Participants:
Series Code: AU
Program Code: AU000094S
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00:00 - The Book of Genesis.
00:02 Far from being an ancient fairy tale, 00:04 it might just be the most reliable document 00:08 that you and I have from the very ancient past. 00:11 [inquisitive music] 00:18 [inquisitive music continues] 00:26 [inquisitive music continues] 00:33 A lot of 21st century people, 00:34 and tragically even some Christians, 00:37 are likely to describe the Book of Genesis as a myth. 00:41 Now, that's not exactly the same thing 00:44 as calling it a lie or a fairytale, 00:46 because that would imply 00:48 that Genesis is nothing but fiction. 00:51 A myth is just a little bit different. 00:53 It conveys some kind of message 00:56 about the nature of the universe, 00:58 and it doesn't necessarily have to be historically accurate. 01:02 So, when scholars call the Book of Genesis a myth, 01:06 they're not necessarily suggesting 01:08 there's nothing valuable in there. 01:09 They're saying that somewhere in the pages of Genesis, 01:13 you can find some kind of truth, 01:14 some kind of higher principle 01:16 that teaches us something useful 01:18 about the nature of reality. 01:21 Now, of course, as a Christian and a minister, 01:24 I don't think of Genesis in those terms. 01:26 Personally, 01:28 I believe we have real history in the Book of Genesis, 01:31 and that would include those first 11 chapters 01:34 that talk about things like the creation, or the flood, 01:37 or the Tower of Babel, and so on. 01:40 Now, in 30 minutes or less, 01:41 I'm not likely going to convince anybody 01:44 that my position is reasonable, 01:46 that it makes good sense 01:47 to take the Book of Genesis at face value, 01:50 but for today, I just wanna underline one important concept 01:55 that might help you start to take 01:57 what the Book of Genesis says just a little more seriously, 02:01 and to help me make that point, 02:03 I'm gonna borrow a little bit 02:04 from the work of Francis Schaeffer, 02:06 the famous 20th century evangelical philosopher 02:09 who helped a lot of college kids in the '60s and '70s 02:12 find their way to a reasonable belief in God, 02:15 a logical one. 02:17 Now, honestly, I'm not positive 02:19 that Schaeffer would've taken the first 11 chapters 02:22 of Genesis's actual history. 02:25 I think he might maybe have leaned a little bit 02:28 in the direction of theistic evolution, 02:30 which teaches that God created this world 02:33 through the evolutionary process, 02:35 so if that's true, we wouldn't be in harmony on that front. 02:39 But when it comes to the practice of epistemology 02:42 or the study of how we know that we know things, 02:45 I think Dr. Schaeffer was onto something. 02:48 He wrote a number of books 02:49 dealing with the existential angst 02:51 we find in our postmodern world, 02:53 including "Escape from Reason," 02:55 and "He Is There and He Is Not Silent," 02:58 and I guess I'm really fond of those books 03:00 because they were part of what helped me 03:02 on my path to becoming a Christian a long time ago. 03:06 Some of what he says makes a whole lot of sense, 03:09 and I'll get to that in just a minute, 03:12 but before we do that, 03:13 let's actually go to the Genesis account 03:15 and look at something really important. 03:18 In Genesis chapter 1, as most people know, 03:21 we have God speaking the universe into existence, 03:24 and we often use a Latin term to describe how God did that. 03:28 He created the universe ex nihilo, 03:31 which means he made it out of nothing, 03:33 and I mean absolutely nothing. 03:37 That stands in stark contrast 03:39 to some of the ancient pagan creation myths, 03:41 which have the various gods 03:43 giving birth to this world and the human race 03:45 from pre-existent materials. 03:48 In fact, the pagan myths usually try to tell us 03:51 where the gods came from, 03:53 because to the pagan mind, it seems unthinkable 03:56 that the gods didn't have some kind of a beginning. 