Title of this post was changed 5/21/23

I was raised in a church starting when I could fit comfortably into a crib in a Baptist nursery. I left the organized church at the age of sixty after my church, where Diane was the music minister and I was one of the trustees, fell apart, the reasons for which I don't care to put into words.

I spent a lot of time in Sunday School. I attended for most of my childhood twice a day. We called the Sunday night class Training Union.

As an adult, I taught Sunday School for many years. I was fortunate enough to be able to keep teaching the same group of boys and girls as they got older and changed grades. The lessons became more serious and the questions from the kids became harder as well.

I wasn't one for following published lessons or guidelines for teaching a Sunday School class. I preferred to teach right from the Bible and prepare my own lessons. I wanted to make my class relevant to the times and what my students were going through in their own lives. Along with stories about David, the prophets, and Proverbs, we discussed divorce, dating, premarital sex, interracial relationships, modern music and television, and many other subjects.

I tried to teach about the nature of God, how He is real, and experiences love and sadness Himself. How angels exist, what powers they have, how the world and the universe came to be, and the signs around us of God's creation and design.

Some of my kids listened, and some did not. My Sunday School kids grew up, one of which was my own daughter. They graduated from high school, then college, and became adults. One student was killed in Iraq while serving his country as an Army Sargent and tank commander.

One day many years ago, I ran into one of my students in an office building where I was installing a phone system. He told me that my lessons had a big impact on his life and affected many of the decisions he had to make as an adult. He said I made things real for him. He remembered my lessons on Creation and why it was logically compared to other ideas about the beginning of it all. He always remembered what I taught him when faced with questions about his faith in God. He remembered a lesson I taught on the subject once and said it had a great influence on him.

Recently when packing up some old books including some of my older Bibles, I came across a copy of some notes I had typed up for one of my lessons when my kids were juniors and seniors in High School. This lesson was about creation and evolution. I think it was the same one I provided to my student:

Evolution is contrary to natural law both logically and mathematically. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the total Entropy of any thermodynamically isolated system tends to increase over time appropriating the maximum value. (time eventually wears everything down to the maximum point that it can).

Entropy is a measure of the amount of energy in a physical system that cannot be used to do work. It is also the measure of the Disorder and Randomness present in a system. You might apply this law to the phrase “nothing survives in a vacuum”, the vacuum of space that is. This law applies to the concept that any object will eventually disintegrate at a rate influenced by the surroundings of the object. Those influences can be heat, pressure, cold, or lack thereof depending on the object.

If I put an apple on my driveway, if left alone it will decay. Other factors can and most likely will accelerate the process of the apple turning into something less than an apple. If I intervene, remove the apple from its surroundings, and introduce it to a new environment, such as a refrigerator, the move towards rot is slowed but left to itself the apple will not remain an apple. (If I eat it, does it become something better?) The apple does not start to evolve a thicker sun-proof skin. I can put a bottle of apple juice on the driveway and it too will deteriorate over time even though the juice has a “thick skin”.

If you were to go up onto the roof of your house (assuming you have one) with a box of Lincoln Logs and throw the contents of that box off the roof, how many times would you need to do so before the falling logs randomly form a log cabin? The odds are you would spend eternity up there throwing logs off your roof and the results would never form so much as half a wall. You could throw the logs off the roof, let them randomly land, and allow someone on the ground to ignore the broken logs, select the whole ones and move them into the shape of a house. You could then leave that little bit of information out when you relate your experiment: “I went up on the roof of my house with a big box of Lincoln Logs and after throwing said contents of the box off my roof, some of them after seven thousand drops, ended up in the recognizable shape of a cabin.” That would be true but the concept you are trying to get across would be a “half-truth”. I am afraid that our friend Darwin used a variation of this technique.

I prefer to believe in the Divine Design Theory as opposed to some spontaneous big bang happening. It makes sense. My faith in God The Creator and His Son is something I have no problem taking to the grave with me. I don't have a lot to lose if I am wrong and I am not. Can the same be said for believing in no God?

I know of one argument against the existence of God: “If it can’t be seen it doesn’t exist.” That is a very illogical argument. I think it is the same one that doctors and so-called scientists used against Louis Pasteur and his germ theory of disease transmission in the early 1800s.

The Literary Digest of 18 October 1902 gives this statement from Pasteur:

Posterity will one day laugh at the foolishness of modern materialistic philosophers. The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. I pray while I am engaged in my work in the laboratory.

Joseph Lister, the doctor considered to be the father of modern surgery, was ridiculed and called a Scottish Upstart because of his insistence that infection was caused by germs residing on unwashed hands. The surgeons of his day, could not see these germs, so in their minds, they did not exist and continued to perform operations with dirty instruments and dirty hands until so many people died they started to listen to Doctor Lister.

Joseph Lister had this to say: “I am a believer in the fundamental doctrines of Christianity.”

There is an article in Tomorrow’s World about atoms, and I find this excerpt fascinating:

Because things that are unseen may often be made known by things that are seen. One may have faith in the unseen on that basis. Then, when one finally sees what has previously been unseen, one’s faith is confirmed by sight. This is why the existence of atoms has become a scientifically accepted truth. Scientists were willing to believe in the unseen atom because of its specific effects on what they could see, long before they could actually see an image of the atom itself.

The article goes on to say:

Why should this be significant to anyone who considers the existence and nature of God? Just as the existence of invisible atoms can be proved by their effects on what is visible, so can the existence of an invisible God be proved by the characteristics of the visible universe. Paul wrote, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse” (Romans 1:20). It is certainly foolish to deny the existence of invisible atoms in the presence of so much visible evidence to the contrary. For the same reason, only “the fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1).

The Bible makes no attempt to prove God’s existence. It simply says in Psalms 19.1 “That the Heavens declare the glory of God.”

Warner Von Braun, who created the American Space Program, said “The vast mysteries of the universe should only confirm our belief in the certainty of its Creator. I find it difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science.”

The Bible says “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth” Simple again. No list of reasons for God to exist, just points out nothing would exist if He didn’t. Yet so many people today are atheists. They don’t want to believe in God and His goodness. They use that old chestnut “If there were a true God there would be no evil in the world” and my response is “If enough people believed and worshipped God, eventually there would be no evil in the world” God, Jesus, is the cure for the world’s evils, not the reason.

An atheist, a grown man, carrying a big red apple approaches a bright young boy, and says “I’ll give you this apple if you show me where God is.” The bright young boy looks at him and says “Yea?, well, I will give you a whole basket full of apples if you show me where God ain’t!”

I didn’t offer a basket full of apples or even one apple but that is the same question I asked my students many years ago. I am very pleased to have learned that at least one of them learned the right answer, and one day, told me so. 

Psalm 53

1 The fool says in his heart,
    “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, and their ways are vile;
    there is no one who does good.

2 God looks down from heaven
    on all mankind
to see if there are any who understand,
    any who seek God.
3 Everyone has turned away, all have become corrupt;
    there is no one who does good,
    not even one.

4 Do all these evildoers know nothing?

They devour my people as though eating bread;
    they never call on God.
5 But there they are, overwhelmed with dread,
    where there was nothing to dread.
God scattered the bones of those who attacked you;
    you put them to shame, for God despised them.

6 Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion!
    When God restores his people,
    let Jacob rejoice and Israel be glad!

Derrick