The Meaning is Beyond the Paint.

When I think about God, I have no doubts. It is incredibly obvious to me that there is a God.

When listening to a man speak in intelligent design theories, I am a bit amazed. They struggle so hard to prove that we didn't evolve from lower animals. The world mocks them, and somehow sits in the comfortable and ridiculous thought that nothing is responsible for us, therefore all is nothing, there is nothing, do what feels good and avoid thinking about it.

I am not troubled by evolution. Darwin's genius did not scare my faith away. I see in the world a guiding force. It's like I can see God holding up the sparrows. I see a world that should be doomed at every turn and yet somehow endures. I see weakness. Tremendously complicated and fragile life, in complicated fragile ecosystems, on a complicated fragile planet, all teetering and tipping, which should have crashed into desolation and darkness and void at just about every turn. The strongest should survive, destroy the weak and devour the prey, and then suffer starvation, but they don't. There is balance. Even though this is explained well in natural ways, the picture is still amazing. Even the laws seem to have meaning, and purpose. There does not seem to be any random laws of nature or physics which are inconvenient or useless. The world is rich with it's own meaning. It is not difficult to take pleasure in it's beauty, in it's perfect flow of deep complicated systems by which everything is ran, and even in it's weakness, in it's fragility.

In any case, I see hands holding up the sparrows. I am not troubled to worry if there is a God. I know damn well there is. I am sure He made the systems, so I do not feel it is important for Him to carve a red swath of miraculous paint down the center of His painting in order to prove to us that He is the painter. The Bible itself says, "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse." in the book of Romans. I knew there was a God, and to this day this is something I never doubt, even at my worst.

The question was... does He care about us? I have all my life been lead to believe that, Yes, He does. There are terrible things that happen to us, and this life is no paradise by any definition. So then how could I believe He does care?

Honestly, it is difficult to ease the troubled mind on this subject. My only answers are not proof. Still, firstly, I know he cares because I care. If all is His design, then the indignation I feel towards injustice was his design. I could just as well feel a pleasant feeling when someone steals someone else's car. However, injustice is bad, and I hate it, because it is injustice. Even when it does not affect me. When I eat food it is pleasant. When I sleep it is pleasant, when I come home from work and sit in my chair, all is perfectly well, and I am satisfied with my rest. Still, when I eat too much, unpleasant, sleep too much, unpleasant, and when I do not work, I am restless. There is a system, a flow, and the Bible speaks directly to this.

"Blessed are you, O land whose king is of noble birth and whose princes eat at a proper time— for strength and not for drunkenness." Ecclesiastes 10:17

"Do not love sleep or you will grow poor;
stay awake and you will have food to spare." Proverbs 20:13

"The sleep of a laborer is sweet,
whether he eats little or much,
but the abundance of a rich man
permits him no sleep." Ecclesiastes 5:12

I live like a Character in a video game, made for a purpose, subject to rules of physics, and able to be understood in a complicated code (written in atoms of different elements. Like binary but more complicated; 1 electron, 2 electrons, 34 electons, etc) Yet what I am made of is not what the game is about. Though the fourth wall can be broken, it is apparent that the game is about something in front of me. Though it be a painting made of many different types of paint, of different colors and different consistencies, it is a painting which is about something, it means something, it represents something beyond itself. As in a painting of a woman the beauty is not the paint, but the representation of a woman. It's as if this whole existence is a painting of something.

The deepest and truest thing our lives have to offer are the very things the Bible speaks of over and over again.

This painting is about love. That is the meaning of life. I kid you not. Sacrifice, trust, hope, love, compassion, mercy, pretty much everything that is regarded as an evolutionary misfire is actually the meaning of life.

You shall Love the Lord your God with all you are, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

But something is wrong here. And the Painter God paints Himself into His own painting, because we have gone rotten. The story is wonderful and outrageous. Christ suffered and died and took all of the rottenness onto himself. This is the story that will stand through time as when the meaning of existence took form and showed us perfect love. It is a strange story, but this is a strange painting.
And there is much much more to be said, and I can never do the incarnation justice when talking about it.