03:59 So, for example, we have the Enuma Elish, 04:02 the ancient Babylonian creation story, 04:05 which says that the creation of the world happened 04:07 because some prisoner gods 04:10 were complaining that they had to work. 04:11 They were out digging irrigation canals under the hot sun. 04:15 They eventually got sick of that and mounted a protest, 04:19 so a great conflict broke out, 04:21 and before the war was finished, 04:22 you had Marduk, the chief Babylonian god, 04:26 making this planet from the dead body of a primal goddess 04:29 by the name of Tiamat, 04:31 and the human race they said came into being 04:34 after he mixed the blood of another god 04:36 with clay from the Earth. 04:39 But then you get the Genesis account, 04:41 which describes a completely different kind of god. 04:43 It never explains where he came from. 04:45 He's just there, like you'd expect from a real god, 04:49 and he didn't require pre-existent materials 04:52 in order to create this world. 04:54 The psalmist actually summarizes 04:56 the opening of Genesis like this: 04:59 "Let all the earth fear the Lord; 05:02 let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him, 05:05 for he spoke and it came to be. 05:07 He commanded, and it stood firm." 05:10 The pagan gods by contrast 05:12 were really just kind of supersized human beings. 05:15 They had personality quirks, they fought with each other, 05:18 they toyed with the human race, 05:20 and they were ultimately mortal. 05:22 You could kill them. 05:24 I think there's a really good reason 05:25 that movies made by Marvel or DC Comics 05:28 employ so many pagan religious overtones, 05:30 including, well, Germanic gods like Thor. 05:34 The gods of the pagans 05:36 were an awful lot like our superheroes. 05:38 They were outsized humans who had special powers. 05:42 Bigger than us, stronger than us, 05:44 presumably smarter than us, 05:47 but not all that different. 05:49 The ancient pagan gods, it seems, 05:51 were made in the image of man, 05:54 but the God of the Bible is strikingly different, 05:56 right from the opening words of Genesis. 05:59 The author, Moses, doesn't waste any time 06:02 trying to explain where God comes from, 06:04 and when the Bible says, 06:05 "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth," 06:09 it's not just a declaration that the world had a beginning. 06:13 It's also an indirect declaration that God did not. 06:17 It says in the beginning, God, he was just there. 06:21 Now, it's important to remember 06:24 that the Book of Genesis was not written 06:26 as an answer to Charles Darwin, 06:28 even though a lot of modern Christians 06:30 try to use it like that. 06:32 When Moses first penned those words, 06:35 Darwin was thousands of years into the future. 06:38 What Moses is really addressing is pagan cosmology, 06:42 the pantheon of gods that the pagans worshiped, 06:45 who were a lot like us, 06:46 and morally speaking, sometimes worse than us. 06:50 They were petty and capricious, 06:52 unpredictable and incredibly self-centered. 06:55 That's the universe that Moses is trying to disprove, 06:59 dispel. 07:01 But there's another concept 07:03 that the book of Genesis is refuting, 07:05 and it's a concept that underlies 07:06 an awful lot of Eastern religion. 07:09 Now, I've pointed this out on other shows, 07:11 but many ancient cultures believed 07:13 that the physical world we live in 07:15 is some kind of a colossal mistake. 07:17 The reason we suffer, these people said, 07:19 was because, "Well, we weren't supposed to live like this, 07:22 with a real physical existence." 07:25 The pagans believed 07:26 that a non-physical existence was preferable. 07:29 They insisted that we should embrace the Grim Reaper 07:32 when he comes, 07:34 because, well, it's better to live as a disembodied ghost. 07:37 Shortly after the birth of Christianity, 07:39 we actually had a problem with some Christian sects 07:42 who imported those ideas into the Church. 07:45 They borrowed from pagan cosmology 07:47 to suggest that maybe the supreme god 07:50 did not actually make the physical universe, 07:52 because they said the world we live in is so imperfect. 07:56 They insisted that the creation must have been the work 07:59 of a lesser deity: 08:00 a being they called the demiurge. 08:03 It was a decidedly pagan way of thinking, 08:06 and tragically, some of their ideas 08:08 did manage to get a foothold in Orthodox Christianity, 08:11 to the point where we can still see 08:13 the remnants of that kind of thinking to this day. 08:17 According to ancient pagan cosmology, 08:19 and I use that word pagan as a bit of a catch-all term, 08:23 because it was actually a Latin term 08:25 used by ancient Christians 08:26 to make fun of their polytheistic neighbors. 