Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; for though they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools;
Romans 1:20-22 NRSV
It’s a straightforward argument: the existence of the Universe points towards an eternal and powerful Creator. What we see helps us to discern what we cannot see.
Now you might not agree with the argument, and many don’t, but that’s the contention and it has some serious weight to it. Many people who might not follow the Christian God, look with awe and wonder at the universe in both its intricacies and its vastness, the beauty of the atomically small and the majesty of the awesomely vast and wonder at it all. As one scientist says, ‘What could be more awesome than the creation of a universe from nothing?'1
In response to this knowledge Paul says two fundamental things are necessary: Honour and gratitude. Without this response we stumble in darkness and although we might claim wisdom we are truly foolish.
I think gratitude is the easier of the two things for moderns to get their head around. I can at the very least say ‘thank you’. I can be grateful to be alive, I can count my blessings, I could if I didn’t know God at all, say the sort of prayer that one says when confronted by the miracle of life and the fearsome beauty of it all and just feel in my bones that I am grateful to see the stars on this night, to witness this sunset, to be here at this particular moment and be stunned by what my eyes are drinking in.
But what does it mean to honour God? How might one esteem or hold in high respect 2 a God whose existence we infer from what has been made but whom we don’t yet know? What might a life shaped by this kind of reverence look like?
I think one sign might be humility. It is impossible when considering our own existence, the incredible richness of life, the vastness of the universe to not be at least a little humbled by our tiny place in the grand scheme of things. Sadly a lack of humility is often missing from believers and unbelievers alike as if somehow certainty and humility were enemies of each other and to possess the one was to defeat the other.
No, we are but dust and therefore to claim to be a lot more than that is unwise. My smallness humbles me, my finitude humbles me, I am quite simply not all that.
Another sign might be a respect for what has been made. A life that seeks to take into account that what exists and the cycle of life that it is bound up in is precious. That if, indeed it is made, to handle all that with care is to somehow show respect to the maker of it. There is a decentering and a recentering of our worldview that should follow. As Wendell Berry says,
We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it. 3
Humility, reverence, respect and gratitude are spiritual responses, it is spirituality that flows from the knowledge that one who is greater than me has made something that is bigger than me and I am extremely fortunate to stand on this earth for however long that may be. God really doesn’t owe my anything.
None of these things are peculiarly or particularly Christian and they are not without their own merit. Living and practicing these virtues bring benefits in this life but perhaps for Paul the greatest benefit they bring is that they draw us closer to the knowledge of God and therein lies the beginning of wisdom.
- Nothing is not nothing: how a scientist set out to sing the story of our origins
- Honour
- The Long Legged House
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