Recently our family had opportunity to visit the beach.  A busy summer schedule dictated that I dispense with a family vacation until early fall.  It was with much anticipation that we all packed up our beach gear and headed south for the Gulf Coast.  Alabama's beaches really are a well kept secret.  I haven't seen any that are more beautiful.  The powder white sand, fair weather, moderate surf, and lack of crowds all combine for a pleasant holiday.

One night we went out to the beach to star gaze.  Living in the midst of metropolitan Birmingham, we don't get much opportunity for that.  The glow of the city lights prevents any meaningful observation of the night skies.  But on the coast, away from the highrises and streetlights, the stars come marvelously into view as the sun sets.  On this night, such was the case--but more so. 

A clear, cloudless night, hundreds (thousands?) of stars and planets dotted the vast sky from horizon to horizon.  Lauri, the boys and I counted meteorites, speculated about distances, constellations, and, inevitably, life on other planets.

I became mindful of the Apostle Paul's letter to the Romans: " ... what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.  For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made."  Yet some look at the same display of power and divine nature that I see and postulate a very different explanation: there is no God, only random processes.  How can this be so?

Some would suggest that those of us who believe in God do so because of our "memes."  A meme is a cultural replicator.  To put it another way, we believe a given thing because we are culturally predisposed to believe it.  That there is some truth to this is obvious to even the casual observer.  Buddhists, for example, no more abound in the American Bible Belt than Yankees fans in Boston.  But it seems to me that the problem is more complex than this explanation would suggest.

Anthropologists have long observed that every early culture known to us believed in a god of some kind.  They postulated a divine being (or divine beings) from their observations of nature.  Certainly they lacked the sophisticated understanding that we possess in explaining the natural order and the plethora of created "gods" they worshiped were absurd.  Indeed, Paul goes on to say this both here and elsewhere.  But this is, I think, beside the point.  In the opening chapters of Romans, Paul is suggesting that belief in the transcendent is not a byproduct of one's culture, it is innate to all men; to suppress it, one must deny their very nature.

Still, belief in the divine, whether it is a result of cultural factors or human nature, does not make such belief true.  Paul anticipates this objection, pointing out that belief in the divine is also logical.  Nothing comes from nothing.   There must be a Primary Mover.  When Paul was in Athens debating atop the little rock that is Mars Hill, he maintained that the Athenians had, in fact, arrived at a partially correct solution to the great mystery of the universe's origin: there is a god.  What they got wrong was his identity.  Indeed, the more intellectually honest among them, rather than inventing a god, had made an altar with an inscription reading "To the Unknown God."  Paul went on to reveal to them the one thing that had, until then, eluded their understanding.

Natural revelation, that is, to postulate the existence of a god when gazing at the sky on a starry night, is both natural and logical.  But it is not enough.  Many Christians were thrilled by the much celebrated "conversion" of the English atheist and philosopher Anthony Flew in 2004.  But Flew merely acknowledged what Paul might have called his natural inclination toward theism.  He did not convert to Christianity or any other religion.  Natural revelation had lead him to theism--which is all that it can do--but it did not lead him to Jesus Christ.  That requires additional revelation: "Faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the word of Christ."

There is something special about observing the created order, a starry sky in this case, when one believes not only in some sort of vague theism, but knows the identity of the Creator and something of his character and motivations.  It tends to put things in perspective:  "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have ordained, what is man that you are mindful of him?"