flexible and creative. But the downside is, there is no psychic stability, no substantive self, nothing really meaty and authentic. We sense this about ourselves. We know we are superficial, all breadth and no depth. Rosen's work embodies this tendency, literally. He desires to make incarnate the identity diffusion so common to our culture. Rosen is in our face making us face up to the fact that the inner and outer connections have crumbled. In our ability to be everything, are we also nothing?

Over and over again, from the Middle Ages on, when the theologian Pico wrote, in a direct and influential challenge to the Platonic idea of essential forms - "We have given you, Adam, no visage proper to yourself, nor endowment properly your own ... trace for yourself the lineaments of your own nature ... in order that you, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer.... [W]ho then will not look with awe upon this our chameleon..." - over and over, since those words at least, we as human beings have fretted about the question of whether there is anything fixed at our core, any set of unalterable traits that make us who we were and are and always will be.

Lifton writes, "Until relatively recently, no more than a single major ideological shift was likely to occur in a lifetime, and that one would be long remembered for its conflict and soul searching. But today it is not unusual for several such shifts to take place within a year or even a month, whether in the realm of politics, religion, aesthetic values, personal relationships. ... Quite rare is the man or woman who has gone through life holding firmly to a single ideological vision. More usual is a tendency toward ideological fragments, bits and pieces of belief systems that allow for shifts, revisions, and recombination."

What Lifton has observed in the psyche Rosen wants to make manifest in the body. When Slater asked Rosen, "So, do you believe we are just in essence protean, that there is nothing fundamental, or core, to being human?" He said, "Lauren, I am a scientist. My original interests were in nerves. The answer to your question may lie in how our nervous systems operate." Human beings have limb maps in their brains. When a person loses a limb - say, the right arm - this portion of the neural map fades away. Similarly, when we gain a limb, the brain almost immediately senses it and goes about hooking it up via neural representation. Rosen explains, "If I were to attach a third thumb, your brain would map it. Our bodies change our brains, and our brains are infinitely moldable. If I were to give you wings, you would develop, literally, a winged brain." Plastic surgery changes the soul. To the extent that we believe our souls are part of our brains, Rosen is right.

Slater once read that a fetus does not scar. Fetal skin repairs itself seamlessly, evidence of damage sinking back into blackness. Plastic surgery, for all its incredible advances, has not yet been able to figure out how to replicate this mysterious fetal ability in the full-born human. Plastic surgery can give us wings and maybe even let us sing like loons, but it cannot stop scarring. This is oddly comforting to her.

__________________

Comment by Jeff Champlin in "A Winged Brain":

Beyond praising the beauty that emerges in the place of lost ideals, Rosen asserts the importance of creating beauty, of sculpting new life forms. His dream of winged humans embodies a new potentiality, a new hope for the creation of a humanity that values the diversity of life to such an extent that it wishes even to increase the variety and multiply the complexity of this diversity.

==================

From "News of the Weird" by Chuck Shepherd, Dec. 5, 2004:

Eccentric British rock musician Genesis P-Orridge (born Neil Megson) and his wife Lady Jaye Breyer are gradually transforming themselves surgically into gender-neutral human beings (“pandrogynous”) resembling each other, so that eventually they will be indistinguishable, to demonstrate how overrated gender is as a point of reference. (For example, he wore a lace dress at their wedding, and she dressed as a biker guy, with moustache, and for Valentine's Day 2003, each got breast implants.) P-Orridge told SF Weekly in October that their goal is to jointly become a third person, distinct from either of them.

Nobody Made It?

Psalms 14:1

Many years ago Sir Isaac Newton had an exact replica of our solar system made in miniature. At its center was a large golden ball representing the sun, and revolving around it were small spheres attached at the ends of rods of varying lengths. They represented Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and the other planets. These were all geared together by cogs and belts to make them move around the “sun” in perfect harmony.

One day as Newton was studying the model, a friend who did not believe in the biblical account of creation stopped by for a visit. Marveling at the device and watching as the scientist made the heavenly bodies move on their orbits, the man exclaimed, “My, Newton, what an exquisite thing! Who made it for you?”

