Author Archives: John Samson

How can a good God allow evil?

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This is not an armchair question. It is a hospital-room question. It is asked through tears at a graveside. It rises from the heart when the phone rings with bad news, when betrayal lands like a gut punch, when a child suffers, when the body breaks down and the world seems brutal, heartless, and cruel. So before we say anything else, we should say this: it is a valid question, and it deserves more than a tidy answer tied up in a neat bow.

In this ‘Got Questions?’ series, I have already made the case that God exists. Now comes the question that lands hardest when life hurts: How can a good God allow evil?

And even after we say true things, some will still protest, “But why this evil, why this loss?” Behind every question is a heart, often a wounded one. Sometimes the deepest need is not a polished argument, but the ministry of presence: a brother or sister who listens, prays, and does not rush the grief. So we should speak with people, not merely talk at them, and weep with those who weep. And right there in the pain, God often comes near, even when He does not explain the reasons. He draws near to the brokenhearted (Psalm 34:18). Psalm 73 captures that honest turmoil of the soul, and the slow return to trust… ‘until I went into the sanctuary of God’ (verse 17). Seeing God as He truly is steadied the psalmist’s heart, and put everything back in its proper place.

So we are not starting with, “If God exists…” We are asking something sharper: since God is good, holy, and sovereign, why is there evil, and why does He permit so much suffering in His world?

What is evil?

We should begin by defining what we mean by “evil.” Evil is not a created substance. It is not a “thing” God made the way He made light and land and stars. Evil is real, and its wounds are deep, but it is a corruption of the good, a twisting of what God made upright. Scripture calls sin “lawlessness” (1 John 3:4). It is rebellion against God’s good rule, whether loud defiance or quiet refusal.

Some ask, ‘I understand free will explains human evil. But why earthquakes? Why childhood cancer?’ Scripture teaches that creation itself was subjected to futility and groans because of the Fall (Romans 8:20-22). The whole world is broken because humanity’s rebellion fractured everything. Death, decay, and disaster entered through the Fall (Genesis 3; Romans 5:12). We don’t live in an innocent world experiencing random suffering. We live in a fallen world where everything reflects the consequences of sin, including nature itself.

We ask God to remove evil, but we forget that evil is not only “out there.” It is in here. If God removed all evil today, He would have to remove us too, because evil lurks in every human heart. That does not minimize your experience. It tells the truth about what has happened to all of us.

Evil presupposes God

Now notice something important. The moment we call something “evil,” we are appealing to a real moral standard. We are not merely saying, “I dislike this,” but, “This ought not to be.” That word ought is an announcement that goodness is not a private preference. It is objective. It is binding. And it only makes sense if there is a holy God whose character is the measure of what is good. Take Him away, and ‘evil’ becomes mere preference, like choosing coffee instead of tea, but the heart knows evil is more than that.

And this is where the original question takes an unexpected turn. Many want to use evil as a weapon against God, but if you remove God from the picture, you remove an essential component of even raising the objection. Remove the Judge, and you do not get rid of guilt, you get rid of a courtroom. You can still feel outrage, but you can no longer say, with moral authority, “This is truly wrong.” Take God away, and you do not solve the problem of evil. You are left with evil with no ultimate meaning, no final accounting, and no certain hope of justice. On the other hand, Christianity affirms that God will ultimately overrule evil to serve His holy purpose. Christianity is not borrowing moral categories from the culture. Again and again, the world wants moral certainty without a moral Lawgiver. But it cannot escape moral assumptions that only make sense if God is real.

The mystery of God’s sovereignty and holiness

But now we come to the very heart of the issue. If God is sovereign, why does He permit evil at all? Scripture does not satisfy every curiosity, and it does not invite us to put God on trial. When Job pressed God for an explanation, God answered with God, not with a chart: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” (Job 38–42). In other words, we are not competent to sit as judges over the Judge of all the earth.

Notice: God never tells Job why he suffered. But after encountering God Himself, Job says, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5-6). Job got God instead of explanations, and that was enough. Sometimes seeing God rightly is the answer, even when the ‘why’ question remains.

This does not mean God is indifferent. It means God is holy. He has the right to govern His world according to His own wise and righteous purposes. He is not accountable to His creatures. He does not take counsel from us. He is the potter, and we are the clay. And yet, Scripture also insists on something else at the same time: God is light, and “in Him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). He is never the author of sin, and He never excuses the sinner. We commit evil because we want to. We cannot shift the blame upward.

