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Nature ends in stinging judgment from its Creator.
Let us start with a proposition: God makes himself known through general revelation in the natural order. That assertion is shared by most religions and could even fit (with a little squeezing) into an acceptable Evangelical Protestant doctrine of the first article: “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.” Yet we should be aware that whenever we say things like this (that God “makes himself known” or “generally reveals himself” using a “natural order”), we are really expressing two great fears: first, that Almighty God is elusive to us small, insignificant humans, and second, that God’s final judgment against us is valid. Whether we know anything about Jesus Christ or not, it is a universal truth that God kills us in the end. More yet, God is just to do so.
The reason we bother talking about God “generally revealing” himself by a “natural order” is that every single human being feels judged–and we don’t like it! I don’t have to be a Christian somberly going to church in search of an absolution to feel that God is out to get me. Everyone feels judged. Even the Greeks felt judged by gods and were convinced such judgment was not by mere chance. They knew they must have somehow transgressed an unwritten law of “nature,” and God was right to judge them. For that very reason, Paul spoke to the crowd of Greek philosophers in Athens by saying, “I see that you are making sacrifices to ‘the unknown God.’ Would you like to know who that God is?” (Acts 17).
How does God give us a revelation in nature, and how do we end up using it? Suppose you live in California and decide one day that–despite being quite a happy soul–you could increase your cheerfulness by hiring a “life coach.” What do you suppose the life coach says? Steve, you have to exercise and “get out in nature.” Walk, bike, hike, board, fly, RV—anything to help you regain your childlike “wonder” of the world. Breathe, see, touch, smell: the beauty is as endless as the universe itself. When you do this, you will find that you are actually communing with God. True, it might not be quite as good as a Christian “taking communion” (eating and drinking the body and blood of Jesus Christ), but still, through your vacation, workout, play, exploration, and “building memories,” you can claim you’ve at least touched the sublime. To that extent, life coaches are right about meeting God out in “nature,” but there is something ominous out there that they don’t warn their clients about.
Neither Jew nor Gentile can claim he failed to get God’s memo about the result of sin.
I tried to find God this way in the green state of Minnesota by communing with nature in my backyard. One day, I saw a tree swallow’s nest with three precious little chicks stretching their beaks so that momma birds could feed them. I mused that this, after all, is the natural order established by God at creation, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 1:22). The great Jewish sages liked to expound on this phenomenon using Job 35:11, “Who teaches us through the beasts of the earth, and makes us wise through the fowls of heaven.” Elihu, one of Job’s “friends,” came up with this idea in an attempt to assuage Job’s suffering through “natural law theory”—that nature reveals its God-given function to guide human desires on their way to “the good” (as Aquinas put it). Elihu thus said, “Job, you may be suffering now, but consider the birds of the air!” As Rabbi Johanan said of this passage: “Had the Torah not been given [to the Jews through Moses on Mt. Sinai], we could have learnt it!” The birds would teach us God’s law if Moses had not done so already. However, that “law of the birds” was not just knowledge of an “order of nature. ” The birds cannot guide a person to happiness; instead, they teach us that God judges sin, finds us guilty, and destroys us in the end. There is no way out. Natural law may guide some of your choices, but it is put there by God—in things—to confirm what we already suspected: God judges all, including me.
As the baby birds chirped and stretched for more insects, a Cooper Hawk swept down and desiccated all three before my virgin eyes. I was horrified. God does have a law that he gave to Israel on Mt. Sinai to which they pledged their solemn lives, and then they sacrificed a golden calf because Moses was taking so long. God also has a “natural” law that he gave to Gentiles. By it, we learn both the amazing “cycles” of nature as well as the fact that all life ends in death. Worse yet, we learn that death is not “normal.” Nature ends in stinging judgment from its Creator. That is why Elihu did not help Job one bit by teaching him the wisdom of the birds. Such teaching only made Job want to vomit.
The bird-law tells us about our own end. Nature is not just a course of repeated seasons infinitely turning—spring to summer, summer to fall, fall to winter, and winter back into spring. Life is not simply exit, return, and repeat. If you didn’t watch closely enough, you would think there is no real death in nature since there seems only to be an endless change of seasons. Yet, nature’s law does not teach infinity; it teaches an inevitable and harsh death—God’s final, legal word. The law does not depict eternal cycles of life: its birds teach us that no one and nothing overcomes death. Neither Jew nor Gentile can claim he failed to get God’s memo about the result of sin. There is no second try at life or endless reincarnation. Instead, when you go out into nature, you will find these three divine revelations:
1) God exists, meaning you did not create yourself
2) God has an order, law, or command that you cannot ignore
3) God judges you with death for not fulfilling this command.
That is what a life coach can teach you: God exists, he has a law, and he is going to kill you with that law. Ponder that next time you are on your bike or in the RV and see a bird.
Then, one more thing: the birds cannot teach you what happens if your “cycle of nature” is interrupted by Christ, the Savior. What happens if, in the middle of communing with nature, you get a preacher who says: “Rise from the dead”? What will you do then?
