Revealed: How God Makes Himself Known

Chapter 2 The Oceans Are Speaking: General Revelation

Do you believe in God? If so, how do you know he exists? People have discussed these matters for centuries, even millennia. Philosophers and theologians have used fancy language in sometimes hard-to-follow conversations, leaving many of us tuned out and overwhelmed. But curiosity is difficult to kill. A surefire way to draw conversational partners at your local coffee shop, for example, is to raise the subject of God. Few people have no opinion on the matter; many people are game for sounding out the nature of reality in one conversation. This is a big task—small wonder that big subjects and large amounts of caffeine often go hand in hand!

Christians believe that we can begin searching out these matters with what we call “general revelation,” truth about God that anyone can see. As we will see in this section, the created world tells us two things in particular: God is powerful, and the conscience is real. We turn to these discoveries now.

The Creation Gives Us Some Knowledge of God

Scripture is not ambivalent about God’s existence. We know God is real, Psalm 19:1–2 tells us, because we find in our world unmistakable evidence of his existence. The heavenly bodies, the greatness of the created order, tell us that something greater than us made all this:

The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge (Psalm 19:1–2 ESV).

The world did not come into being, the Psalmist muses, through chance occurrences or random causes. The world bears clear evidence of the fingerprints of a majestic being much greater than us in power and ability. We see the sun, the moon, and the planets, and we naturally know that a being like us could not account for or create such a force of nature. We witness the thundering power of the ocean and recognize that we could not unleash that, let alone harness it. In these and other ways, we come to see that the wonder of nature depends upon a greater power. This greater power is a person: God.

It doesn’t take a science doctorate or inestimable brilliance to apprehend these truths. It takes open eyes, an inquisitive mind, and a willingness to open our hearts to the beauty and mystery that courses through the known world. This isn’t easy to do, I grant, in a skeptical age like ours. It’s tempting to see the cosmos as nothing more than a matter of atoms colliding. But there is much more to our world than mere matter. There is a divine being, the Bible teaches, who is behind it all. Only God can create; only God can sustain life.

The New Testament builds upon this starting point. Introducing sinful humanity’s great need for the saving grace of God, the apostle Paul teaches us this principle directly in Romans 1:18–20 (ESV).

[18] For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. [19] For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. [20] 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. So they are without excuse.

Even as the apostle Paul teaches about God’s character, he gives us insight into humanity’s condition. It is not a happy condition.

Though God made the world, and filled it with evidence of his greatness, things have fallen apart. Trusting the serpent over the Lord, Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden (Genesis 3:1–13). Their sin destroyed the holy peace that lay over all creation. All humanity inherited the consequences of that act of disobedience—death (Romans 5:12).

But in the midst of this troubling news, there is good news. Despite our fallenness, we still can see that God is real, and that he is powerful. Theologian R. C. Sproul helpfully summed up what Romans 1:20 teaches: “God is not seen directly but he is seen through the things that are made.” The apostle Paul is teaching us that creation reveals God, displaying in the order of creation his thunderous strength. No one is left clueless about God’s existence; we all know God exists and rules the cosmos, but we naturally suppress this truth, Paul teaches (Romans 1:18).

But the created realm continually draws us upward despite ourselves. Our hearts naturally crave displays of great beauty and force. According to the U. S. Park Service, over five million people visit the Grand Canyon each year. These folks are not traveling great distances to the northern part of Arizona to look at specks of sand and the odd bird in the sky. They visit the Grand Canyon to be awed by its hugeness.

When we see such vastness, we are confronted with the question: how did this come to be? In both the Old and New Testaments, the Scripture is helping us see that the wonders all around us are not dead ends in our quest for truth—“Oh, how nice. A mind–bending geographical phenomenon. Hey, what’s for lunch?” They are signposts, pointing humanity to consider the raw creative horsepower and aesthetic artistry that can only be behind such majestic sights.

We Naturally Know Right from Wrong

Our coffee–shop chat continues. Having discussed the purpose and power of creation, we consider morality. It is only natural, after all, to wonder, “Why is humanity moral?” Of course, some folks today may question the very nature of morality. They might argue that there is no higher truth, and so there can be no moral absolutes. There’s only what we ourselves prefer.

But humanity does seem moral than some might say. Sure, we might say we don’t believe in hard–and–fast ethics, but when someone cuts us off in traffic, we get red–faced. Yeah, we might argue against clear–cut right and wrong, but if we learn that our bank–teller embezzled money from our account, we won’t be a happy customer. If someone walks up to us and decks us in the face for no good reason, most of us won’t respond with a cheerful smile and a wave. We’ll feel wronged. We’ll feel outraged. We will want justice. This is because, as the Bible teaches, every human person has a conscience, a natural ability to tell right from wrong.

In Romans 2:14–16, Paul explains that even if we have no exposure to religion, we have the equivalent of a functioning moral calculator in our soul:

[14] For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. [15] They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them [16] on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus (Romans 2:14–16 ESV).

This section informs why humanity is so pervasively moral. Even those who are not formally religious continue to feel conflicted about sin (v. 15). Why? They have the law “written on their hearts.” This means that they know that they must choose goodness and rightness, for their innate moral sense, their conscience, tells them so. It “bears witness” to them (v. 15). This only makes sense according to the Christian perspective. God is goodness. He created humanity in his image (Gen. 1–2). Part of what this means is that we know right from wrong, at least in a basic sense.

This discussion of conscience reminds me of the story of British philosopher C. E. M. Joad. Joad was fantastically famous in Great Britain, and wrote over 100 books during his career, many of them dealing with ethics. Joad loved to poke at traditional morality and a fixed sense of right and wrong. But he had his own moral failings that eventually caught up with him. Though he had considerable wealth, he loved to ride trains without paying. He did this for years until he was found out in 1948. Even then, he was fined only £2 (he probably had that in his pocket). But the national hubbub over Joad’s unethical ways knocked his star out of the sky. His career collapsed.

In this time, Joad’s conscience flamed back to life. He saw that he had done wrong. He admitted as much. Joad eventually returned to the Anglican Church, and left his God–denying ways. He had experienced what some have called the “revenge of the conscience.” You can try to deny it, you can quiet your moral impulses, but they are strong indeed, for God coded this instinct into our personhood.

Strong as our natural appreciation of right and wrong is, however, we need more. We not only must have increased guidance, and a bit of moral instruction: we need to be made right with God. While general revelation tells us vital truths, it does not spell out the solution to our troubles. This only the Bible can do.

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