The Tools of the Universe

Imagine you are out shopping one beautiful Saturday afternoon at an outdoor market. Booths are set up for hundreds of yards, craftsmen are not only hawking their wares, but actually demonstrating how they are creating and building the things they are selling.

As you walk along, you notice one particular booth is unoccupied, but in it is a single chest of drawers, a small table, and a set of tools. As you approach the finely made chest of drawers, it seems to get even better and more amazing the closer you examine it. The workmanship is beyond anything you've ever seen in prefabricated or machine made furniture, it is simply beautiful.

The entire chest seems to have been created from mahogany, hand-tooled and shaped. You grab a drawer pull and the drawer comes to you almost unbidden, as if it is opening itself. It slides back into place smoothly and noiselessly. AMAZING, you think to yourself.

Then you notice next to the piece, a small table full of tools. There are chisels, awls, mallets, fine saws, a hand drill and lathe, some of the most amazing tools you've ever seen. It's no wonder the unseen Craftsman made such amazing furniture with these tools, you think to yourself. You find yourself wondering if you could learn to do this, or at least purchase the piece so you can own it yourself and admire it every day. You look around for the Craftsman, but the only evidence you can find that he even exists is his exquisite furniture.

Now, in that situation, ask yourself a simple question: If I pick up a fine saw, examine it, understand it, even try it out on some wood myself, at that point would I say to myself something like this:

"Well, I've found the saw. I've determined how it was used. I've even proven that I can saw with it and even master it. Therefore, I've decided that no Craftsman is needed to create this beautiful piece of furniture in front of me! I've decided that, based on my understanding of the tools and their application, that this chest just leapt into being all by itself. Since I understand the tools, now I own the finished product."

Sounds kind of silly, right?

But are we not doing the EXACT same thing when we use science and our meager understanding of physics, matter, time and space to "prove" that God does not exist and did not create the Universe? Now that we hold the tools, we hold the truth of the final product?

Sounds just as silly to me.

I'm not attacking science, not in any way. But intelligence and knowledge has always had an arrogance all its own, and we need to be wary that we do not throw out the reality of the Creator, and our own Creation, to satisfy the god of science.

Surely, despite our amazing understanding, we understand very little of the actual creation of the Universe. The best we can do is to guess that billions of years ago, all the stuff in the universe was in one place and exploded outwards and its still exploding today.

Hardly accounts for the complexity of man. Certainly does not account for the beauty of nature. Will never account for our ability to hear and see the God of our Creation.

So remember, when you see the exquisite furniture, the finest of tools, and take them for yourself, that in no way makes you the Carpenter.