Man's Complexity -- God's
Simplicity
Have you ever taken your computer apart and looked at its insides? If
you have, you probably saw something like the picture that is on the cover
of this journal. For those of us without a background in electronics and
engineering, the guts of a computer look impossibly complicated. Mankind
has done and continues to do things which are incredibly complex. These things
are changing our world and are involved in everything from the microscopic
world to outer space. The changes that are happening have the potential for
enormous good or tragic destruction for mankind.
The interesting thing about this is that, in spite of our great progress
in electronics, nuclear energy, and space, we still have no idea why people
behave the way they do. What makes a person fall in love? Why do people
feel guilty? What is it that gives one person great artistic ability while
another person can barely draw a straight line with a ruler? Why do we
have the ability to have sympathy for one another or for an animal? Perhaps
the biggest question is what is it that causes things to go wrong in our
minds, leaving us with depression, rage, split personalities, and insanity?
In spite of decades of theorizing, experimenting, and observing, we have
made very little progress in developing any man-made drug or device that
makes a positive permanent change in these things.
The difference between what a computer chip does and the things we have
listed in the previous paragraph is the difference between the physical
world and the spiritual world. In the physical world, all that happens
is a product of forces and energies which are easily measured and controlled.
Every physics student is impressed quickly in the basic physics course
at how easy it is to understand how physical things in the cosmos work and
how accurately we can predict what various combinations of forces will do.
Just the opposite is true of the spiritual world. Why a person falls in
love with someone of the opposite sex might be to some extent explained in
terms of hormones or pheromones or a combination of these, but why a person
would love an idea to the extent that they will die for it is another matter.
All biological explanations seem to fail at a very basic level in this
area.
While scientific attempts to explain and understand these spiritual
phenomena have failed because of the fact that they are not physically derived,
our ability to deal with them on a spiritual level has gotten better for
many of us. One of the great challenges for someone like your author in
moving from atheism to Christianity is learning to think and comprehend
the spiritual. The Bible even tells us that this will be the case:
The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the
Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand
them, because they are spiritually discerned (
1 Corinthians 2:14
).
The more basic concept in this is that we are beings created in the image
of God. That image has nothing to do with our physical makeup because God
is not physical. It has to do with the fact that what makes us unique--makes
us human--is our spiritual component--our soul. Our bodies are not special.
All animals possess a heart, lungs, eyes, and teeth. Man's true uniqueness
which is beautifully displayed in his creativity, his worship, and his human
feelings is his soul. The concept is much like Einstein's theory of relativity.
I tell my students that Einstein's theory of relativity is incredibly easy
to understand; it is just really difficult to believe! The idea of man
being created in the image of God and that our humanness is a reflection
of that unique creation is so simple that men tend to reject it. God's
simplicity is frequently the best answer to mankind's dilemma, and we would
suggest that the cure for many of the problems ripping and tearing at people
and at our society can only be solved by utilizing what God's simplicity
has given us.
--John N. Clayton
Back to Contents
Does God Exist?, JanFeb02.