08:29 It was a way of calling them bumpkins or rubes. 08:32 But I still use it 08:34 because we don't really have a better catch-all word 08:37 for those belief systems. 08:39 I guess we could call them all idolaters, 08:41 which would be accurate, 08:43 but somehow that seems worse than pagan, 08:45 so pagan it is. 08:47 And according to pagan cosmology, 08:49 the universe began as a non-material mind. 08:53 The physical world was a downgrade 08:55 from an ethereal existence, 08:57 and so in a way, 08:58 the best thing that can happen to you is death, 09:00 because it releases you 09:02 from the prison of physical existence, 09:04 so you can return to the great cosmic mind of the universe. 09:08 But the God of Genesis is not just a cosmic mind, 09:12 and the physical creation was not a mistake, 09:16 and I'll be right back after this to tell you why. 09:19 [air whooshes] 09:22 - [Narrator] Life can throw a lot at us. 09:25 Sometimes we don't have all the answers, 09:28 but that's where the Bible comes in. 09:31 It's our guide to a more fulfilling life. 09:34 Here at The Voice of Prophecy, 09:35 we've created the Discover Bible guides 09:37 to be your guide to the Bible. 09:39 They're designed to be simple, easy to use, 09:41 and provide answers to many of life's toughest questions, 09:44 and they're absolutely free, 09:46 so jump online now or give us a call 09:49 and start your journey of discovery. 09:52 - There is a solidity, a reality to the Book of Genesis 09:55 that you don't really find 09:57 in other ancient creation stories. 09:59 It presents a very real God 10:01 and a personal God who creates a very real world, 10:04 and there is no hint anywhere 10:07 that humanity was ever supposed to be authentically at home 10:10 in any place but planet Earth. 10:13 In fact, at the end of the creative process, 10:16 right after the creation of people, 10:18 God reviews the project and says, "Behold. 10:21 It was very good." 10:23 The later gnostics would suggest 10:24 that somehow the creator botched it, 10:26 and that one of the reasons Christ had to come 10:28 was to correct the mistake of creation. 10:32 By following the teachings of Christ, the gnostics said, 10:35 you could escape the prison of physical existence. 10:39 Scholars believe this is one of the reasons 10:41 the Gospel of John spends so much time 10:44 on the creation story. 10:45 "In the beginning was the Word," John tells us, 10:48 "and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 10:51 He was in the beginning with God. 10:54 All things were made through him, 10:55 and without him was not anything made that was made. 10:58 In him was life 11:00 and the life was the light of men." 11:03 Of the four Gospels, 11:04 John easily has the most impressive opening. 11:08 It's using the language of Genesis 11:09 and it's making a really big point. 11:12 Jesus is the one who created this world in the first place, 11:16 and it was not a mistake. 11:18 The gnostics were wrong. 11:20 They were teaching pagan cosmology 11:23 and not the story of Genesis. 11:26 The biggest difference between the God of Genesis 11:27 and the great cosmic mind of the pagans? 11:30 The cosmic mind was rather impersonal. 11:33 It wasn't a who so much as a what. 11:35 And they taught that everything that exists in this world 11:38 is just an illusion, including you. 11:41 Eventually, they said, we all realize 11:43 that nothing really exists, including us, 11:46 and then we are just reabsorbed 11:48 into the great mind of the universe. 11:50 But the God of the Bible is very personal. 11:52 He's self-aware, self-determining. 11:55 A sentient being 11:56 who can actually communicate with his creatures. 11:59 He is not synonymous with the universe, 12:01 and the universe is not synonymous with him. 12:04 God is above it and distinct from it. 12:07 You and I are also distinct from God, 12:10 we are made in his image, 12:12 and our personal identity is real. 12:15 It is not an illusion. 