Participants:
Series Code: TCR
Program Code: TCR180009A
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00:31 Welcome to The Creator Revealed.
00:34 I'm Tim Standish and I'm a scientist. 00:38 Scientists are trained to observe things in nature. 00:43 And one of the things that we observe is evil. 00:48 Yeah, you know, last time we talked about 00:50 human in relational evil, 00:53 but this time, 00:55 we're going to talk about evil in nature, natural evil. 00:59 And we're so glad that you have joined us because, 01:02 you know, this is such an informative series, 01:05 and we're glad that you're enjoying it. 01:07 You know, before we actually go on, 01:09 I do want to point out that what we call evil 01:14 is really something that is subject to definition. 01:19 And we shouldn't be distracted by the evil 01:23 from all of that is wonderful out there in nature as well. 01:27 From the biblical perspective, we do acknowledge evil, 01:30 but we also recognize the good 01:35 and we believe that the good was created by God 01:40 at the very beginning. 01:41 Amen. 01:42 Moses wrote about this creation in this way in Genesis 1:31. 01:47 He said, "Then God saw everything that He had made, 01:51 and indeed it was very good." 01:53 Very good. 01:55 "So the evening and the morning were the sixth day." 01:57 So now they're going to go on into the Sabbath 02:00 and rest and spend that time together with God. 02:05 I can't imagine how beautiful the creation was. 02:09 And yet, we see things today that are the result of sin. 02:15 Those, sin is evil, 02:17 and the results of sin are evil consequences, 02:22 death, suffering, tears, pain. 02:25 So God cursed the earth because of the fall, 02:28 because of the evil. 02:30 Yes, Oh and human beings 02:33 chose the evil over the good. 02:37 It seems incredible, 02:39 in retrospect that would happen. 02:42 And yet, 02:43 I know that I've made that same decision myself on occasion. 02:48 But and, you know, when you think about deception, 02:51 sometimes people don't realize that what the devil hands us 02:55 can be in a shiny foil package with a beautiful bow. 03:00 And it's nothing more than gift wrapped garbage. 03:03 Unfortunately, that's the case of 03:05 and yet we go for it on occasion. 03:08 And in fact, I think we're going to talk right now 03:11 about some gift wrap garbage. 03:12 Okay. That's kind of harsh. 03:14 I believe that Charles Darwin was very brilliant man. 03:18 And that he understood the implications 03:20 of what he was saying. 03:22 And that's one of the things that we are contemplating now. 03:24 Because he, remember he had this 03:26 alternative materialistic conception of reality. 03:29 And he wrote this, he said, "From the war of nature, 03:34 from famine and death, 03:37 the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, 03:40 namely, the production of the higher animals, 03:43 directly follows." 03:47 Wow. 03:48 Well, so what Darwin is saying is that thing that we all know, 03:53 in our hearts is awful, death, suffering, war, 03:58 those sorts of things, 03:59 that that is what produced the beautiful things. 04:02 Yeah. 04:04 Whereas the biblical view, 04:07 the reality that's actually out there 04:09 is that God created all of that beauty, 04:12 all of that wonder, and the death, the suffering, 04:17 that evil is an imposition 04:19 on God's originally very good creation. 04:23 So these are very, very different views of things. 04:26 Why would a Darwinist consider war and death to be bad? 04:31 It's a good thing. 04:32 It makes wonderful things like human beings, 04:35 and eagles and, you know, 04:39 all of those things that we kind of wonder about. 04:41 What a convoluted way of thinking though... 04:43 Well, it is. In my mind. 04:45 But you say that, because you're coming at it 04:47 from a biblical perspective, yes. 04:50 But from a Darwinian perspective, 04:52 you could not say that, 04:55 it's the only logical thing from a Darwinian perspective. 04:58 I mean, you just look at pictures 05:00 of what's going on in Syria, for example, 05:03 how can anyone say war is good, 05:05 how can anyone say something is resulting 05:08 that's good from that 05:09 when you see all the destruction and suffering? 