Two Basic Modern Worldviews
(an excerpt from the book The Ikon of God)
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What was the marvel of America sending men to the moon?
What was the grandeur of that accomplishment? Was it that something wonderful
would be found there, that maybe the moon was made of green cheese? When the
first man, Neil Armstrong, stepped foot on the moon, how was this act "One small step for man, one giant leap
for mankind?" Nothing changed on earth: life was no different other than
some brief excitement. If it was such a grand frontier, why have we not been back
in over 40 years?
Let us put this into perspective. When Man finally got to
the moon, he only found rocks and dust, rocks and dust made up of the same
stuff as rocks and dust found on earth. How was this “small step” any kind of
“one giant leap for mankind?” The real discoveries of putting a man on the moon
had nothing to do with the moon itself, but had everything to do with what he
saw when he got far enough away from earth to look back at it. The moon was
inhospitably cold and hot, but the earth was the most brilliant thing in the
cosmos, sparling, shinning, and full of life. Man’s travels to the moon did not
result in any magnificent lunar discovery: we did not find plants that grew
upside down, new elements to include on the periodic table, or even the
smallest living cell. The true discovery came in what Man saw when looking back
at earth. Undoubtedly, the most remarkable, most astounding discovery was not
anything found on the moon but happened in the Apollo 8 mission, before
Armstrong uttered those infamous words when stepping on the moon. When viewing
earth from space the three astronauts of Apollo 8 had a message for earth,
revealing what they saw:[i]
Bill Anders:
"We are now approaching lunar sunrise and, for all the
people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to
send to you.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was
upon the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided
the light from the darkness.
Jim Lovell:
"And God called the light Day, and the darkness he
called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the
waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which
were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it
was so.
And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and
the morning were the second day.
Frank Borman:
"And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be
gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
And God called the dry land earth; and the gathering
together of the waters called He seas: and God saw that it was good.
And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night,
good luck, a Merry Christmas – and God bless all of you, all of you on the good
Earth."
What was the message for earth that the astronauts wanted
to convey? What was it that they discovered by going into space? This message
was nothing new, but something very old, as old as earth itself. It gave the
only meaningful purpose to the Apollo missions. Earth was NOT an accident! Its
existence was intentional. And if earth was intentional, then Somebody had to
intend it and then create it; this gives meaning to everything. Intent
demonstrates meaning; earth was intentional. But who intended it? That
somebody, is God. And there is nothing that can compare with earth: it is the
most wonderful place in the universe, nothing has been observed through any
telescope or viewed from any space probe that can even remotely compares with
earth. Like Dorothy, in the “Wizard of Oz,” at the finish of her long journey, who
proclaimed, “There is no place like home.”
So if this truth was
self-evident to the astronauts, why do so many disbelieve it? The advent of enlightened
reason during the last few centuries has taken a terrible toll on the modern
mind. The modern secularist sees the existence of everything as being some sort
of enormous accident (how reasonable is that! Can you imagine a train wreck
ending as beautiful as earth?!) The atheist’s bible reads something like this,
“In the beginning there was nothing and nobody, then boom, something appeared
quite accidentally, and that something without any intent, direction, or
purpose from of anybody, again, accidentally became something well defined, and
it, of its own accord, accidentally, produced grass and trees and birds…and
then, quite accidentally, produced Man.” Making everything an accident is a
very dim view of the universe indeed. It is like living on the moon: rocks on
dust and dust on rocks. There are no animals, no trees, and even no color. Everything
is lifeless, just sitting there, and just
existing with no real meaning or purpose.
This presents two very
strikingly different points of view of the cosmos. One view is personal: that
there is a Person who had intent and meaning for everything. Conversely, the
other view denies any design or intent for the universe. With this view,
nothing has any meaning, because it was all a series of accidents. When there
is no meaning to the cosmos, then there is no meaning for the individual. To
believe in this theory of accidents is to both believe in and live a life that
is morbid and meaninglessness.
If there is a Creator,
then there is intent, and if there is intent, then there is meaning, and that
intent is the meaning of everything to us. To find meaning for life is to
locate God’s original intent for creating everything. Life then becomes about
the meaning; life is full of meaning and then everything has meaning. Every
blue sky, every sunset, every flower, every bumble bee, has meaning. If there
is a God and His intent was relational, then everything in Creation speaks, and
even shouts, with the meaning of God’s intent. Everything created is God’s love
letter. To lose sight of that is to lose the meaning of everything.
The secular worldview
kills everything because there is no Creator and therefore no intent; with no
intent, nothing has any meaning or value. Even life itself becomes disdainful, morose,
purposeless, because it all was an accident; this is the culture of death. And
as with all accidents, life becomes about the injury, the pain, the hurt. The
cosmos injured us by producing us through an ongoing train wreck. By giving us
life with no meaning, the cosmos has imprisoned us and made us victims. The
modern obsession with being oppressed blatantly manifests this symptom of our
much larger sickness. The secular worldview is a dungeon, with many tortures
and devices of torment, because it strips the essence of every dignity God gave
to Man from him.
In summary: there are
two ways of seeing the universe. One, holds onto the dream of the Dreamer: it
is full of meaning, full of life, full of wonder, and is based on miracles. The
other is as lifeless as the moonscape: cold, dead, and without rhyme or reason.
These are the your choices.
Moses had it right:
See, I have set before
thee this day life and good, and death and evil. (Deuteronomy 30:15)
The choice has always
been and will always be the same, life or death.
[i]
Apollo 8 Genesis Reading, Wikipedia.org, 01-08-2013, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_8_Genesis_reading
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