12:16 We are not just part of God's mind. 12:18 We have a real existence quite distinct from him. 12:22 Of course, the Bible also teaches 12:24 that we could not possibly exist without God, 12:27 because he is the only source of life in this universe. 12:30 "In him was life," John writes, 12:32 "and the life was the light of men." 12:35 In his letter to the Colossians, 12:37 Paul spells it out like this. 12:39 He writes, "For by him," that's Jesus, 12:42 "all things were created, in heaven and on Earth, 12:45 visible and invisible, 12:46 whether thrones, or dominions, or rulers, or authorities. 12:50 All things were created through him and for him, 12:53 and he is before all things, 12:55 and in him, all things hold together." 12:58 So, without God, you couldn't exist. 13:01 It wouldn't be possible. 13:04 That's why sin 13:05 is said to have such devastating consequences. 13:08 You have compromised your connection 13:10 to the only source of life in the universe 13:13 and the wages of sin then is death. 13:16 But while we depend on the existence of God for our being, 13:20 we're not the same thing as God. 13:22 We are distinct with our own personalities. 13:26 The God of the Bible is absolutely unique 13:28 on the landscape of world religions. 13:30 He's infinite, which is really, really important, 13:33 because that's how we can see 13:35 that you and I are finite by comparison. 13:38 I mean, in order to understand what it means to be finite, 13:41 you have to have something to compare yourself to, 13:44 something infinite. 13:45 You have to have an external reference point. 13:48 That makes our understanding of the God of the Bible 13:52 the opposite from the way the pagans considered it. 13:55 They had very human-like gods they made in their own image, 13:59 but the Bible has the human race made in God's image. 14:02 We are not identical with God, 14:03 but there is something of God in all of us 14:06 that makes the human race special, 14:09 even noble. 14:11 So, in other words, 14:12 the pagans determined what the gods were like 14:14 by comparing them to us, 14:16 and by contrast, 14:18 you and I can determine what we are like 14:20 by comparing and contrasting ourselves 14:23 with the infinite God. 14:25 It's an exercise that generates a lot of humility and awe, 14:29 and you'll see that in some of the Psalms, 14:31 because they were written as the psalmist was awed 14:34 as he contemplated the majesty of God. 14:38 About 500 years before Christ, 14:40 there was a Greek philosopher by the name of Xenophanes 14:43 who started to get uncomfortable 14:45 with just how awful his pagan Greek gods really were. 14:49 I mean, they were petty, they slept around, 14:51 they squabbled, they lied, they murdered, 14:54 and they used the human race like a plaything. 14:57 He finally came to the realization 14:58 that these couldn't be gods at all, 15:00 and because they weren't big enough 15:02 to explain the existence of the whole universe, 15:04 he suggested there must be one god 15:07 who created everything. 15:09 Now, unfortunately, 15:10 we don't have much left over from his writings, 15:13 but the fragments we do have demonstrate 15:16 that Xenophanes was getting embarrassed by his paganism. 15:19 He realized that his gods were made 15:21 in the image of humanity. 15:23 If animals could be religious, he taught, 15:26 their God would look like an animal, 15:27 because they were making gods to resemble themselves. 15:30 That's what we've been doing, Xenophanes said. 15:33 But God, if you think about it, 15:34 couldn't possibly be like us. 15:37 One of the key differences he said 15:39 is that the creator must be eternal by his very nature, 15:43 and we're not. 15:44 "Everything which comes into being," he said, 15:46 "is doomed to perish," 15:47 and he insisted that the human soul 15:49 might actually just be our breath. 15:52 He was moving away from pagan cosmology 15:54 towards something a lot closer 15:56 to what you find in the Book of Genesis, 15:58 and he got there by using logic and reason. 16:02 So now, let's go back to the Book of Genesis. 16:04 The God it describes is big enough 16:06 to account for what we see in this world, 16:08 but at the same time, he is deeply personal, 16:11 which explains the noble nature of human beings. 