Anything But God

“And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind…” (Rom.1:28)

Those were his words. “Anything but God.” My biology teacher was trying to give an explanation for the origin of life on planet Earth (3.9 billion years ago, in case you were wondering). Using such words as “could have been,” “seems to have been,” “might have been if,” etc. he offered stories of a “cold little pond,” or conversely, a “hot water environment,” finally admitting that he himself rather leaned toward the idea of amino acids (building blocks of life) delivered to a young Earth on huge meteorites. Finally, having taken all I could of a lecture that should have begun with, “Once upon a time,” I looked him dead in the eye (I sit in the front row, dead center!) and said, “In other words, any wild explanation will do, as long it’s not God.” It was then that this usually calm, California laid-back, professor leaned toward me, menacingly, and hotly shot back, “Yes, anything but God. If that’s what you want me to say, I’ll say it. Anything but God!”

There we have it. That’s the rationale behind it all. For if there is a God who created the world as we know it, He must be reckoned with. He cannot be ignored. And that is so fearful and abhorrent to the unregenerate mind that anything else, no matter how implausible and unscientific, will do. So, when one explanation is shot down, another one, just as improbable, is flown.

Both Christianity and Evolution are religions based upon faith, and I have believed “In the beginning, God..” from the time I was a child. But how good God is to have given me the opportunity to see in action what Paul referred to as “science falsely so called” (1 Tim. 6:20). As children of God, we need never worry that to exercise our faith is to sacrifice our minds. We read that the young Jewish boys taken into Babylon as captives were “skilful in wisdom, cunning in knowledge, and understanding science” (Dan.1:4). You cannot reason your way to God, but coming to God for salvation is the most reasonable choice a man or woman can make.

Frankly, to see a science professor with several degrees unnerved in the presence of an “unassuming, sweetly smiling, great-grandmother,” who simply points out discrepancies from time to time, gives us some indication of the sheer bluster and attempted intimidation that is involved here. We can rest our souls and our minds on the Word of the only One who is able to supply us with the first step in the so-called “Scientific Method”— Observation.

“Thus saith God the LORD, he that created the heavens, and
stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth, and that which
cometh out of it: he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and
spirit to them that walk therein.” (Isa. 42:5)