The created world

Phil Arthur, Lancaster

Before it all went wrong

Read Genesis 1 and you are sure to be struck by a phrase that occurs a number of times, God saw that it was good. After he made the dry land (v10) and covered it with vegetation (v12) on the third day of creation and then after he had made sun and moon and ‘flung stars into space’ on the fourth day (v18) we meet the same phrase. It occurs again in verses 21 and 25 after the creation of the animal kingdom. Finally, in v31, after the creation of man, we read that God saw everything that he had made, and indeed it was very good. You can almost sense his delight. We in our small way like to examine work that we have completed and take satisfaction in it, but nothing that we can produce is ever quite perfect. Here we see the Sovereign of the universe looking at his handiwork and taking joy in it. It is worth bearing in mind that his standards are exacting. Everything would have to be just so to meet his requirements.

Even now, many centuries after the havoc introduced into the created order by the fall, the created world is full of things that take the breath away. At different times I have gazed in awe at the High Atlas Mountains in Morocco, stood at the base of 300-foot high Cedar Trees in the Hoh Rainforest in Washington State in North America and been left almost speechless by the thunderous cataracts of the waterfall known as Gullfoss in Iceland, reputedly greater than Niagara.

But creation teems with marvels on the small scale as well as on the large. Every baby born into the world is a miracle of complexity and precision. The intricate complexity of snowflakes, spiders’ webs and the human eye leave us ‘lost in wonder, love and praise’. If the natural world is wonderful now, what must it all have been like before sin spoiled it? Imagine a world with no thorns or thistles, no dangerous beasts, no acid rain, melting ice caps or global warming. Any scientist who managed to create a single fly would be loaded with honours and distinctions by an admiring world. Why then do we not admire the One who shaped the continents in a moment, carpeted them with green things and then gave every region a distinctive ecology with its intricate natural checks and balances and its habitats teeming with a bewildering variety of animal life?

Even though God’s perfect creation has been marred by the fall, it still has something to say to us. Even in a universe where things are not as they were at the beginning, The heavens declare the glory of God (Psalm 19:1). Turning now to Romans 1:20 we learn that God has revealed himself to mankind through the things that are made (v20). The whole creation shouts with a deafening voice, ‘There is a God!’ The universe is so splendid that the only reasonable deduction is that someone special created and controls it. Take a walk round Buckingham Palace: look at the family portraits, the photographs of the children, the sumptuous furnishings, the banqueting hall and the staterooms, the kennels full of corgis, the stables with all their gilded carriages, the royal standard on the flagstaff and all the soldiers on guard duty. Who could look at all that and then say: ‘The Queen doesn’t exist!’ Yet some people can look at a range of towering mountains, gaze at the Milky Way spangled across the night sky or think about the intricate detail of the human brain and still maintain that it all just happened. Incidentally, the Bible insists that the created universe tells us what God is like. It is not just that there is a vague and shadowy being out there somewhere.

The God who made the world has revealed certain of his invisible attributes, his qualities, by doing so. What does the universe tell us? It proclaims that God is extremely powerful and incredibly clever. And there is more! God cares for the world that he has made. He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust (Matthew 5:45). He even lavishes the blessings of sun and rain on people who ignore him and say that he is not there! I heard recently of a farmer in Northern Ireland who loved nature. Whenever he saw something that moved him he would say, ‘Well done, Lord!’ A new-born calf or a field of daffodils, the wonders of nature all tell the same story: God exists and he is very good.

Shutting our ears to the voice of creation

The apostle Paul goes on to say in Romans 1:20 that every human being knows for a fact that God exists. His attributes are seen and understood. The created universe reveals his Godhead. Mankind is left in no doubt that there is a God to be reckoned with. There is no shortage of evidence. But confronted with this truth, human beings suppress it (Romans 1:18). When you suppress something, you push it down, force it out of sight, and try to convince yourself that it isn’t there any more. People suppress the truth about God in a variety of ways. Atheism is one of them, the various forms of false religion are others. Nevertheless, the main point is brutally clear. In effect, people have talked themselves into thinking that God either isn’t there or can safely be ignored. But God won’t be suppressed: he won’t go away. Trying to ignore him is like trying to keep a beach ball under water by sitting on it. It just bobs up to the surface again and again. Paul’s verdict on the human race is depressing. Our planet is populated by a species which owes everything to the Maker of the universe but which truculently refuses to acknowledge its debt to him.