16:14 It explains why the natural world 16:16 appears to have order and design, 16:18 and it invites us to use our gift for rational thought 16:21 to go out and find God, 16:23 and it was this idea 16:25 that gave the Western world its appetite for science. 16:29 The universe can be studied, we realized, 16:31 because it makes sense, 16:33 and the universe makes sense 16:34 because it is the work of a sensible being. 16:37 Go back and read the writings of the great minds of science, 16:40 people like da Vinci or Newton, 16:42 and you'll discover that they were positive 16:44 there was something to learn out there, 16:46 because there is a god who can be found behind the creation. 16:51 It's a concept that Paul underlines very carefully 16:53 in his letter to the Church of Rome. 16:55 I'm pretty sure you've heard this passage before, 16:57 because it's one of my all-time favorites. 17:00 It's found in Romans chapter 1, starting in verse 19, 17:03 and Paul is talking about skeptics 17:05 who reject the idea of God 17:07 because they think there's no evidence. 17:09 Here's what he says. 17:11 "For what can be known about God is plain to them, 17:14 because God has shown it to them. 17:16 For his invisible attributes, 17:17 namely his eternal power and divine nature, 17:20 have been clearly perceived 17:22 ever since the creation of the world 17:23 in the things that have been made, 17:26 so they are without excuse." 17:29 This is one of the biggest differences 17:31 between the God of the Bible 17:32 and the deities of other religions. 17:34 The Greek and Roman gods eventually started to look silly 17:37 because they were far too human, morally speaking. 17:41 They were just too much like us. 17:44 And those nebulous fuzzy deities of the East, 17:46 the ones that have no personality? 17:49 That's a god who's completely unknowable. 17:51 In most of the world's religions, all you've really got 17:54 are some esoteric, mystical experiences 17:56 that can't even be described in everyday human language. 18:00 There is no reasonable approach 18:02 to the cosmic mind behind the universe. 18:04 You just can't get there by using simple logic. 18:07 It's a little bit like the psychedelic trips 18:09 that the hippies were taking back in the '60s. 18:12 They would come back from this so-called profound experience 18:14 that didn't make any real sense. 18:17 They just assumed that they had broken free 18:19 from the illusion of a personal identity 18:21 and ascended to some higher plane. 18:23 Never mind, of course, the fact that you needed drugs 18:26 to get there. 18:28 By contrast, the God of the Bible is knowable. 18:31 In addition to creating the universe, 18:33 he continued to interact with us. 18:34 In fact, he actually speaks to us. 18:37 Let me read you one of my very favorite passages 18:39 found over in the Book of Jeremiah, 18:41 because I think it's one of the most profound in the Bible, 18:44 but I'm right up against a break, 18:46 so I'll read that to you as soon as we get back. 18:50 [air whooshes] 18:53 - [Narrator] Dragons, beasts, cryptic statues. 18:57 Bible prophecy can be incredibly vivid and confusing. 19:02 If you've ever read Daniel or Revelation 19:04 and come away scratching your head, 19:06 you're not alone. 19:07 Our free Focus on Prophecy guides 19:09 are designed to help you unlock the mysteries of the Bible 19:12 and deepen your understanding of God's plan 19:15 for you and our world. 19:16 Study online or request them by mail 19:19 and start bringing prophecy into focus today. 19:23 - All right, just before the break, 19:24 we were on our way to the Book of Jeremiah 19:26 to a profound passage that I love. 19:28 In fact, you've heard me read it many times in the past. 19:32 It comes from Jeremiah 9, starting in verse 23. 19:35 "Thus says the Lord: 19:37 'Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, 19:39 let not the mighty man boast in his might, 19:41 let not the rich man boast in his riches, 19:44 but let him who boasts boast in this, 19:47 that he understands and knows me, 19:50 that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, 19:53 and righteousness in the earth. 