Life’s Most Important Question

What is the most important question in the whole world? No, it’s not “Do the Red Sox have enough pitching this year to make a run at the playoffs?” (Although that’s a pretty important question for me personally. And the answer, by the way, is “no.”)

The most important question in the entire world is: “Did God create mankind or did mankind create God?”

The way a person answers this question shapes everything about his or her life. I mean EVERYTHING.

If a supernatural Being created life on earth, then it means there is something much greater out there than mere humans. There is something or someone present in the Universe with a mind and power much greater than we possess. This means humanity is not the pinnacle of life on earth, nor are we the last word on the definition of right and wrong. If there is an all-powerful Creator out there somewhere, the only logical thing for mankind to do is try and discover who this Being is and what he, she, or it wants from us.

Also, if there is a supernatural Being called God who created life, then there must be a supernatural dimension to existence, which means there might be some kind of supernatural destination for us once our natural, physical bodies die.

However, if mankind created God, that is, if fearful and ignorant people centuries ago invented a concept they called God -- but there’s really no such thing -- then we are going to approach life much differently. We are going to conclude that there is no great power or mind in the Universe, and therefore human beings are the pinnacle of evolution and we need to decide for ourselves what is right and what is wrong. We, and we alone, are the sole source of values and morality.

If God is just a myth, then the natural world is all there is, and when we die we cease to exist. So, making the most of this brief period of time when we are alive and conscious (however we personally define “making the most of”), is our main motivation. Thinking of this life as just one phase that leads to a completely different and eternal phase once we die is totally out of the question. We have to live for today, not for some fictitious heavenly reward in the future.

So, as you can see, the way we answer that all-important question changes our whole understanding of who we are, why we are here, and what we ought to do.

If a person answers the key question by saying mankind created God and there is no supernatural dimension to reality, then he or she has to explain how life on earth got here in the first place. The most common answer is what our high school biology teachers told us: simple forms of life accidentally occurred billions of years ago, and then genetic mutations and the power of natural selection caused new species to emerge, and eventually the vast diversity of life on earth we see today developed. It all happened without the need for a supernatural Creator.

Well, that explanation might have made sense when Charles Darwin lived. Back then people had no clue about the stunning complexity of biological life at the molecular level. They didn’t know about DNA, and they thought cells were just little blobs of tissue.

Now that we know how incredibly complex even a single-cell organism is -- with dozens of interconnected systems that must work in perfect harmony to keep the organism alive and allow it to reproduce -- that old high school biology explanation isn’t very tenable anymore.

Here is the equation for that high school biology explanation: Chaos + Chance + Time = Intricate Precision. 

For this to be true, we have to believe that it’s possible for a tornado to blast through a scrap metal yard and leave in its wake a perfectly functioning Honda Accord. 

To make it fair, let’s say millions of tornados blasted through millions of scrap metal yards over the course of millions of years. Would at least one Honda Accord emerge from that? You know the answer. It’s “no.” No matter how much time we allow chaos and chance to interact, it will never produce intricate precision. (And by the way, the complexity of biological life is WAY more intricate and precise than even a Honda Accord.)

If this makes us conclude that if might at least be possible that God created mankind, does that mean the Christian Gospel is true? Oh, not even close. Coming to that conclusion requires another thousand steps in the search for Truth. But realizing the likelihood that mankind created God is not nearly as certain as our modern culture relentlessly tells us, is an important first step.

As Jesus said, “Seek and ye shall find.” Building on this first step and honestly seeking to find out who we are, why we are here, and what we ought to do, is the most fulfilling journey anyone can ever take.