The Gospel: Reality's Foundation

I would like to address the gospel’s relevance and necessity in our society and our world. But first I would like to lay a foundation regarding observations about the world we live in and our place in it. Life abounds with poignant questions like: who are we, how did we come to be here? If there is a God, what type of relationship does mankind have toward Him?

The gospel must be preached to the whole world, for it is a universal message for the salvation of all mankind, regardless of age or gender, ethnicity or background. But to cross ethnic, cultural or societal boundaries one must effectually begin by laying a foundation. So here we have what I suppose one might call apologetics or theology 101: the First Cause. The complexity of our universe implies a Creator; the alternative, a self-created or ageless universe goes against what man knows from studies into modern science.

Organized intelligence (books, computer programs, etc) doesn’t arise from time and chance; an intelligent agency manufactures them. Humanity is a complex being whose genetic makeup is more complicated than the most sophisticated computer technology around. It implies a Creator. The expansive universe and the microscopic world that surrounds us argues for intelligent agency; otherwise man is left with an impossible network of irrelevant questions that can have no answers, since before there was written history there remains nothing but speculation and assumptions of gaging the passage of eons gone by that are suspect at best. 

An effect is never greater than its cause. Humanity with our intelligence, morality and ability to think in the abstract excels the non-living, unintelligent chance processes that supposedly created us.

God’s existence lends an answer to man’s penchant for moral behavior. Morals may differ, but when anyone talks about something being right or wrong they are making a moral judgment. It’s an appeal to authority.

Morality only makes sense if God exists; otherwise morality is only an artificial construct to safeguard the majority. Right and wrong only work in the context of antithesis.

Morality implies that some authority designated what is right and wrong; furthermore, man’s conscience bears witness that we are aware to various extents that this is so because we operate in accordance with this authority much of the time. There are parameters by which morality constrains us, and we acknowledge in ourselves and others when we have stepped beyond that boundary. Is morality an illusory social construct, or does it exist natively within every society on earth as far back as written history attests? If so, this raises some interesting questions about a common origin (to say nothing of how similarly the moral order tends to flow in every culture and country).

This strongly implies a universal moral order. Like laws in science such as gravity there are moral laws that have been given to mankind that we ought not to break. The difference is that, unlike the laws of science, moral laws can be broken by an act of volition. We ought not to trespass the moral order, but there is a vast difference between ought not and cannot. Now, who is the giver of the moral order, that established an organized universe and peopled a planet with a race capable of excelling above inanimate nature and the animals both in comprehension and creativity? God willing, we will press on soon and look a little further.