I don’t like being lied to. Who does? In school, I was told I was a highly-evolved accident whose distant ancestor was pond chemicals. According to my teachers, God didn’t make me. I came from pond scum. Apparently, all of my thoughts and feelings were just the result of chemical reactions in the brain. I had no mind of my own, because I didn’t have a mind at all. I wasn’t free, because everything I did was predetermined by the makeup of my brain. I was told the only purpose in life was to pass my genes on to the next generation. In other words, I was an accident in a world filled with death, pain and suffering, and my only purpose was to bring another accident into this world. Depressing? Welcome to high school biology.
These days, people are shocked when young people commit suicide. You’ll hear them say “They just had so much to live for!” Really? Like what? If evolution is true, life’s a cruel accident. What’s the point of living? Is it about getting filthy rich? Well, being the richest person in the cemetery won’t do a lot of good. Is it about partying and having a good time? How boring! Besides, what’s the point of being the happiest-looking corpse in the morgue? Is it about leaving a legacy? Who cares? I’d be dead, so I wouldn’t be able to enjoy everyone loving on my memory.
Indeed, when you tell young people they are mindless animals who can’t control themselves, why would anyone be surprised when they murder their classmates? If there is no God, what’s right and wrong is a matter of personal opinion. Anything goes. Why would I obey laws? They’re nothing more than one group’s opinions about right and wrong. Who cares what they think? Why would their atoms be more “moral” than mine? So, if murdering my classmates is good for me, why not do it? After all, what’s true for you isn’t true for me, right?
Ultimately, this is why people like evolution. We’re supposedly the most ‘evolved’ things around, so we get to be in charge. Everyone likes to play God. What if kids are depressed about being told they are completely worthless? Survival of the fittest, they’ll say. How charming.
Fortunately, evolution is a lie. The Bible says God created everything, and it’s so obvious that people are “without excuse” (Romans 1:20). Put differently, the Bible says there’s no excuse for atheism. The question isn’t whether or not God exists. No, the question is how you feel about God. Do you love Him, or do you hate Him? There’s no middle ground.
Of course, this is the God of the Bible we’re talking about. We’re not talking about all of the made-up versions of “God” out there. Sure, it’s more comfortable to believe in a “God” of our own making, but that’s no different than worshiping a wooden statue. You can take your ‘coexist’ bumper sticker and throw it in the trash, because it should say ‘contradict.’ All religions can’t be true. There is only one way to God, and Jesus said “I am the way” (John 14:6). Everything else is a detour people stumble onto trying to avoid the Way, and I have firsthand experience.
I spent the first 21 years of my life running from God. Now, I never fully bought into evolution. The idea that everything created itself seemed ridiculous. How does something that doesn’t exist make itself? It made no sense. “Chance did it,” my biology teacher would say, but blind luck seemed like a stretch. Try telling your biology teacher chance ate your homework. How unlucky!
In all seriousness, if you saw a snowman, would you think it evolved from snowflakes by chance over millions of years? If you saw a sandcastle, would you say that it evolved from grains of sand by chance? If you said yes, your family would stage an intervention. Still, my teachers seemed pretty enthusiastic about evolution. They were the ‘experts,’ so, I figured God could’ve used evolution. Eventually, this also seemed ridiculous. It contradicts the first page of the Bible! I mean, if you can’t trust page one, how can you trust the rest of it?
For my part, I didn’t care about the details. I was too busy living the good life. I thought I had it all. Certainly, I was what society would consider a ‘good’ kid. I didn’t do drugs. I didn’t sleep around. I got good grades. Gold stars all around! Truth be told, I was an egomaniac. What, you couldn’t tell?
For some reason, I thought that unless you were Hitler, you were going to Heaven. You just have to be good enough, and I definitely thought I qualified. What about the bad stuff I had done? No big deal. All of the good stuff would cancel it out. Well, there’s no point system to get into Heaven. You’re either perfect, or you’re not getting in (Matthew 5:48). I thought I was pretty awesome, but even I could see perfection wasn’t going to happen. I thought the “Big Guy” and I were cool, but I found out that to be cool with God, you have to be cool with Jesus.
No, it wasn’t dramatic. I didn’t have a major tragedy. I was selfish. I knew I couldn’t live up to God’s standard, and I didn’t want to be punished for it. I asked Jesus to save me. How’s that for self-preservation?
You’ve heard the saying “time heals all wounds.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Time won’t heal all wounds. Jesus will. By His wounds, we are healed (Isaiah 53:5). That’s what this book is all about. There is a real answer to the why question, and it’s much better than anything you could ever make up.