The ideological battle between world-views for Australia’s heart is a spiritual battle. The universe either has meaning, because God made it… or there is no God and we can do what we like. The Christian blogger, Virginia Orton, writes:
The foundation of any worldview is its view of origins. What a person accepts as ultimate will shape everything else. The biblical worldview is grounded in its doctrine of creation, which, in contrast to naturalism’s irrational and indifferent universe, has explanatory power for a world in which rationality and responsibility exist.
In other words: if you don’t get the truths of the opening few chapters of the Bible locked into place, your life will be adrift, untethered to an ultimate grounding for morality, meaning, worth, and hope.
So, let’s take a look at origins—at the very start of the Bible.
Ever since the Christian church was quite young, the leaders of the church have come to understand that the first three chapters of Genesis (which speak about God creating the universe) were written to answer the theological questions of who and why rather than science’s questions of how and when. These chapters teach the fundamental principles upon which the rest of the Bible is based. With peerless prose, they declare:
- in an age of many gods, that there is only one God.
- in an age when people try to worship creation, that all creation is created by God.
- in an age when the gods were thought not to care, that God thought his creation was fantastic and that he seeks a loving relationship with us.
- in an age which fails to explain the reality of evil, that evil is rebellion against God.
- in an age that cannot make sense of suffering, that suffering is the result of humankind going down a path God never intended.
- in an age that feels helpless in the jaws of suffering, that God has not given up on us.
- in an age that despairs of finding justice and which tolerates evil, God declares that he has a zero tolerance to evil and that he will ensure that justice will ultimately prevail.
- in an age that has lost God amongst its religions and philosophies, that God is rescuing his people and his creation back to himself.
This profound teaching at the start of the Bible is the foundation of all that follows. It is the foundation of the love story of God revealing himself to humankind and rescuing us back to himself through Jesus. This is the place where all Christians can unite with pride and joy, and say: ‘This is true.’
The big question is, of course: Is it true for you?
What is it you believe about your “origins?” Why do you exist? Are you a meaningless accident or are you really meant to be here? What evidence is there of you being a meaningless by-product of the absurd belief that everything came from nothing as the result of nothing, via a mechanism that has never been discovered and for which there is no precedent? Or does the extraordinary finely tuned order of the cosmos; its mathematical beauty and its ability to form humanity… indicate purpose?
What is the story of your origin?
What is more likely to be true?
May I suggest that if evidence suggests your are a meaningless accident, then the only course open to you is nihilistic, self-obsession — or, as the apostle Paul put it: “eat drink and be merry for tomorrow you die.”
Alternatively, if the order of the cosmos suggests that there is likely to be a mind behind creation, then I suggest it is incumbent upon you to fit in with the purposes of that mind… particularly as he has declared his love for you in history by dying on a cross for you.
Perhaps it’s time to check out the moral, historical and spiritual truth of Jesus.
