Proof of God

My Auntie has been doing a bit of thinking and sent me this yesterday:

It struck me…

Not thinking about anything in particular, the other day it struck me, that one of the things that makes me believe in God, is the similarity and difference between man and animals.

I love watching the many, many programs about the simply amazing creatures on this planet. Most recently, Stephen Fry’s visits to rare and endangered animals. The monkeys, the gorillas, the lemurs…just beautiful and fascinating.

Then as someone talked to Philip Adams about the 98.5% sharing of genetic makeup between man and animals, it struck me that indeed, I believe we are of the same dust and design. What makes us different is the breath of God, which took an animal and made it something of God.

The differences between man and animal can’t be explained by the 1 ½% difference in genetics. Some gorillas, great apes, can imitate speech and show social skills and affection that reflect our own. But the differences are so vast, that they really require explanation.

This creature, man, has re-shaped the earth, has made discoveries, found out how to record them, then built further progress on the back of the progress of their forerunners. Not all to man’s benefit!

And in terms of good and evil, there is something absolutely dastardly and shocking, about the capacity of man for evil, yet he has the ability to know the difference between good and evil.

To believe that the normal evolutionary cycle would throw up mankind, is asking a huge leap of faith and credulity. There is nothing of the order of man’s mind, skill, ingenuity, beauty and ugliness, in creation. We get excited to see an animal that creates a tool made of twigs and leaves, in order to get the food it eats. But in the scheme of things it is in an entirely different order from the skill of mankind.

In terms of the spiritual, there is no race or tribe of man, that does not have some instinctive sense of a power beyond. Only modern Western man has attempted to remove God from the picture, but even that requires a level of faith that is probably the same as those who do believe.

Those who do not believe would claim that this spiritual sense and belief in God comes from fears and attempts to deal with uncertainty. That is part of it. But beyond that, there is a large area to do with love, relationship, connectedness, unselfish willingness to make sacrifices on behalf of one another that is profoundly significant and in scale, is immeasurably different from the instincts of the animals world.

Thanks Father, for the absolute beauty of your creation and of your creatures, and for the way they are inextricably bound together and our dependence on them. Thank you for making us, naming us your Children, making us in your image…reflecting the very Person of God. That is indeed, what makes all the difference. And it can’t be explained as an aberration of evolution. How you must smile, wonder, be pained, by the determination of man to “do” life without you.

I sometimes despair; feel depressed and embarrassed at the tortuous path we’ve taken. I feel the fugitive desire to forget others and make a life that feels fulfilling to me. To “do” life my way!

I recently heard, and was profoundly touched, by the story of Derek Redmond, the Olympic runner*, who broke his hamstring and yet who determined to finish the race, and with his father’s arm around him, he and they reached the finishing line.

We are battling with a broken hamstring Father, and it is only your arm around us that will get us there. As I mourn and sometimes despair; feel depressed and embarrassed at what we so readily become, it strikes me, that you are looking across the entire earth, seeing your plans being damaged, ruined; people being killed and maimed by corruption and evil; sometimes by “acts of nature”. And it struck me that I can feel depressed and despairing, but I wonder for you, what you must feel about the global village that you have invested yourself in – even visited, demonstrated how it works, sent your prophets and your leaders to show the way. Yet, how frequently darkness wins.

You have made man and separated him from the animals by breathing your life into him; you have given him the dignity of choice, like ‘gods’, but it is genuine choice, because there is evil at large and it so often wins, even among those who love you and want to serve you.

No wonder you, and the writers of the NT speak so often of unity and love; of love of you and of one another. It’s like the ‘magic’ potion that defends the world and your people from the power of evil.

*UTube…see “ Derek Redmond”.