19:55 For in these things I delight,' declares the Lord." 19:59 The God of the Bible is knowable 20:02 and he's knowable because he communicates, 20:04 and he communicates in more than one way. 20:06 On the one hand, you have a collection of inspired writings, 20:10 the words of prophets 20:11 who conveyed the thoughts of God to us, 20:14 but then you also have what some people call 20:16 the Book of Nature, 20:17 and as Paul points out, you can discover the creator 20:20 by looking at the things he made. 20:22 They're literally covered with his fingerprints. 20:25 That's the idea that gave birth 20:26 to the scientific revolution, 20:28 the idea that there was something out there 20:31 to be discovered. 20:33 And that's where Francis Schaeffer comes into the picture. 20:37 Thomas Aquinas, he said, 20:39 helped derail our authentic natural approach to science, 20:42 and he did that by suggesting 20:44 that human reason is autonomous. 20:46 We can just use it to discover truth 20:48 without including God at all. 20:50 What we did at that point in history, Schaeffer said, 20:53 was divorce the two great realms of philosophical discovery. 20:57 On the one hand, he said, we have the world of particulars. 21:00 That's what he called it. 21:01 The vast diversity of things we find on this planet, 21:04 particular things. 21:06 But then on the other hand, 21:08 we find ourselves looking for the universal principles 21:10 that bind all of those individual particulars together. 21:14 Let's use your morning commute as an example. 21:16 Let's say you drive a Toyota Corolla. 21:19 That would be a particular, a single kind of car, 21:22 but the concept of cars in general, 21:25 that would be the universal. 21:27 A car might be an SUV, it might be a pickup truck, 21:30 but there will always be wheels, and an engine, 21:32 and those kinds of things. 21:33 The things that help define what a car is. 21:37 Once Aquinas introduced the idea 21:39 that we could use our unaided reason to discover truth 21:42 without any reference to God, 21:45 well, that's when we started to run into trouble. 21:47 We could still use our reason 21:48 to identify and categorize all kinds of things 21:51 out there in the natural world, 21:53 but we no longer had an overarching universal principle 21:56 that tied it all together. 21:58 We knew these things were out there, 22:00 but we had no reason for their existence. 22:02 We had a what without a why. 22:04 And after adapting that point of view, 22:07 what we were left with was a very mechanical universe, 22:10 one that worked very well and was predictable, 22:13 but now, it seems to have come into existence by accident 22:16 along with the human race. 22:17 Without God in the picture, 22:19 the cosmic machine still seems to work beautifully, 22:22 but now for no good reason. 22:24 Dr. Schaeffer describes it like this. 22:26 He says, 22:28 "If the intrinsically personal origin of the universe 22:30 is rejected, 22:32 what alternative outlook can anyone have? 22:34 It must be said emphatically 22:36 that there is no final answer 22:37 except that man is a product of the impersonal, 22:40 plus time, plus chance." 22:44 We still believed that the universe had order 22:46 and that you could study the order to learn things, 22:49 but we moved away from a limited system 22:51 where God could be outside of nature 22:54 and intervene in nature when he wanted to 22:56 to a closed system that was nothing but a machine 22:59 that just somehow came into existence all by itself. 23:03 We were studying the particulars of our existence, 23:06 but suddenly, we didn't have a universal behind it, 23:09 and without that universal principle, 23:10 without a personal, infinite God who ordered the universe, 23:14 humanity became nothing more than just a cog in the machine. 23:18 We were no longer special. 23:19 We lacked any real purpose, and because of that, 23:22 our lives no longer meant something. 23:25 But never mind, we were still convinced 23:27 of the absolute power of human reason 23:30 to discover just about anything, 23:32 until we started to understand the limits of reason itself. 23:35 In the world of philosophy, we came to the point 23:38 where we couldn't be certain of anything. 23:40 Epistemology is the branch of philosophy 23:42 that studies how we know things, 23:44 or to be more accurate, 23:46 how we know that we know things for sure. 23:49 I mean, here we are, 23:50 gathering up data left, right, and center. 23:52 We live in a world that is saturated with information. 