To what degree does man live if God does not exist? For ages philosophers, psychologists and intellectuals have tried to explain the meaning of life, and attempting to do so with the belief that God does not exist. Unfortunately when we deny God’s existence and the transcendent Truth that forms the foundation for all ethics, a vacuum is created, which is soon filled with evil. This evil manifests itself horrifically in man’s denial of the sanctity of life. Today we see a culture where more and more teenagers are resorting to mass murder as a coping skill, where the number one cause of women in the UK to visit the emergency room is suicide attempt, and where nothing is thought of murdering an innocent baby for the sake of convenience. What is it about God that man seems so afraid to have Him as part of his culture?
In 1925 the Scopes trial, which many would admit was nothing more than a publicity stunt to give attention to a small community in Tennessee, began a debate that to this day stirs controversy. John Scopes was accused of violating the Butler Act. The Butler Act, instated in March of 1925 in Tennessee legislature, was “AN ACT prohibiting the teaching of the Evolution Theory in all the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of Tennessee, which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, and to provide penalties for the violations thereof.” (Online: Tennessee Anti-evolution Statute - UMKC School of Law). Since this trial there has been a concerted effort by those who oppose the idea of a Divine Creator to remove any trace of Him from public education. Those opposed claim that any teaching that uses an accounting of the origin of man by a creator is a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. This has lead to the sole teaching of the theory of evolution in the public classroom and thus diminishing or even eliminating a transcendental purpose or even intelligent design to our human existence. When we have the idea that we have descended from apes or that we crawled up from the primordial goo, it’s no surprise that we don’t see any value for human life.
Who hasn’t been moved to tears by the news of another horrific school shooting? In the last 10 years alone there have been fifty one school shootings in the world; eleven of which were outside of the US. “A Time Line of Recent Worldwide School Shootings.” Infoplease.com 2007 Pearson Education Inc. 1 December 2007. These are terrible crimes carried out by obviously troubled kids who I’m sure had their “reasons” for doing so. But I can only surmise that the value that life had in the mind of these kids was minimal. Kids today, often times, will say “your born, your live, you die and worms eat you”. How can we be surprised? Our kids today see more violence; play more games that glorify death and murder, and watch movies and television that endorse the philosophy that you may as well do it now because when you’re dead it’s all over. Without learning that there is even a possibility that there is a God who created them and that He has a purpose for their lives kids simply see life as a meaningless event that they must endure.
When God is expelled from culture, we have nothing that transcends ourselves and our self image is dependent upon the worth that others put on our outward appearance rather than the inner character God can see. It is no wonder that many women assess their worth by the picture in a magazine rather than the worth that God, who loves them and created them, has for them. We consistently hear terrible stories of young women who starve themselves to achieve, what society deems, ideal. We’ve seen celebrities such as Karen Carpenter, who seem to have it all, wither away to skin and bones and eventually die because of a skewed self image. When your self worth and self image is dependent upon what others think, you are bound to feel less than adequate. In research done by Theodore Dalrymple he states, in his book “OUR CULTURE, WHAT'S LEFT OF IT: THE MANDARINS AND THE MASSES”, that the number one cause for women in the UK to visit the emergency room is suicide; furthermore, he states that it is the number two cause for men. Though there may be a number of reasons for this, a lack of or skewed idea of self worth is certain to contribute.
Our culture has even come to the point where terminating the life of another human being in the womb is an accepted practice. Since 1973, the year that the Roe v. Wade decision was handed down, an estimated 48,589,993 lives of unborn children have been terminated. United States. Center for Disease Control. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report Vol. 56 No. SS-9 (November 23, 2007). Studies show that the highest percentage of abortions being in girls 15 and under. These are staggering numbers. How is it that we can look at the genocide in Rwanda and see it as a horrific tragedy but look at abortion statistics and think nothing of them? It’s a relativistic view on what makes life important that causes us to believe that one life is more important than another. In the eyes of God, all life is precious and all life is important. Man has elevated himself to a place where he believes that he knows better than God. Ancient civilizations have been destroyed for the very same practices that, today, we see as common place. I fear the day when God’s judgment falls on those who chose to ignore His existence or refused to share the truth of His being.
God has a purpose for us and we have worth beyond our own understanding. How long will our culture see life as pointless journey from nothing to nothing? How long will we turn our backs on the beauty of the creation that only the hand of God could make? How long will we deny Truth and substitute our own gratification in its place? When we expel God from our culture life becomes meaningless; an empty life with empty goals and empty destinations. What a sad existence our lives truly become.
