Robert Laidlaw - The Reason Why

The Reason Why

by

Robert Laidlaw

Dunmore East, Co. Waterford,

CrossReach Publications

2018

Hope. Inspiration. Trust.

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Contents

Suppose that a young man sent his fiance a diamond ring costing him $10,000, placing it in a little case which the jeweller threw in for nothing. How disappointed he would be, if upon meeting her a few days later, she would say, Sweetheart, that was a lovely little box you sent me. To take special care of it, I promise to keep it wrapped up in a safe place so that no harm shall come to it.

Rather ridiculous, isnt it? Yet it is just as foolish for men and women to be spending all their time and thought on their bodies, which are only cases containing the real self, the soul, which, the Bible tells us, will persist long after our bodies have crumbled to dust. The soul is of infinite value. Longfellow expressed it this way: Tell me not in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream, For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. Life is real, life is earnest, And the grave is not its goal. Dust thou art, to dust returneth, Was not spoken of the soul.

Indeed that statement was not made of the soul, for in Mark 8:36 our Lord Himself asks, For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? So, in Christs estimate, mans soul is something incomparably more valuable than the whole world.

I would like to discuss with you some of the basic questions that relate to your most valuable possession, your soul. For instance:

Is there a God? Is the Bible true? Is man accountable? Is there divine forgiveness?

These are some of the problems which most perplex those who think seriously about the future.

How may I know there is a God?

I have an innate conviction that God exists. No matter how my intellect had tried, in the past, to produce reasons proving He was not, or how much I had wanted to believe that there was no God, that still, small voice came to me again and again, just as it comes to you, in the quiet of lifes more sober moments. Yes, I knew that at least for me there was a God. And as I looked at others I realized many were looking for God, seeking in religion to silence that same voice that spoke within me. True, there are some men who dont believe in God. But to me the problems of unbelief in God are greater than the problems of belief. To believe that unaided dead matter produced mind, that mind produced conscience, and that the chaos of chance produced the cosmos of order as we see it in nature, seems to call not for faith but for credulity.

The president of the New York Scientific Society once gave eight reasons why he believed there was a God. The first was this: Take 10 identical coins and mark them 1 to 10. Place them in your pocket. Now take one out. There is 1 chance in 10 that you will get number one. Now replace it, and the overall chance that number two follows number one is not 1 in 10, but 1 in 100. With each new coin taken out, the risk will be multiplied by 10, so that the chance of ten following nine, is 1 in 10,000,000,000 or 10 billion. It seemed so unbelievable to me that I immediately took pencil and paper and very quickly discovered he was right. Try it yourself. That is why George Gallup, the American statistician, says, I could prove God statistically. Take the human body alonethe chance that all its functions would just happen is a statistical monstrosity.

Surely no thoughtful person would wish to base their eternal future on a statistical monstrosity? Perhaps that is why the Bible says in Psalm 14:1 The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.

Suppose we are standing at an airport, watching a big jet coming in for a landing. I say to you, A lot of people think that plane is the result of someones carefully designed plans, but I know better. There was really no intelligence at work on it at all. In some strange way the metal just came out of the ground, and fashioned itself into flat sheets. And then these metal sheets slowly began to grow together and formed the body and wings and tail. Then after a long while the engines slowly grew in place, and one day some people came along and discovered the plane, all finished and ready to fly. You would probably consider me a lunatic and move farther into the crowd to escape my senseless chatter. Why? You know that where there is a design there must be a designer, and having seen other products of the human mind just like the plane in question, you are positive that it was planned by human intelligence and built by human skill.

Yet there are highly-educated, professional men who tell us that the entire universe came into being by chance, that there was really no higher intelligence at work in it. They claim to know no God but nature.

On the other hand there are many thoughtful men who believe that God is transcendent, namely, that while He reveals Himself in nature (in that its laws and principles are expressions of His power and wisdom), He Himself is greater than the universe. But all that atheists can offer us is the riddle of design without a designer, of creation without a Creator, of effect without cause.

Every thoughtful person believes in a series of causes and effects in nature, each effect becoming the cause of some other effect. The acceptance of this as fact logically compels one to admit that there must be a beginning to any series. There could never have been a first effect if there had not been a First Cause. This First Cause to me is Deity.

Although man has discovered many of the laws that govern electricity, even the greatest scientists cannot really define it. Then why do we believe it exists? Because we see the manifestations of its existence in our homes and industries and streets. Though I do not know where God came from, I must believe He exists, because I see the manifestations of Him everywhere around me. Dr Wernher von Braun, director of NASA research, and developer of the rocket which put Americas first space satellite into orbit, says,

In our modern world, many people seem to feel that our rapid advances in the field of science render such things as religious belief untimely or old-fashioned. They wonder why we should be satisfied in believing something when science tells us that we know so many things. The simple answer to this contention is that we are confronted with many more mysteries of nature today than when the age of scientific enlightenment began. With every new answer unfolded, science had consistently discovered at least 3 new questions.

The answers indicate that everything as well-ordered and perfectly created as are our earth and universe must have a Maker, a Master Designer. Anything so orderly, so perfect, so precisely balanced, so majestic as this creation can only be the product of a Divine idea.