Posted by Kathleen Skaar, Executive Director CLI
This past weekend Anders and I were at Roan Mountain in Tennessee at Fairhaven ministries. God had blessed us with a couple of days of breathtaking beauty! We were delighted with His canvas of reds, yellows and browns. Yes, the leaves were changing. It is a cycle. They change every year.
It made me consider: Everything in this world changes. Human beings are especially made for change. Change in our physical appearance and change in our hearts:
And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. NIV Matthew 18:3
But God does not change: "I the LORD do not change". NIV Malachi 3:6a
Change is an argument for the existence of God. There are about 20 arguments for God’s existence that when taken together are worthy of consideration. Some folks are just blessed with faith and don’t need any kind of arguments to know there is a God. However, for others, a rational argument may be an important first step in opening one’s mind to the possibility of a Supreme Being.
When we speak of change as an argument for the existence of God we are saying that God is the force behind the changing world. The material world that we know is a world of change. For example, can you think of anything in the world or universe that is not changing?
From the tiniest acorn to the largest planet, every item is changing. What is changing it? It cannot change itself. It must be acted upon. Animals and humans may move by their will but when they die, the molecules remain but the bodies are no longer able to act in any way.
Things are being acted upon to change. And the things that are doing the acting are also being acted upon. But no matter how many things there are in the series of acting and change, each one needs something outside of itself to actualize its potentiality for change.
“The universe is the sum total of all these moving things, however many there are. The whole universe is in the process of change. But we have already seen that change in any being requires an outside force to actualize it. Therefore, there is some force outside (in addition to) the universe, some real being transcendent (1) to the universe. This is one of the things meant by “God.” (2)
As Christians we know that our change is most certainly from God, the Son. When invited into our lives, Jesus Christ purifies us and immediately goes about transforming us into His likeness. He will do this for anyone who asks.
At CLI we are so touched and amazed at the changes Jesus makes in those in prison. It is like autumn every day, as we receive letters detailing change after change. Those letters are like the splendor of falling autumn leaves in their God altered glorious hews of gold and orange and red.
1. Being above and independent of the material universe. Used of the Deity.
2. Kreeft, Peter, & Tacelli, Ronald K, Handbook of Christian Apologetics, INterVarsity Press, IL, 1994, p. 50.
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