Shower meditations

What Chesterton means is that everything we see around us is a miracle; nothing is absolutely guaranteed. What the scientific method discovers about the world are not laws - things inherent in the existence of the universe - but miracles; miracles with a very high statistical probabability. What we like to call Laws of Nature are really only a very strong likelihood that a particular miracle will occur again, based on what we’ve experienced in the past.

The universe does not operate in a certain way becauses that is the way any good universe ought to operate. The universe acts according to the way God makes it act.

When God made the world and called it good, he did not say it was good because he had some perfect knowledge of a standard for how a universe ought to be. He did not say it was good because he evaluated it; it was good because He decreed that it was good.

When God made man, he called this creation very good. It was not very good because God had surpassed his previous creation with this new addition; it was very good because it was made in the image of God, who is the source and definition of goodness.

God could have created and ordered nature differently, and it would still be just as good. Electrons, after all, didn’t have to orbit around nuclei, or planets around suns. They do so because God makes them do so. He is pleased to do it, and that’s a good enough law for me.

Sin is not evil, then, because it breaks a “law of nature;” sin is evil because it breaks the law of God, “Thou shalt not.” And this law is not less exalted or more whimsical than the law of nature. The Red Sea has been known to part, and the sun to stand still; but there has never been a time when God has not said, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.”

God, after all, is the source of all miracles. How does the egg turn into the chicken? Could it not just as easily have become a dragon? The science of probability imparts a false certainty to these matters. Why must the cell divide, besides for the reason that it usually does? And besides, the egg might completely miss chickenhood and become an omelette instead. Who are we to say? We shouldn’t worship science, since it is only a tool to help us with practical decisions.

When we say that “God is good,” are we making a statement about the nature of God, or the nature of goodness? Are we holding God up to our idea of what is good and comparing Him to this idol, or are we looking at God and drawing our concept of goodness from Him?