05:12 God has built into us 05:14 that fundamental understanding. 05:17 Amen. It is evil. 05:18 And evil is a bad thing. It doesn't produce good things. 05:23 In fact the Bible, again, this is Paul writing, 05:26 in the New Testament, he says, 05:27 "The last enemy to be destroyed is death." 05:31 Death is not our friend. 05:32 Death is not our Creator, 05:35 or part of the process of creating us. 05:38 Death is the enemy. 05:40 And Jesus Christ, our Creator, of course, overcame death. 05:45 Now I want to address one of the arguments 05:47 that's commonly put forward 05:49 about the creation when we look at it. 05:52 Remember, this is what scientists do, 05:54 we look at things and as I said, you know, 05:56 I look at nature and I see evil things. 05:59 I see things that break for example. 06:03 And there is this argument out there because nature breaks, 06:08 it doesn't work the way we think it should do 06:10 that somehow or other that is evidence 06:13 so that isn't created. 06:15 However, that is a flawed logic. 06:17 This is a picture here that I'm showing of a Ford Pinto. 06:22 Was this yours? And no, it wasn't mine. 06:27 Now, Ford Pintos. 06:30 They frankly were terrible cars. 06:33 I think anybody who's had an encounter with a Ford Pinto, 06:35 though they're probably a few Ford Pinto fans out there. 06:38 I'm sorry. 06:39 But that they just terrible vehicles 06:43 and but nobody doubt, so they were designed. 06:47 And they were designed for a purpose. 06:50 That, so even bad design is still design, 06:55 it still requires a mind. 06:57 The question really is, 06:59 is the design a good 07:01 or is the design an evil? 07:04 Is God good when we see these broken designs? 07:08 So let's just take a look at some of these things. 07:10 Oh, this is my beautiful dog, Jack. 07:14 And you can see he was so intelligent, 07:16 so full of love. 07:18 What Jack's doing here is 07:19 he's actually climbing into my suitcase. 07:21 He knows you're packing and leaving. 07:22 He knows I'm packing. 07:24 He wanted to come home with me. 07:25 And only less than a year ago, 07:29 I held Jack in my arms while he died. 07:33 And that was an awful, awful experience. 07:37 In fact, just talking about it now, 07:39 it kind of, it makes me, it makes me profoundly sad. 07:43 What a wonderful, lovely creature. 07:45 How can it be that our bodies grow old and we die? 07:50 How can that happen? 07:52 Well, you know, the wages of sin are death, 07:54 we know that. 07:56 So, you know, 07:58 the Bible doesn't ignore this suffering 08:00 and pain that we're in. 08:02 In fact, in Romans, Paul also wrote this, 08:06 he said, "We know that the whole creation 08:08 has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth 08:12 right up to the present time. 08:13 Not only so, but we ourselves, 08:16 who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly 08:20 as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, 08:24 the redemption of our bodies." 08:26 You see, the Bible provides hope, 08:29 the same God who created us. 08:32 Our Creator is our Redeemer, 08:35 and He adopts us, even though we rejected Him. 08:40 It's an amazing. 08:42 It's such incredibly good news. 08:45 It's rooted in our thinking about the creation. 08:48 And, of course, Paul also wrote this, 08:51 "Through one man sin entered the world, 08:53 and death through sin, 08:55 and thus death spread to all men, 08:57 because all sinned..." 08:58 This is in Romans 5, 08:59 he actually says the same thing over and over again, 09:01 so that we get it right. 09:02 We can't misunderstand here. 09:05 Death is a result of sin. Okay, and that's... 09:09 We can say, okay, that's a natural result. 09:11 You know, we separated ourselves from the life giver. 09:13 And it doesn't mean, you know, 09:14 I just want to say this in case there's somebody 09:16 watching who thinks, well, my two year old just died, 09:18 he didn't sin. 09:20 We're not talking about 09:21 the direct correlation of what you did. 09:24 I mean, maybe for the second death, yes. 09:26 But just that when sin entered the world, 09:30 everything started decaying. 