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Life is Significant. A Presentation that explores a Biblical basis for Life’s Significance.

s Life Significant? The very first principle I want to teach you is that Life is Significant. Now a parent or a pastor or your own Bible reading may have taught you that Life is Significant. So you probably don’t want me to simply state that the principle is true and then move on to another principle! Instead, let’s pose the principle as a question. That way we can arrive at the principle by reason, rather than something we’ve assumed a priori.

Is Life Significant? To answer that question we have to define two terms. First, what's meant by the term "life"? And second, what is “significance”?

We use the term “life” to refer to the overall quality of all physical things that are alive. But what happens when we try

to define the term without using it in the definition—that’s what dictionaries are required to do. The answer is that no truly adequate definition exists! I apologize for your having paid all these tuition dollars to the university in order to be taught by a biology professor who can’t even define the word life! But guess what--no biology professor at any other university can satisfy you here either. We can’t define life.

A Dictionary might define life as “a tendency toward negative entropy”. Problem is: that definition just focuses on a single feature of life. Life’s orderly. But this definition could also describe a highly-ordered but non-living salt crystal. There simply is NO concise, one sentence definition that sets apart all living things from all non-living ones.

So if we can’t define this term “life” what are we left with? We are forced to string phrases together. If we list enough of the basic characteristics of life, soon no non-living thing is left standing.

So we can say life is a property of anything that:

is highly complex

stores its information in either DNA or RNA

is capable of reproducing itself, and

exchanges energy and materials with its surroundings.

When we pile up all these characteristics, the non-living salt crystal loses out. (it contains no DNA or RNA) and only the living flower remains standing.

Now…….what do we mean by the term "significance"? We mean that life itself has a value or importance that goes beyond what our five senses are able to tell us. The idea of significance implies a "why" question. “Is Life Significant?” is basically asking "Why is life here?" If there is NO REASON for life's existence, then it really doesn’t matter how complex or beautiful it all is, the answer to our question is "No, Life is Not Significant.”

The question “Why is Life Here?” poses a huge problem for us in the sciences. The methods of science rest squarely on the limitations of the human sensory system. We can gather data; we can describe HOW things work. But we can't get to the WHY question: scientific methodology just can't do that!

And tragically this is where many scientists stop. But as human beings most of us find it far too frustrating to stop there! When you have something as beautiful and integrated as life forms, we really need an answer to this question.

Let’s begin our thinking on this question with an instructive analogy. Consider the wonderful machine pictured to the left. Ask yourself this question: Is a piano significant? Why does it exist? We know the answer to this question! This machine exists because somebody wanted to be able to reproduce musical sounds. How do I know that? Well there is a purposeful quality to it’s design! In its complexity--in its function--it has been so utterly well constructed for the service it performs. Well then, consider the photograph to the right on this slide. Here we have an Allium flower taken from the living world. Consider this beautiful machine and ask yourself this question: Is this machine significant? Why does it exist?

The more you know about HOW a flower reproduces a plant, the more breathtakingly designed this structure is. It leaves our piano “in the dust”. So then, by analogy, is the flower significant? You bet it is. We’re being led to a dangerously probable conclusion here: If the piano has a Designer, then so should this flower!! And if we grant this conclusion, then biology becomes: the art of a great Creator, the art of a GOD who is greater than men.

Therefore, one significance of Life—one reason for its existence—is that it reveals to us evidence of a great Creator we might otherwise have overlooked!

Let’s keep thinking! A Creator powerful enough to create a reproductive organ like a flower or a human brain would probably be powerful enough to communicate with the mind housed in that brain. Has the Creator communicated propositionally with us? Because if He has, then His communication might also address the question of life’s significance! It might do so in a highly elegant way!

Down through history, a variety of documents have purported to represent specific words, truths FROM this God. Curious scholars have evaluated the scientific and historic validity of many of these documents. Others have studied their content of wisdom and moral quality. From all this study, one document clearly emerges as highly dignified and authoritative by comparison with the others: that document is the Bible. From the majesty and accuracy of Genesis 1, to the microbiological wisdom of Leviticus, to the archeological validity of Old Testament history, this book gives high quality evidence that its come to us from God.

If you wish to read further on evidence for the supernatural quality of scripture consider these sources. They are representative of many other sources like them. These authors and others have concluded that aside from the Bible, no book has comparable evidence for its Divine authorship.

Therefore, we humbly approach the Bible with the question: Is life significant?

Its answer is YES, for several very worthy reasons! Consider the following passage of scripture and what it states regarding the significance of physical life on earth.

Psalms 104: May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in His works.

One significance of the panoply of living things on earth is simply the joy it gave God to create them. (He is a consummate Artist). He enjoys observing the creations of His own hands. He rejoices in the glory of the things He has made.

Is Life Significant? Consider another passage from the book of Job. Here Job asks God a searching question:

“What is man that You make so much of him, that You give him so much attention, that you examine him every morning and test him every moment?”

Here, Job portrays God as being entirely fascinated with the moral qualities of man. But to see those moral qualities played out, God required a physical arena for man to live in. So the glorious creation of life in all its various forms is part of the physical network—the context—in which man lives out his physical life. But on that physical life is superimposed the moral content of all the decisions we make each day. And God is highly interested in those decision.

Now on to Paul’s letter to the Romans for a third Biblical argument for the Significance of Life:

You may recall from Psalm 19 that the heavens declare God's glory. Well Paul, in this passage includes living things in his apologetic argument here in Romans 1. “What has been made” is so well made that it represents a powerful apologetic for the existence of a great Creator-Designer. God—apart from written Scriptures—is knowable to man through God’s creative wonders!! Life is significant: it shows us God.

Finally, we return to the Psalms to see yet another dimension of Life’s great Significance: The created order is God’s gift to mankind. It provides his food to sustain his physical life. It provides his clothing for modesty and his much of his shelter from the storms of nature. The horse has born the burden of human civilization until very recently. The dog has become man’s best earthly friend. The birds have taught man to sing. What a glorious gift the created order represents. And the Designer selects man as both its recipient and its manager. Is Life Significant? Your physical existence absolutely depends on it.

Let’s summarize! Life is a joy to its Designer, a stage for man’s spirit, a quiet hand that points to God and a precious gift that grants life to the human body? Is Life Significant? It certainly is! And any otherwise liberally educated scholar would be a fool to avoid studying it. Why take a biology course? Because Life Is Significant