There is mystery here, and Christians should admit it without embarrassment. We do not know all that we would like to know about the origin of evil. Many simplistic answers fall apart under honest scrutiny. But Scripture does not leave us in the dark. It insists on holding two truths together: nothing unfolds outside His providence, and yet He remains perfectly holy. We can affirm both truths even when we cannot fully explain how they fit together.

Think of light. Physics tells us light behaves as both a wave and a particle. These seem contradictory, but both are true, and scientists hold them together even without fully understanding how. If finite minds can hold together mysteries in the physical world, why should we be shocked when infinite realities exceed our complete comprehension? Mystery doesn’t mean contradiction. It means our minds are finite and God’s ways are higher than ours (Isaiah 55:8-9).

God’s answer: The incarnation and the cross

Now we come to the center of the Christian faith, and it is not an argument; it is a Person. God has not answered evil with a lecture. He has answered it with an incarnation. The God of the Bible is not a distant, detached, deistic deity, merely watching the gears turn from far away. He stepped into our world in Jesus Christ. He shared our flesh and blood. He was tempted as we are, yet without sin. He is able to help sufferers, and He is a High Priest who sympathizes with our weakness (Hebrews 2:14–18; 4:15). In that sense, God can look at our protest and grief and say, truthfully, He understands why we hate evil. He does too. He has seen what evil does up close.

And then we come to the cross, the place where this question is finally silenced and answered at the same time. What is the most evil act in human history? The crucifixion of the Son of God. Sin and hell and hatred and cowardice gathered together and did their worst, and the only truly righteous Man was murdered in public. And yet Scripture says Jesus was “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23). What men meant for evil, God meant for good (Genesis 50:20). God was not reacting to the cross. He was accomplishing redemption through it. If you want to know what God thinks of evil, look at what it cost Him.

At the cross, God didn’t minimize evil or excuse it. He absorbed it. He took the full weight of sin’s penalty upon Himself. “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24). The price tag of redemption is the measure of how seriously God takes evil. And the fact that He paid it Himself is the measure of how much He loves sinners.

Evil will be judged

And this is also why the Christian can say, with tears and with confidence, that evil is not ultimate. God will judge it. God will expose it. God will repay it in perfect righteousness. There is a day coming when every hidden thing will be brought into the light, when every wrong will be set right, when every victim will be vindicated, and when God’s holiness will be seen to be beautiful, not harsh.

Some say, ‘I don’t like the idea of judgment.’ But if you hate evil, you should long for judgment. Judgment means the child abuser doesn’t get away with it. The genocidal dictator doesn’t escape. The unrepentant oppressor faces justice. A God who never judges evil isn’t good. He’s complicit. The cross shows us God’s heart: He offers mercy now, but He will bring justice eventually.

And hear this clearly: the Lamb is reigning now. By faith we see it already. Christ is seated, His kingdom is advancing, and even the bitterest seasons remain under His wise hand. God is able to work “all things” for good for those who love Him (Romans 8:28). Notice carefully: Paul doesn’t say all things are good. He says God works them for good. Cancer isn’t good. Betrayal isn’t good. Abuse isn’t good. These are evils. But God, in His sovereign wisdom, can take even the worst evils and weave them into His redemptive purposes for those who trust Him. He doesn’t cause the evil, but He doesn’t waste it either. But one day what faith sees will be confessed openly. Every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess the reality that is true right now: Jesus Christ is Lord (Philippians 2:10–11). The universe will not end with evil laughing. It will end with the Lamb exalted, and with God vindicated as good and holy forever.

Even now, God restrains evil more than we know. The world is fallen, but it is not as evil as it could be. There is still beauty, kindness, laughter, love. These are mercies. And God’s patience is not indifference. It is forbearance, giving space for repentance, holding out mercy through Christ while the door is still open.

What should we do with this?

So what should we do with this? If you are suffering, you are not being asked to pretend it does not hurt. You are invited to trust the God who is holy, wise, and never cruel, and who has proved His heart at Calvary. And if you are skeptical, do not stop at the question. Look at what you are appealing to when you call something “evil,” then look at the cross, where God’s holiness and love meet in full brightness. The God who will judge evil is the God who entered history to save sinners.

