Читать книгу Faith and Practice - Frank E. Wilson - Страница 9

Nothing can ever be proved absolutely. Everything in this world is related to everything else. Therefore if you are to understand anything completely you must be able to understand everything. For the same reason, to prove any one thing absolutely means that you must be able to prove everything. That is rather a large order for human intelligence.

Nevertheless, when we tell one another that we can prove this and that, our statements do really have a meaning. We do not say that we have complete proof for anything, but that we have enough for working purposes. It is not absolute evidence that convinces us, but a preponderance of evidence that one thing is more true and accurate than another.

It is important to keep this distinction in mind when we are considering religious matters. There is a good deal of loose popular clatter to the effect that religious convictions rest upon wishes and imagination while legal, logical, and scientific conclusions are based on demonstrable facts. The latter, we are told, constitute proof while the former is not much more than charitable conjecture.

Yet it is a matter of common knowledge that many things are known to be true which can never be legally proved. Conversely, the court records are full of instances where something has been legally proved which turns out later to be entirely false.

Similarly our systems of logic are of human contrivance and are therefore bound to be vulnerable. For example, there is the classical bit of logic taken from the Psalms of David:

David said, “All men are liars”;

Therefore, David, being a man, was a liar;

Therefore, what David said is not true;

Therefore all men are not liars.

Of course, it is nonsense but it is logical.

Scientific proof is generally considered more dependable and, on the whole, it is. But there also the footing may become slippery. The recently promulgated theory of relativity and the whole scope of the “New Physics” show clearly that many points which were considered scientifically established a generation ago are called in serious question today.

So when someone bluntly demands that we should prove the existence of God, we reply—what do you mean by proof? In the first place there are different kinds of proof. You don’t prove a material fact in the same way that you prove a mathematical formula. You may demonstrate to your own satisfaction that a stone is hard by feeling it, but you do not convince yourself that two and two make four by touching the numbers. Evidence for the existence of God is of a different quality than either of these, and you must not expect to prove God by some laboratory experiment. And in the next place, nothing can be proved absolutely, leaving no possible question unanswered. But we do believe we can produce a preponderance of reasonable evidence that God does exist. If you say that this is a call upon faith and merely begs the question, we reply that the proof of anything begins with a call upon faith. In the cleanest scientific experiment you must start by assuming that you have a mind which will work and that there is reliability and uniformity in the laws of nature. At the outset you cannot be sure of either of these points, but you must assume they are true if you are to make any beginning at all.

Well, then, let’s see about God. I start with myself and the world in which I live. Where did we come from: We are the product of preceding ages. But where did these preceding ages come from? They are the result of still earlier ages. But there must have been something before them and something else still further back. So we continue to retreat into a past ever more dim and distant until our reason explodes and our minds stop ticking. Somewhere we must come to a pause and say—here is the origin of things. There must be a First Cause. Otherwise common sense collapses and all our thinking loses its validity for want of an anchor. We would be like a man reaching off into thin air for a foothold and ending up in a crash of nothingness. Of course, you can’t explain it but you can’t explain anything else without it. The alternative is to try to live in a delirium of unreason. That First Cause we call God—the Creator—the Source of all things—and our very existence demands Him, unless we prefer to question our own existence. In that case, we might as well fold up and sink out of sight.

Then I begin to study the world in which I live. The first thing I discover is that my world is intelligible. It can be understood and my mind is capable of understanding it. Obviously the world must have been put together with some plan and sequence or there would be nothing intelligible in it for me to discover. But an intelligible world necessitates an Intelligence back of it with which my own intelligence corresponds. Suppose I study the operation of my automobile and learn how the various gears, and rods, and shafts perform their functions. Nobody needs to tell me that they work the way they do because they were made to work that way. Well, then, someone made them. Try if you will to tell me that my carburetor just happened to fall in the right place, that my wires by pure chance dropped on the spark plugs, that my wheels casually rolled themselves up and landed on the axles. I would very quickly form my opinion of your mental condition. Because I am able to understand the mechanism of that car proves conclusively that someone of similar understanding made it to be understood. My world is much more complicated and my comprehension of it grows much more slowly, but every step teaches me with increasing clarity that it is understandable, and that there must be an Intelligence which has produced it and continues to govern it. Otherwise my own intelligence is nullified. That Supreme Intelligence we call God.

As I continue to study my world I learn that there is a purpose in this creation. It is subject to certain laws and obedient to certain controls. I am able to grasp enough of all this to know that I must reckon with these laws if I am to keep on living. As I adapt myself to them and cooperate with them, I find new and wonderful results forthcoming. By splicing these laws together with a purpose I can ride in railroad trains and fly in airplanes. I have not made these laws of steam power and aeronautics. I have simply discovered them and cooperated with them. But they have always been there. The steam engine and the airplane were perfectly possible a thousand years ago but the men of that day didn’t know it. The marvels of a thousand years hence are quite possible today but we don’t yet know how to get at them.

These purposes are inherent in the laws of the universe. They are there all the time whether we uncover them today or tomorrow. Now laws do not arise by spontaneous combustion. They come from a Lawgiver. And if there is a purpose to be discovered in those laws, nobody but the Lawgiver could have put the purpose in them. Constantly we find these purposes emerging as we cooperate with the laws, and the greater our cooperation, the greater the purpose. All of which points to the natural conclusion that there must be a dominating purpose of which all of these lesser ones are minor manifestations, and that whenever the time comes that mankind fully cooperates with all the laws of the Lawgiver, that final purpose will be achieved.

