To Be Congruent

I awoke this morning from my usual sound sleep, and made my way into the kitchen for a glass of cold water. I stumbled over the kitchen garbage can—which had been filled almost to overflowing when I last saw it—now completely empty and lying on its side. Suddenly fully awake, I was even more surprised to find a beautifully presented meal spread on the table. Thinking I was the only one in the house, my adrenaline kicked in. I quickly confirmed that all the doors were securely dead-bolted. There were no broken windows. No noise had awakened me during the night. How could I possibly explain the missing garbage and the freshly prepared meal?

Would you believe that the one spontaneously became the other?

Neither would I.

But millions try to convince themselves that some unknown substance, passing through processes we cannot replicate over periods of time we cannot fathom became the complex universe in which we live.

In my foolish example—and, lest you entertain a concern about my mental stability, it is all fiction—at least I provided a source for the initial substance, and a product of relative simplicity. Yet, into logical and reasoning—though young and impressionable—minds, we drill the idea that the virtually unlimited complexity and profound beauty and incredible harmony of the world we know and enjoy just happened!

We might as well bang on tin cans and call it music, or throw paint at canvas and call it art, or believe trash spontaneously morphs into meals.

And we wonder why our world becomes increasingly chaotic.

Let’s be clear. This is not about evolution or six days; we’re not concerned here with method or duration. Those may be topics for another day. This is simply about one truth; a simple principle that every uneducated child intuitively knows and understands: Everything has a maker.

Order is purposed. Beauty is intentional. Our world is logical.

To teach that the world and its population came about by random or chaotic action and to then demand responsible behavior and productive effort is illogical. The dissonance between those ideas creates confusion, demands denial of the one or the other, and ultimately leads to acceptance of chaos and consequent despair and anarchy, or acceptance of purpose, which produces hope and order; Or strange wavering between both.

I am not suggesting any particular religious dogma. I am arguing for logical congruity. Life, and all of life, and every stage and level of life, must make sense. If chaos reigns, individual responsibility is futile. If purpose rules, even irresponsibility and its results can be explained.

This matter of our origin, of the need for logic in explaining our very being, is a vital and fundamental principle. Perhaps the most vital, because the most basic. Failure to acknowledge a Creator makes it impossible to genuinely acknowledge a god of any kind. Before men can come to know God as Father, Friend, or Savior, they must acknowledge Him as Creator.
There is a reason the Bible begins with, “In the beginning, God created…”

And there is a reason that before any of the great actions of faith are recounted in Hebrews 11, this fundamental principle undergirding them all is clearly stated:

By faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God’s command, that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen. Hebrews 11:3 (NLT)

That kind of faith is not blind; that kind of faith is logical.

Our actions are always determined by our beliefs. To attempt to live contrary to what we know to be true produces incongruity; absurdity. Let’s be people of truth; let’s live, proclaim, and teach spiritual and intellectual congruity.

Come now, and let us reason together, Says the LORD. Isaiah 1:18 (NASB)