Without looking up, Sir Isaac replied, “Nobody.”

“Nobody?” his friend asked.

“That’s right! I said nobody! All of these balls and cogs and belts and gears just happened to come together, and wonder of wonders, by chance they began revolving in their set orbits and with perfect timing.”

The unbeliever got the message! It was foolish to suppose that the model merely happened. But it was even more senseless to accept the theory that the earth and the vast universe came into being by chance. How much more logical to believe what the Bible says, “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” The Word also declares, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” (Ps. 14:1)

It Just Happened

The noted agnostic, Col. Robert Ingersol, during a visit with Henry Ward Beecher, noted a beautiful globe protraying the constellations and stars of the heavens. "This is just what I'm looking for," he said after examining it. "Who made it?"

"Who made it?" repeated Beecher in simulated astonishment. "Why Colonel, nobody made it, it just happened."

Birds Pointed Him To the Creator

Andrew Jackson Grayson was caught drawing birds instead of doing his lessons, so his schoolmaster walloped him over the head. Young Grayson in turn broke his slate over the schoolmaster's head and was forbidden by his father to draw birds again. He obeyed for 20 years. In 1853, at the age of 35, he resumed drawing. He wanted to study and paint all the birds of the Pacific coast and publish them in a grand portfolio. So he began to collect and paint all the birds with which he came into contact as he moved from St. Louis to the West Coast, where he died from yellow fever in 1869 without having seen his paintings published.

So what sustained this illustrator who did not receive recognition while he was alive? Grayson had commented that, when his spirits became darkest, “Something comes in like a bird with glad tidings whose melody often... has given me a greater love for my creator whose works shine forth in all things... so beautiful and mysterious.”

________

Joseph Kastner, “When Everything Became 'Too Tame In His Native Land'," SMITHSONIAN, May 1988.

Great Things … From His Hand

Psalms 19:1

The heavens declare the glory of God ; and the firmament showeth his handiwork. —PSALM 19:1

Love is the only

Atmosphere

In which creation sings;

When love abounds

Contentment reigns

And God can do great things. — CHARLES RICHARD HOLBERT (Neenah, Wisconsin)

There is a story told of Alexander the Great. A general in the army, being a great favorite with him, was told to draw anything from the treasury that he wanted. The general accordingly presented a draft to Alexander’s treasurer. It was for such an enormous amount that the treasurer was astonished, and refused to allow it.

The general went rushing back to Alexander and told him what had happened. The emperor thereupon summoned his treasurer and said to him, “Didn’t I tell you to honor the draft of the general?”

“Yes,” replied the treasurer, “but do you understand its amount ?”

“Never mind what it is,” replied Alexander, “he honors me and my empire by making such a great draft.”

So we honor God by asking for Grace in abundance. I tell you, my friends, it is a pity there are so many half-starved, mean Christians around when God says, “Come and get all you want.” — DWIGHT L. MOODY

To God be the glory great things he hath done,

So loved he the world that he gave us his Son,

Who yielded his life an atonement for sin,

And opened the Life-gate that all may go in.

Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Let the earth hear his voice;

Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Let the people rejoice.

O come to the Father through Jesus the Son,

And give him the glory great things he hath done. — FANNY JANE CROSBY © W. H. Doane

The Lamb shall overcome them : for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings : and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful. — REVELATION 17:14

His Grace is sufficient. What comfort to place My weakness in Jesus! What strength in his face! What mighty resources Have those who embrace His gift: free, redeeming, Unmerited Grace! — DIANA MARTIN (Wellington, New Zealand)

O Heavenly Father, who hast filled the world with beauty: Open, we beseech Thee, our eyes to behold Thy gracious hand in all Thy works; that, rejoicing in Thy whole creation, we may learn to serve Thee with gladness; for the sake of him by whom all things were made, Thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. — BOOK OF COMMON WORSHIP

The Christian Worldview As Master Narrative: Creation

John 1:3

One of the hallmarks of the postmodern age is, as one of its main theorists has explained, “incredulity toward metanarratives.” This reflects the postmodern suspicion of any master explanation of world reality and human experience. But, from beginning to end, biblical Christianity is a master narrative. Biblical Christianity is not only a faith that involves essential truths; it is the story of God’s purpose to redeem humanity and to bring glory to himself. This narrative is revealed to us as a comprehensive master story that is as vast as the cosmos and so detailed as to include every atom and molecule of creation.