This Lawgiver we call God, and the purpose implanted in His laws we call the Divine Will. The state of life in which His purpose is fulfilled we call the Kingdom or Realm of God. So we pray, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done.” There you find real progress with an end to be attained. Otherwise life becomes a hodge-podge of disjointed impulses and a lawless nightmare of idiotic fantasies. There must be a Lawgiver with a purpose for His laws.

Here we are likely to be confronted with that horrid thing called Evolution. Doesn’t it seriously undercut any idea of a God with a design and purpose for His creation? The answer is—no. After all, the theory of evolution is a theory which may or may not be true, but if it is true it actually reinforces the idea. The principle of evolution simply states that on its physical side higher forms of life have emerged from lower forms by graded steps, some of which we have been able tentatively to identify. The process as we know it is frequently punctuated with blind spots but, on the whole it is a reasonable explanation. All it says is that the Creator began with elementary forms of life in which were resident the possibilities of development. In accordance with the Creator’s own laws that development has taken place. The design and the purpose are strengthened by the theory and, incidentally, it is thoroughly consonant with the creation picture given in the first chapters of Genesis.

Occasionally popular clamor is raised over the assertion that evolution teaches how man is descended from the monkeys. Really it teaches no such thing. The theory is that human life began in a very simple form which gradually developed into something more complex. In the course of development some lines moved upward and some down. Remember that evolution does not necessarily mean advancement to a higher state—it may also indicate deterioration to a lower condition. Human life would mark the upward swing while the apes might illustrate a degraded development on the same evolutionary principle. When some students find certain similarities between humans and apes, they are suggesting that both may have had a common ancestry which is a very different thing from saying that one may be descended from the other. In any case, such conjectures are incidental to the broad theory of evolution itself.

As I consider myself and my world there is another factor which I may not overlook—namely, the sense of moral responsibility. Usually we assemble all such evidences under the general name of “conscience.” There is a moral sense which is universal in mankind. It prompts us to do things because we ought to do them whether we want to or not. At different times and among different peoples this inner impulse expresses itself in a variety of moral codes and customs, but the variations only emphasize the universal presence of the impulse itself.

All people are conscious of a distinction between right and wrong. It is quite true that what was considered right once may be considered entirely otherwise now, but that simply means growth and advancement in the response to conscience. The distinction between right and wrong, the consciousness of moral responsibility is there, inbred in us, a normal factor in human nature. Neither can it be said that this is an artificially cultivated reaction to the conventional standards of our day because conscience often forces us to go diametrically opposite to current public opinion. The philosopher Kant called it the “categorical imperative,” and was so deeply impressed that he counted it the most compelling evidence of the existence of a Supreme Moral Arbiter. The universal presence of moral consciousness among men implies a moral principle embedded in the very constitution of human life. It is another law which demands a Lawgiver. That Moral Arbiter we call God—the Decider, the Referee, the Umpire, the Judge of human conduct. Every time I say “I ought” I am predicating a Reason for doing something which I might not want to do at all. Otherwise I am an impractical sentimentalist for abandoning the standards of teeth and talons which should properly keep me selfishly ferocious in all my behavior.

Add to these considerations the further fact that men have always held some sort of belief in a Supreme Being. It is not surprising that religion has often assumed grotesque aspects and that the gods of primitive races have been obnoxious monstrosities in the light of modern learning. The soul of man has mounted by painful stages just as his body and his mind. The important fact is that men have always sought God. It is inconceivable that there should be such an instinct for God unless there were a God to be found. Otherwise human life would be irrational and human experience would be a fictitious dream.

No one of these points mentioned above can be called a “proof” of the existence of God. But if you add them up, the cumulative effect of them is very impressive. If proof means the preponderance of evidence, it is difficult to escape an affirmative answer. “Is such-and-such a place inhabited?” “Yes.” “How do you know? Did you see people there?” “I found the ground cleared and the land under cultivation, a house built with smoke rising from the chimney and curtains in the windows, newly-washed garments hanging on a line, tools scattered here and there, live stock feeding in a meadow, and I heard someone call as I passed by. No, I saw no person and I got no affidavit of occupancy, but the preponderance of evidence proves to me that the place must be inhabited.” Most people would agree that it is harder to explain away the evidence for God than to accept it. Evidence that God does not exist is practically nil. All things considered, it is less strain on our credulity to believe that God is than to believe that He isn’t.

Some people can never be convinced of anything contrary to their own prejudices. Once on a railroad train I fell into conversation with an opinionated growler who held forth on the charity racket, insisting that all the money raised for charity was so much graft for the hypocrites who professed an interest in the needy. Finally I said: “I have been a director on our local charity board for fifteen years and I know its operations inside-out. What you say is perfect nonsense—unless, perhaps you believe I am piling up my own bank-roll out of it.” To which he replied, “I wouldn’t be at all surprised.” Such a man would never be convinced of God unless some personal catastrophe crushed through his ugly shell of self-righteousness. Sometimes that happens.

What, then, does this preponderance of evidence indicate? It indicates God the Source of all creative power, ever present sustaining His creation, the Supreme Intelligence, the Moral Guide, and the final Answer to human searching (in theological language—omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient). Put this all together and it says one thing more—Personality. For when we speak of a person we mean a being possessed of reason, intelligence, self-consciousness, a sense of moral responsibility.

The evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of a Personal God, and now we want to know Him. That brings us to Revelation.