Sunday, June 3, 2012

Randomness and God


     Recently I have been pondering the idea of whether there is randomness in the universe. Are events in nature like rain, earthquakes, solar storms just random events? If these can be random, then what about stuff that occurs during our everyday life like finding a car park, or kicking your toe on a rock, or winning lotto? It must be noted that if something is random then it doesn’t have a purpose.



Is the idea of randomness and purposelessness consistent with the way God works? Where does the idea of randomness come from anyway?

The two ideas are everywhere in the Western world, they are in the way we think and the way we speak. Even a trivial remark like ‘best of luck’ is based on the idea that the events in life are random. These ideas haven’t always been in the Western world. In history the Western world always believed that even the most insignificant events were the result of God’s will, there was no concept of things occurring without a purpose. But when atheism started to take over the Western world, it started transforming the way we think about things. Because the atheist believes that there is no God, he also believes that absolutely everything is random and has no purpose. This is exactly where we get the idea of ‘luck’. So randomness and purposelessness actually come from the atheist way of thinking.



So after pondering these things for a while I came to realise that I had unwittingly adopted the ideas of randomness and purposelessness into the way I view the world. I thought I knew atheism well enough to prevent it from invading my personal worldview because I spent half a decade actually studying atheism and debating atheists. But it seems that the ideas of atheism are so deeply ingrained into the Western world that I unwittingly adopted some aspects of atheism into the way that I view the world; my worldview.



My personal worldview was built by spending a great deal of time studying the natural sciences. I had noticed how everything in the universe ticked along like clockwork (albeit clockwork that’s running down and malfunctioning) without the immediate presence of God; planets revolve, our bodies repair themselves and clouds create rain all without any supernatural action. These observations lead me to think that events in nature are random and have no purpose, events like rain, earthquakes, the motion of planets, bushfires.



When I started looking into the Bible it became clear to me that randomness and purposelessness are simply NOT Scriptural concepts, but as I noted before, they instead come from atheism.

While most Christians have no trouble believing that God is all-powerful, few are aware of how surprisingly powerful this actually is! Being all-powerful, all knowing and means that God has complete control over His creation. He knows & sees all (1Jn3:20; Ps139; Pr5:21;15:3; Heb4:13; Isa46:10), and nothing is too hard for Him (Gen18:14; Job42:2; Jer32:17; Mt19:26). Even Satan and his minions are fully bound by the will of God, as the story of Job testifies. So if nothing happens without His knowledge, then absolutely nothing can happen without God’s approval; not the explosion of a star, not an earthquake, not a car crash, not a broken finger nail, nor even the motion of an atom in the atmosphere. God’s dominion is absolute.



God is described throughout Scripture as making all things conform to His will. Everything does His bidding, and nothing can resist (Is 43:13; Rm8:28; Eph 1:11; Ps155:3,135:6; Dan4:35).

The picture of God that is painted in Scripture is a God of purpose and design. I can find absolutely no Scriptural reference to randomness or purposelessness, it is totally foreign. It does not fit into the Christian worldview, it only fits into the atheist’s worldview.



So this puts things into a better perspective: If God has perfect control over the movement of even all the atoms, then it makes perfect sense that God would direct the motion of all things in the universe to do His will; the movement of the atoms, the planets, the clouds, and the winds: Everything is in His control and is used to achieve his will. So not only does it seem nonsensical to me for a God who has total control over everything to allow random movements of things, I actually question if it would even be possible for there to be randomness if God has total control! It seems to me that this would be a logical contradiction, just like a ‘married bachelor’ or a ‘straight curve’. So if there is no randomness in the world, then nothing can be purposeless either.






For me, believing in randomness in the universe became a spiritual ‘wall’ in my heart which was preventing the Holy Spirit from fully working in me. How could I fully embrace and believe in the reality of things like miracles and God working through events in everyday life -even though I wanted to- while at the same time holding the contrary belief that the way the world works is random? The simple fact is that God’s actions can not be found in random events.

The spiritual effect of me now believing that God’s will is in everything has resulted in a total revolution of my attitude in life. Stress, anxiety and the burden of expectation has vanished. Believing that absolutely everything is God’s will means that there is nothing worth fretting over. This is no longer an unobtainable fantasy for me, it is now a reality, and the peace in my heart and the joy in my stride that this reality brings is beyond what I thought was possible.



To everything there is a season, and a time for every matter or purpose under heavenEcc 3:1
The Lord has made everything [to accommodate itself and contribute] to its own end and His own purpose—even the wicked [are fitted for their role] for the day of calamity and evil.” Prov 16:4

No comments:

Post a Comment