The Cabin in the Woods

“His invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” – Romans 1:20

A man walked through the woods late one afternoon, came into a clearing, and stumbled upon a small cabin nestled beside a calm mountain stream. He examined the outside of the cabin, finding a well maintained structure of four sturdy walls, a thatch roof, a tidy, recently swept porch, and a neat pile of split logs propped against one wall. He walked up the steps and into the front door.

Inside the cabin he found a clean, well lit room. There was a cot in the back corner, a large pot for scrubbing dishes, a few chairs surrounding a worn, but clean table, and a fire in the fireplace heating a pot full of a delicious smelling stew. The man glanced around the room and thought to himself, “how fortunate I am to have stumbled upon this randomly occurring natural phenomenon so well suited to provide a comfortable environment for the provision of my needs.” And thinking thus, he promptly ate a large bowl of stew, threw his boots in the floor, and lay down on the cot and went to sleep.

Meanwhile, the builder and current resident of the cabin finished washing in the stream, pulled his shirt and coat back on, and walked up to the cabin in the growing twilight, whistling to himself. Upon opening the front door, seeing muddy boots lying in his floor, and spotting the discarded bowl on his table, he noticed the man lying fast asleep on his bed. With an abrupt voice, and a not too gentle hand, he roused the intruder from his sleep and demanded to know what the meaning of this presumptuous and ungrateful invasion was.

“I’m sorry sir,” the man replied, “I was under the assumption that this cabin was a natural occurring phenomenon, sprung by chance from the soil, water, wood, and air. The existence of a builder and owner would have been extremely inconvenient for me at the time, as I was tired and hungry, so naturally I assumed you did not exist.” Upon hearing this excuse the builder shook his head and firmly ushered the squatter out into the darkness. Before he closed the door, he called down the porch to the dejected traveler, “If you had but knocked I would have let you in and shown you full hospitality, but, in this case, ignorance is just another word for stupidity, and will get you nowhere at all.”

***
Many men and women look around them, at a world perfectly suited for human life, tilted at the exact right angle, situated the exact right distance from the sun, with the exact levels of oxygen and Co2 necessary for life, at a world full of sunsets, llamas, random insects, art, music, love, the grand canyon, the internet, the ocean, rainbows…the beautiful, the good, the true, the absurd, and they see chance and natural phenomenon. Yet supposedly Christians are the ignorant, narrow minded ones.