Even as the postmodern age has rejected the metanarrative, most postmodern thinkers accept the fact that human existence is essentially narrative in terms of our consciousness. This is an important insight, for it is impossible to give an account of our individual lives without using the structure of a story. The postmodern resistance to a master narrative is the fear that such a story would be inherently repressive. But the Christian gospel is the most liberating narrative ever heard and the Bible presents the story, not merely as one account of reality to be put alongside others, but as the one definitive account of God’s purposes.

Indeed, the Christian gospel is the story to which all other narratives are accountable. The Scripture narrates the story in the unfolding of God’s plan and purposes. The very God who reveals himself as sovereign and holy — the only true God — is the God who has generously shared the knowledge of himself and his purposes with his sinful creatures.

Creation — The Beginning of the Story

Every worldview and metanarrative has a beginning. Without exception, every worldview must give an account of how the cosmos came into being and must answer the question of its meaning. The very existence of the cosmos requires an answer to this question, and this answer determines so much of what follows in the narrative.

The Bible begins with the declaration that “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). The doctrine of creation forms the starting point for our understanding of the cosmos and our place within it. The Bible’s straightforward explanation for the existence of all things is traced to God’s own intention to create the cosmos as the theater of his own glory. The Bible rejects all forms of dualism or polytheism, leaving the God of the Bible as the sole explanatory principle of the universe. Nothing that exists does so outside of his sovereignty and intention. The God of the Bible creates ex nihilo (out of nothing) and is not dependent upon any preexistent matter or conditioned by any external force.

As Creator, God takes responsibility for his creation. Furthermore, the Creator remains directly involved with his creation, ruling over all times, places, and authorities. He exercises his rule through a scrupulous providence that includes, as Jesus made clear, even the birds of the air and the lilies of the field (Matt. 6:26, 28).

The Bible also makes clear that the Creator is pleased with his creation. Having created all that exists, he declared his creation to be good. This verdict on creation is a refutation of any worldview that denies the goodness of creation or slanders the material world as unholy. At the same time, the Bible condemns any worship of nature as an end in itself.

The creation of human beings is the climax of the creation narrative. Having created everything else that exists, God crowned his creation when he created human beings as the singular creature made in his own image (Gen. 1:26-27). The Bible clearly and unambiguously reveals that human beings are special creatures — the only creatures made in the image of God. Even as we face contemporary efforts to dethrone humanity from a position of privilege within creation, the Bible makes clear that human beings are made in God’s image precisely so that we, alone within all creation, may consciously know and glorify God. Therefore the human creature is given the ability to fabricate and to manipulate the material world. God gave human beings the ability to till the soil, reap a harvest, and bring the earth under dominion. At the same time, God invested human beings with a crucial stewardship in our responsibility to use, enjoy, and care for creation as a matter of essential stewardship.

The Bible also reveals that gender is a part of the goodness of God’s creation. God made his human creatures as male and female and invested these creatures with responsibility to enjoy his guests and to reproduce within the context of marriage (Gen. 1:27-28). Marriage, too, is part of the goodness of God’s creation. While other creatures merely mate, humans are called to enter into a covenant of marriage whereby one man and one woman come together to form a union that is pleasing to God.

The biblical portrait of the creating God demonstrates a God of love whose character issues naturally in his creation. The loving character of God is woven into the warp and woof of his creation and the creatures within it. The substance of the biblical teaching focuses on God’s creation of the universe and all within it by the power of his word. The product of God’s creative activity is a universe of seemingly infinite variety, complexity, and mystery.

Thus, creation is not a brute fact without meaning. It derives its meaning from the divine character and will. As the theater of God’s redemptive activity, creation is not static, but is moving toward that goal established by decree before the foundation of the universe. Without the knowledge of divine creation, we would be left to ourselves in terms of discerning or discovering the very purpose for the existence of the material world and the means by which it came to exist.

