Every Good Thing Points to Its Cause, Which Is God
If you are a Christian, then you should be committed to a view of reality in which every good thing points to its Cause, which is God. The reason why can be explained in two ways.
Scripture
First, Scripture says that the heavens declare God’s glory (Ps 19:1). Nature speaks (Ps 19:2–4). The world shows off God’s “handiwork” (Ps 19:1). The word handiwork confirms that God made creation. He acted. It came into being. A more general way to put it is: God caused creation; creation is the effect of God. It would be pretty easy to pile up passages that show this theme throughout Scripture. They exist everywhere.
Scripture also says that God created everything to be good—“very good” in fact (Gen 1:31). So nothing that exists was created as evil, unless someone other than God created something. But that is impossible since God characteristically differs from us by being Creator—we are creatures. We do not create out of nothing, ex nihilo. God does. And God created everything to be very good. So evil has no substantial existence. Whatever it is, it exists as a corruption or leech on an otherwise healthy organism.
In short, the Bible says God created everything to be very good. And everything declares God’s handiwork. So every good thing (and that is everything) points to God. What is evil is a corruption of the good. We do that. God does not do that. In this narrow sense, we invented evil. What makes that invention lame is that evil has no substance; it is merely the corruption of the good.
Reason
Second, reason demonstrates that every effect has a cause. If a ball rolls down a billiards table, something pushed it or gravity pulled or some cause made it move. If a cup sits on a table, the table holds it up. Whether a cause exists prior in time or contemporaneously as a support (like the table), causes lead to effects.
Some skeptically say that cause and effect merely show a general coincidence that two things tend to happen together. Beyond that, we cannot infer that some real cause exists. A cause and a effect are just names to describe coincidences.
Well, such skepticism may seem to work. It really does not account for why two things tend to coincide so often! The answer is, and I think we can be reasonably sure, causes precede effects; a cause or set of causes produces some effect or effects. Reason concludes it.
If that is the case, then the world around us from quark to microbe to galaxy to universe must have some prior or sustaining cause. Now, physically we can work down the ladder of material conditions that make, say, the earth orbit the sun. But at one point, the massive scale of order will need some force to keep it all together; at one point, some beginning of matter seems at least plausible.
Everything that began to exist must have had something that caused it to exist. So while we may not be able to prove the temporality of the universe, we can I think be reasonably sure that eternality does not characterize the world around us as entropy is constant. If black holes eventually pull all matter and compress it into a heavy black something, then maybe we can admit a series of eternal explosions, big bangs.
That is why I am not sure the temporal argument of cause and effect persuasively leads to seeing a single cause behind everything. But I am less concerned about that and more concerned about why everything at this single moment in time seems to hold together. Why does the complex system of everything just work. Why do heat and gravity and space and time seem to follow laws; why does the way things work well just work?
At base, something must hold it all together. Whatever you want to call it. I call it God because it seems self-evident to me—to most people really since most people are religious in the world. In any case, let me get to the point: the things we see around us point to a cause; that cause is God.
Conclusion
I am speaking about a sacramental view of reality. Traditionally, everyone held to this view, albeit I am sure some expectations existed. The last couple hundred years, however, have complicated matters because now we do not find such a view plausible. We think a tree is just a tree, not a sign that points to God (that is, a sacrament).
I am using sacrament loosely here, admittedly, to make a jarring point. We do not need this word. We could call the world enchanted if we like. We could call it a sign-post of God’s glory. Whatever word we choose, the point should remain: If you are a Christian, then you should be committed to a view of reality in which every good thing points to its Cause, which is God.
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