I just don’t have enough faith. Let me be clear: I don’t have enough faith to believe that you and I evolved from nothing. In fact, I don’t believe that species-to-species evolutionists can answer my most fundamental question: If nothing ever was, what would there be now?
And my second question is similar: If there was ever nothing, how did we jumpstart to something?
Friends, you just can’t get something from nothing. That’s the first law of thermodynamics.
Maybe you don’t like physics. Can I interest you in a little philosophy? “Ex nihilo nihil fit.” That’s Latin, so here’s the English: “From nothing, nothing comes.” Perhaps it started with Parmenides in the 5th century, but the point is: Nothing can’t create something.
If you start with nothing, nothing’s what you’re gonna get. And keep getting.
Even the remnants of pop culture remind us that – when it comes to nothing and something – all of us enjoy a little practical philosophy from time to time …
“Nothing comes from nothing,
Nothing ever could.”
– Richard Rodgers (Rodgers and Hammerstein, “The Sound of Music”)
“Nothin’ from nothin’ leaves nothin’
You gotta have somethin’ if you wanna be with me.”
– Billy Preston
“From nothing, nothing comes.”
As you and I embrace 2025 for all it’s worth, we’re not standing on nothing. (Forgive me, former English teachers.) We’d have to check our brains at the door to believe something like that. In fact, the notion that an all-wise and all-powerful God created everything – and that He’s still reigning and ruling over His creation – makes a heckuva lot more sense than, “Well, poof! It just happened.”
As to the theory that nothing comes from nothing – and therefore there must exist a necessary, eternal entity – some University of Manchester scientists tried to prove that something can come from nothing. Inside a large container, they created an absolute vacuum, so secure that nothing could get in or get out. (I’m no physicist, but I think the theory is that you have to perturb the empty space until something happens.) And eureka! After some time, they found little specks of matter floating in this perfect environment. Their conclusion: Something had come from nothing. My conclusion: Those specks were undetected all along, or their vacuum wasn’t as “absolute” as they thought.
Spontaneous generation? Something from nothing? Call me crazy, or at least a skeptic, but time alone is no creator.
So I’m anchored to the ancient premise given to us by Thomas Aquinas, who died in 1274. From nothing comes nothing. Every effect has a cause, and no matter how far back we go in the material world – or how much stock we put in what some folks call the “Big Bang” – there is a cause of some kind for everything. If at some point, we discover an uncaused cause – some self-existing reality – then we know that we’re onto something exceptionally and vitally important. I would submit to you that the uncaused cause – the cause to which everything in the universe points – is God. In fact, the only uncaused cause is God.
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
– Genesis 1:1
God. There’s the something behind the something. The Someone behind the something. The Someone behind all the somethings. If you and I can find security and hope in that marvelous beginning and source of everything that exists, we’ll be better prepared to wrestle with all the things this year that we can’t understand.
I have no doubt that 2025 will bring more than its share of perplexities that leave us scratching our heads – but you and I aren’t starting from scratch. We’re standing firmly on a more than reasonable foundation of truth: “In the beginning, God.”
And it gets even better, my friends. God’s Son has come to us “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
Pastor Charles
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