God's Love for man by Daniel Webber

                                                      Nature’s Apocalypse

“When through the woods and forest glades I wander,
and hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees;
when I look down from lofty mountain grandeur,
and hear the brook, and feel the gentle breeze;

Then sings my soul, my Saviour God; to thee,
How great thou art, how great thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God; to thee,
How great thou art, how great thou art!” Hine S, 1899

How is it that we as humans find something so beautiful in nature; from the large mountains, to the sea, to the flowers and everything else fills us with a sense of awe? The hymn writer is bedazzled by its effortless beauty, how at their very own heart, they find comfort and peace whilst in it.  Creatures as small as birds can inspire nations, take for example the United States of America, whose emblem is the bold eagle or Russia whose emblem is the Bear or the United Kingdom who have many national animals such as the Lion and the Welsh Dragon.

After examining the beautiful things in nature the songwriter exclaims how great God is, their soul could not contain the wonder, not just of nature, but of a transcendent mind behind it. Woah woah woah, surely nature says nothing about anything transcendent. Surely, theists force their view upon everyone else, just like trying to convince a friend of the shape of a cloud in the sky. The songwriter suggests that the ‘creation’ reveals the hands of the creator as a watch indicates of a designer. But was the conclusion justified? Does nature really reveal to us the hands of a creator?

Interestingly enough, this same ridiculous claim is found in the bible. “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, [even] his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:  21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified [him] not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.  22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.  24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:  25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.” Romans 1:20-25

The passage says something almost paradoxical, that the “invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen”. ‘GOD’ seems to explain that those things that have been created reveal himself, that no-one who looks at the beauty without presuppositions will exclaim the randomness of this purposeful wonder. The famed atheist Anthony Flew who was at the helm of confronting theism for decades published a book titled ‘There is a God: How the world’s most notorious Atheist changed his mind’ in which he said 

      “My departure from atheism was not occasioned by any new phenomenon or argument. Over the last two decades, my whole framework of thought has been in a state of migration. This was a consequence of my continual assessment of the evidence of nature. When I finally came to realise the existence of a God, it was not a paradigm shift, because my paradigm remains, as Plato in his Republic scripted his Socrates to insist “We must follow the argument wherever it leads.” Flew A, 2009, p89. Flew, like Hines attributed the natural to the supernatural simply through observing nature.

This overwhelming revelation of a creator can be so powerful that it is written that “Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved” Crick F, 1988, p138. This ‘feeling’ must be so inescapable that Biologists are instructed to constantly keep evolution in their minds no matter what intuition tells them. So was God right? Was this a legitimate claim?

Coincidentally, another answer comes to us from the same text in Romans 1v 23,25, which says:

    “23 And changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.…..25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.”  History is littered with the idea of homosapien’s exalting themselves to the place of Deity, whether it be through religions such as in ancient Egypt, where Pharaoh’s ruled as Gods on earth or to what we can consider more ‘spiritual’, meaning, putting ourselves before God and our fellow men because we have a desire to be adored. We see so much wickedness that happens around us, from people being killed, to people being abused and the denying of basic rights as humans we need. A major problem is, is that when we “change the truth of God into a lie” we then have to deny ‘creation’ and are forced accept ‘nature’, and acts of cruelty, reduce down to primal instincts in which we are destined to repeat.

In a book called Steps to Christ, the first Chapter tells us that nature seems to testify of God’s love, the things that have been created have been wonderfully adapted to meet the needs of man and all living creatures; the rain that brings life to the earth through refreshing the lands, the sun that punctures warmth to the most impenetrable of places (White E, 2010).

I believe that there is compelling evidence that reveals to us a creator, but I believe that although he has revealed himself not just through nature but through the bible, history, archaeology, prophecy, there are points in which we can hang our doubt. But there is a point where evidence has to transition to faith and God calls us to search for him and he promises that if we do search for him with our whole heart, we will find him (Jeremiah 29:13).

References:

Crick F, 1988, What mad pursuit: a personal view of science discovery, Penguin Books, London, p138

Hine S, 1899, Seventh-Day Adventist Hymnal, no.86

Flew A, 2009, There is a God: How the world’s most notorious Atheist changed his mind, HarperCollins, USA, p89

White E, 2010, Steps to Christ, Lincolnshire, Stanborough Press Ltd