I began to conform to the culture in which
I was growing up, that included learning about Darwin’s theory of evolution. I
joined the ranks of academics who, at that time were saying that Darwin had
eliminated the need for a creator to explain how we got here. We just evolved from lower forms of life by a
process of chance variations and survival of the fittest. The left side of my
brain was developing rapidly, at the expense of the right side! I loved studies
in science and philosophy and wanted to impress my teachers with my sensible
logical mind. Eventually I made my way into a Ph. D program in Philosophy at
the City University of New York. I had hardened my heart against God and “religion,” in fact against anything “spiritual.”
Recently I noticed the author of
Ecclesiastes reached the exact opposite conclusion from the one I was espousing
at the time I am telling you about in my own life. He writes “I have seen all of the things that are done
under the sun (that is in the physical realm); all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind… Here is the
conclusion of the matter. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the
duty of all mankind” (Ec.1:14, 12:13). Unlike the author of Ecclesiastes, I
had concluded that everything “spiritual” is meaningless!
I thank God he didn’t leave me in that sad
confused state. After chasing me for years, while I was pretending He didn’t
even exist, I began to “hear” faint whispers saying, “May, you are wrong.” I
began to look back and evaluate the meandering path of my life and the thought
came to me that maybe we don’t need God to explain how we got here, but could
there be other things we need God for? I
was having faint memories of a moon-lit meadow and a “voice” … But no, for
years I had disciplined myself to reject such thoughts, they were just products
of a child’s imagination, myths and fairy tales! I continued to work on my
dissertation, in which I was trying to show how we (mankind) could have developed
our systems of morality without the concept of God as a law-giver. I did
believe in a universal conscience that every human in every culture is born
with, but I rejected the idea that it was “God-given.” My thesis was: our
conscience is a product of our evolution, mankind is just more highly developed in
this area than other animals.
God was working to convert me but I was
stubborn. Jesus told Nicodemus, “You must
be born again” John 3:7b, God was telling me the same thing. The only difference between me and Nick was in
the walls we had built. His wall was the Pharisees’ religious legalism that rejected
Christ, mine was a theory of Naturalism that rejected God altogether, but
especially as a law-giver. Neither of us was experiencing joy in the presence
of God and his creation. A few years after I got the Ph. D, God demolished the
wall I had erected between him and me. Once again I was experiencing joy in the
presence of my Creator and his creation. Jesus is now the joy of my life!