23:55 We take measurements, we do the math, 23:58 and we declare that there are physical laws 24:00 that govern the universe, 24:01 but how do you know your data is good? 24:04 How do you know that your measurements 24:05 actually mean something? 24:07 How do you even know that your existence is real? 24:10 I know to some people 24:11 these seem like really stupid questions, 24:13 until you realize 24:14 that the last few hundred years of philosophy 24:16 have been obsessed with them. 24:19 I mean, right now, I think I'm on TV or the radio, 24:22 and I think I'm talking to other self-aware, 24:24 sentient human beings, 24:25 but how do I really know that? 24:28 And when I find myself listening to you, 24:30 how in the world do I know 24:31 that I really understand what you're saying? 24:34 Of course, common sense tells us the world is real. 24:37 Common sense tells us that when we talk, 24:39 we are actually communicating with somebody else, 24:42 so our daily experience suggests 24:44 that the philosophers are probably wrong. 24:46 There is a real universe, and I'll be right back after this. 24:51 [air whooshes] 24:55 - [Narrator] You can almost hear your imagination. 24:59 [serene music] 25:06 So free 25:09 your spirits can soar. 25:15 So vast 25:19 it needs to be explored. 25:21 [serene music] 25:29 So high 25:33 you can touch the clouds. 25:37 A place 25:41 called Discovery Mountain. 25:46 - It stands to reason that I can believe you exist, 25:49 because when you talk to me, you communicate ideas 25:51 that were obviously not born in my mind. 25:53 They're new. 25:55 Experience teaches me that you really are there, 25:57 but modern philosophers have really struggled with that, 26:00 to the point where they say finally, like Albert Camus did, 26:04 that the universe around us is really just absurd. 26:07 It's an idea that has made its way 26:08 into Christian thinking unfortunately, 26:10 and so now, I'm thinking of people like Soren Kierkegaard, 26:13 who suggested there is no way 26:15 to rationally study the existence of God. 26:18 All we really have, he said, is a leap of faith, 26:21 with no requirement for logic or reason. 26:24 But as smart as Kierkegaard was, I would have to say 26:27 that is not the position of the scriptures. 26:30 The Bible says the universe is knowable 26:32 because there is an infinite, personal God who made it, 26:36 and because his work is knowable, he is knowable, 26:39 and if God is knowable 26:41 and we are made in his image, 26:42 then you and I can be knowable too. 26:45 We can figure out what it means to be authentically human. 26:48 We are not just cogs in some galactic machine, 26:51 meaningless parts of the universe 26:52 that don't have a reason for existence. 26:56 Right now, we have come to a point in human history 26:59 where absurdity is actually the prevailing theory, 27:02 but think about this. 27:04 Human beings have built this incredible civilization, 27:06 the most prosperous in the history of the world, 27:09 squarely on the notion that the universe is knowable 27:12 because God is knowable, 27:15 but now, we see our certainty crumbling 27:16 in the face of a generation 27:18 that says you can't know anything for sure, 27:20 and we no longer believe in objective truth. 27:23 We struggle to figure out who or what we are, 27:25 to the point where we're making ridiculous leaps 27:28 into absurdity, 27:29 and now, we're inventing identities for ourselves 27:31 that defy all logic. 27:35 What we're doing now is reaping the long-term consequences 27:38 of rejecting the personal God. 27:40 We prized personal freedom instead, 27:43 and tried to liberate ourselves from God-given morality. 27:46 We thought it might make us happy, but obviously, it didn't. 27:50 You know, 27:51 it might actually be too late for Western civilization, 27:52 but it's not too late for you. 27:55 Maybe it's time to go back to the claims of the Bible, 27:57 because maybe, 27:59 it's exactly what your heart's been looking for. 28:02 Thanks for joining me today. 28:03 I'm Shawn Boonstra, 28:04 and you've been watching another episode of "Authentic." 28:08 [inquisitive music] 28:14 [inquisitive music continues] 28:22 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Revised 2024-03-27