All worldviews start with this great question and must give some account of beginnings. The naturalistic worldview insists that this account of beginnings must be comprehensively limited to natural and material causes and effects. Such a worldview runs into direct collision with the worldview of the Bible, for the Bible does not flinch from claiming and explaining that all that exists owes its existence ultimately to God himself (e.g., John 1:3).

One interesting aspect of worldview analysis is the recognition that, for the most part, everything that follows is contained within the account of origins. Once we know that God is the solitary explanation at the beginning, we can be confident that he will be the one who brings this story to a close in a way that brings him no less glory.

________

For background reading, see:

R. Albert Mohler, Jr., “The Glory of God and the Life of the Mind,” Friday, November 11, 2010.

R. Albert Mohler, Jr. “The Knowledge of the Self-Revealing God: Starting Point for the Christian Worldview,” Friday, December 3, 2010.

When Plants Have Rights ... An Idea Gone To Seed [2 Articles]

Worldviews are constantly in motion. New issues arise and new questions present themselves. In one sense, worldviews operate as idea factories, as primary ideas work themselves out into related ideas. The basic framework of convictions that lies at the heart of a worldview always works outward toward implications of those key convictions.

Keep that in mind when you read of developments in Switzerland. As previously reported, Switzerland amended its constitution to require that “the dignity of creation” must be taken into account “when handling animals, plants, and other organisms.” In order to meet this constitutional provision, the Swiss government commissioned the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology and asked that body to produce guidelines. The result was a report that is among the most radical ever adopted by any government. “The Dignity of Living Beings with Regard to Plants” is nothing less than clear evidence of what happens when the Christian worldview is completely eclipsed by secular thought.

At the onset, the Swiss committee admitted that it was operating on the basis of moral intuition. In essence, intuition is all the members had to go on -- which should have been sufficient warning in itself.

In the most important part of the report, the committee identified four alternative worldviews that would lead to very different conclusions. These are:

• THEOCENTRISM -- “The basis for this position is the idea of a God who is creator, and therefore the creative ground of all living organisms. What counts for its own sake is God. All organisms count because of their relationship to God.”

• RATIOCENTRISM -- “In this position the issue of whether beings count for their own sake depends on their (potential) capacity for reason and their capacity for abstract speech.”

• PATHOCENTRISM -- This position is based in the sentience of living organisms. They count morally for their own sake if they are sentient and are therefore able to experience something, in some way, as good or bad.”

• BIOCENTRISM -- “Living organisms should be considered morally for their own sake because they are alive.”

While these four alternative worldviews do not exhaust the possibilities, this outline is very helpful. Even more helpful is the fact that the committee reported on its own mixed commitments. Tellingly, not one member of the committee accepted the Theocentric worldview. The majority chose the biocentric worldview. That fact, taken alone, is sufficient to explain the report. The extension of “rights” to plants, confusing plants with personhood, is the direct implication of the biocentric worldview. If life, defined merely as biosis, is at the center of the worldview, then biosis must be the good that trumps all other goods.

Now, The Wall Street Journal reports that the guidelines set down by the committee are complicating life for scientists. “Unfortunately, we have to take it seriously,” said Beat Keller of the University of Zurich. He was referring to the mandate that scientists take account of a plant’s “dignity” before conducting any experiment.

As the paper reports:

Several years ago, when Christof Sautter, a botanist at

Switzerland’s Federal Institute of Technology, failed to get

permission to do a local field trial on transgenic wheat, he

moved the experiment to the U.S. He’s too embarrassed to mention

the new dignity rule to his American colleagues. “They’ll think

Swiss people are crazy,” he says.

Defenders of the law argue that it reflects a broader,

progressive effort to protect the sanctity of living things.

Last month, Switzerland granted new rights to all “social

animals.” Prospective dog owners must take a four-hour course on

pet care before they can buy a canine companion, while anglers

must learn to catch fish humanely. Fish can’t be kept in

aquariums that are transparent on all sides. The fish need some

shelter. Nor can goldfish be flushed down a toilet to an

inglorious end; they must first be anesthetized with special

chemicals, and then killed.