09:31 It is going to be recreated. 09:33 That's right. 09:35 And this is one of the reasons that death is so awful 09:37 because it's so unjust. 09:39 Yes. 09:40 The righteous die 09:41 and the sinners die, everybody dies. 09:43 I mean, you know, this is, 09:44 we know this is not the way it should be. 09:46 Right. 09:47 But there's another kind of evil out there. 09:49 And I'm illustrating it with this viper here. 09:52 It's a rattlesnake, obviously. 09:54 And when we look at them, 09:56 when we look at their system of envenomation, 09:58 it looks like it's designed. 10:00 How do we account for that as Christians? 10:05 And the truth is, we don't know. 10:09 We don't know how that system 10:12 that has only one purpose and it is to kill. 10:16 How did that come into being? 10:18 The problem is that 10:20 we have too many possible explanations. 10:23 Yes. 10:24 Some people say the devil did it. 10:26 Some people say it's just sort of some kind of 10:29 natural consequence of things breaking down. 10:32 Some people even say God did it, 10:34 you know, God, somehow or other 10:36 when He cursed the earth and certainly 10:38 He specifically cursed snakes. 10:40 Maybe that was it, we don't know. 10:45 It's a mystery. 10:46 It is a mystery, 10:47 but what we do know is that 10:49 there is still an awful lot of beauty and goodness 10:53 that is evident in the creation. 10:55 And, oh, we also know, by the way, 10:58 that snakes are not alone. 11:00 I like tarantulas, 11:02 it kind of like a story things. 11:04 But they do have venom and they can inject it into. 11:08 So you do have to... 11:09 Don't go and pick up every tarantula out there 11:11 as I'm doing in this photograph. 11:14 But just understand, hey, you know, 11:16 there's lots of this that we see out there. 11:19 But here's what the Bible tells us. 11:22 This is Paul again, he's writing to Timothy, 11:24 my namesake. 11:26 And he says, "Here is a trustworthy saying 11:28 that deserves full acceptance: 11:30 Christ Jesus came into the world 11:33 to save sinners of whom I am the worst." 11:37 I could say the same thing about myself as well. 11:40 Yes, and that's really what the Bible brings to us 11:44 the promise of a solution to this problem. 11:46 It recognizes the problem and provides a solution. 11:50 And what the solution is, is the new creation. 11:54 And we have this wonderful view of the new creation in Isaiah, 11:58 the Book of Isaiah, which talks a lot about creation, 12:00 by the way. 12:01 Here, he writes, 12:03 "The infant will play near the cobra's den, 12:07 the young child will put his hand 12:09 into the viper's nest." 12:10 Why? 12:12 Because there will be no death, no suffering, 12:14 that's all going to be eliminated 12:16 in God's new creation. 12:19 Amen. 12:21 I'm just struck by the hope that the Bible gives. 12:27 It's not a book of sort of idealism or made up stories. 12:34 It is a book about reality, 12:36 the real things that are going on in the world 12:39 that we observe all around us, 12:41 but it is also a book about the reality that is coming. 12:47 It tells us what the solution to what we know is wrong is. 12:52 Amen. 12:54 So what does this natural evil tell us about the Creator? 12:58 Well, there are a couple of things 12:59 that are important points so we can pull out of this. 13:01 First, His selfless sacrifice 13:05 to overcome the impact of sin on His creation. 13:11 The evil makes that whole the more meaningful, 13:13 he suffered as we do. 13:15 And it also tells us about His original plan for His creation. 13:20 Remember, he had a plan of salvation 13:22 that again reveals his selflessness. 13:25 So the created things made evil by sin, 13:28 reveal the Creator's selflessness. 13:32 And that always blows my mind 13:34 when I think about the fact that He knew 13:37 before He created us, 13:39 with His foreknowledge, things were gonna go south, 13:42 and yet He planned before He even created us 13:47 to come down here, become a man and save us. 13:51 Ooh! That's amazing. 13:53 Well, we are going to take just a moment's break 13:56 and come back with a very interesting guest. 13:59 So please stay tuned. |
Revised 2019-04-15