Respect for creation is, for Christians, based in the worship of the Creator. Despoilers of nature are unfaithful stewards of creation. We are to treat all creation -- and all creatures -- with respect and thankfulness. But, we are not to confuse plants and animals with humans. Humans have rights because human beings are made in the image of God. Plants do not have rights.

The Swiss committee holds that plants have the right to reproduce, and that this is essential to a plant’s dignity. They also held that a plant cannot be “arbitrarily” deprived of its life. Arbitrariness is, as might be guessed, in the eye of the beholder.

Professor Keller of the University of Zurich is embarrassed by this weak-headed thinking. So is Yves Poirier, a molecular biologist at the University of Lausanne. “Where does it stop?,” he asked. “Should we now defend the dignity of microbes and viruses?”

Gautam Naik, the paper’s reporter, asks an obvious question: “For a carrot, is there a more mortifying fate than being peeled, chopped and dropped into boiling water?”

The complications for biological research are real and important enough, but the consequences of this kind of radical thinking will reach far beyond biology.

When the Christian worldview is abandoned, there is no adequate replacement -- nothing that can ground human dignity in anything other than philosophical quicksand. When plants are said to have rights, human rights are automatically undermined. A biocentric worldview is a recipe for disaster, but it is a logical alternative once the Christian worldview is rejected.

Just ask the Swiss what happens when a theocentric worldview is abandoned. Better yet, ask a plant.

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Breakpoint commentary by Charles Colson, Nov. 12, 2008

"The Silence of the Yams -- The Dignity of Plants?"

In the recent movie THE HAPPENING, plants, threatened by the growing human population, release a toxin into the air that causes people to kill themselves. A nursery owner tells the hero that plants can not only “target specific threats,” they can also communicate with each other and coordinate their “defense.”

While THE HAPPENING was panned by audiences and critics, one country appears to have taken the threat from plants seriously enough to sue for peace with the plant kingdom. That’s Switzerland.

How? By enshrining the “dignity” — their word, not mine — of plants in their constitution.

A molecular biologist at the University of Zürich recently sought permission to field test wheat that had been genetically modified to resist a particular kind of fungus. He not only had to prove that the test wouldn’t have unintended environmental consequences, he also had to “debate the finer points of plant dignity with university ethicists.” Then, he had to satisfy government officials that the trial “wouldn’t ‘disturb the vital functions or lifestyle’ of the plants.”

Dignity? Lifestyle? Of plants? Like many a farcical road, this one was paved with good intentions. In the 1990s, Switzerland amended its constitution to require that “account to be taken of the dignity of creation” — Switzerland’s word, not mine — ”when handling animals, plants and other organisms.”

Then, last spring, the parliament asked a panel of “philosophers, lawyers, geneticists and theologians” to determine how this requirement applies to plants. The panel’s report concluded that people do not have “absolute ownership” over plants and that “individual plants have an inherent worth.” Therefore, they concluded, “we may not use them just as we please, even if the plant community is not in danger.”

Plant community?

As ethicist Wesley J. Smith has pointed out, phrases like “plant community” and the “dignity” of plants is evidence that our rejection of the biblical worldview “is driving us crazy.” Having rejected the “unique dignity and moral worth of human beings,” it was logical that “we would come to see fauna and flora as entitled to rights.”

More than that, this shift in worldview, Smith writes, regards “treating people differently from animals simply because they are human beings” as “invidious discrimination.”

Unfortunately, the damage from this worldview isn’t limited to making Alpine countries look silly or creating more paperwork for researchers. While some of the sought-after parity between man and the rest of creation is achieved by raising the status of animals and plants, most of it comes through lowering our status as humans.

That’s where the real danger lies. Research that could help feed countless millions is made more difficult and even impossible because of concerns over plant “dignity.” Even worse, carrying the logic to its conclusion, the sanctity of human life becomes a matter of what you can do, not who you are — that is, someone created in the image of God.

By the end of THE HAPPENING, the threat from the plants creates a renewed appreciation for human life. For once, I wish that life would imitate the movies.

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66 Sermon Illustrations on Creator