You do not have to understand all God’s reasons to trust Him. You only have to look at the cross and see what kind of God He is.

Do not let evil drive you from God. Let it drive you to the cross, where God has already begun to undo it.

If you are suffering, or if you have questions you want to talk through, please reach out. We are here for you.

Evil is loud, but it is not lord. Jesus Christ is Lord.

If Matter Is All There Is, Where Did Persons Come From?

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In our “Got Questions?” series so far, we have asked whether God exists and whether science makes God unnecessary. But there is another question underneath both of those, one that touches every one of us. That is because we are not merely objects in the universe; we are persons.

Here is the question: How do you get persons from an impersonal universe? How do you get mind, meaning, love, guilt, laughter, reason, and conscience from nothing but matter and motion?

Many people assume the answer is simple: given enough time, matter can eventually become life, and life can eventually become intelligence, and intelligence can eventually become personality. But that assumption needs to be tested, not merely repeated.

Some will say evolution bridges the gap. But even if you grant change over time, the deeper question remains: how do mindless, unguided processes produce minds, and not only minds, but persons? How do you get a real “I,” a self that reasons about truth, loves, chooses, and feels the weight of “I ought” and “I ought not,” out of nothing but matter in motion?

Some will say consciousness gradually evolved from simpler nervous systems, from basic reactions, to feeling sensations, to awareness, to full consciousness. But this still doesn’t solve the real problem. Even if you can trace how brains got more complex over time, you still haven’t explained the most basic mystery: why do we experience anything at all?

Think about it this way: when you bite into a pizza, you don’t just process information about temperature and taste. You experience it. There’s someone on the inside (you) who feels that warmth, tastes that flavor, enjoys that moment. Why? A computer can analyze pizza ingredients perfectly, but it doesn’t experience anything. It’s empty inside. So why aren’t we like that? Why is there a ‘you’ on the inside experiencing your life, instead of just a body going through the motions with nobody home?

Time is not a cause

Time can measure duration, but it cannot explain how meaning arises in the first place. It is a clock, not a creator. If you leave parts alone long enough, you do not get a message, a code, and an interpreter, because interpretation belongs to minds, not molecules.

Think about it in ordinary terms. Take a pile of dirt, or a mound of chemicals, or a mix of raw materials. Leave it alone for ten minutes, you still have a pile. Leave it alone for a year, you still have a pile. Leave it alone for a million years, you still have a pile. Without guidance, without a plan, without an organizing mind, time does not turn “stuff” into “self.”

Even when scientists do remarkable work in the lab, what we see is not accidental life emerging from nothing, but brilliant minds arranging and engineering what they already understand. One famous example is the lab-created ‘minimal cell.’ Scientists stripped away every gene they thought was unnecessary, trying to create the simplest possible living cell. The result? It still requires 473 genes to function. And here’s the striking part: 149 of those genes have functions scientists cannot yet explain. In other words, even the most stripped-down living system we can build is still astonishingly complex, and it does not appear by leaving chemicals alone. It bears all the hallmarks of design. [1]

And this gets to the heart of the challenge for a purely materialistic framework. Life is not merely having the right “parts.” Life requires coordination, instructions, self-copying, and energy, all working together at the same time. Think of it like this: having amino acids is like having an alphabet. Having the right amino acids in sequence is like having words. But life also needs grammar (the genetic code), a translator (ribosomes), an energy source (ATP), error correction (DNA repair), packaging (cell membranes), and reproduction (cell division). All of these systems reference and depend on each other. Remove any one, and the whole thing collapses. This is what makes purely materialistic origin-of-life scenarios so difficult. You need multiple integrated systems working simultaneously. Parts remain parts. Not life.

Chemistry can’t explain consciousness

So the issue is not a small gap that can be casually filled with “more time.” The issue is a category difference. Chemistry can produce reactions. But reactions do not aim at truth. Reactions do not weigh evidence. Reactions do not love their children. Reactions do not feel the moral weight of “I should” or “I should not.” An impersonal cause does not naturally give rise to personal realities.

Some suggest consciousness simply “emerges” from sufficient complexity. But emergence is a description, not an explanation. It names the mystery without solving it. Wetness emerges from water molecules because wetness is just a way of describing how those molecules behave together. But consciousness is not just behavior. It is the inner experience of “I am,” the felt quality of being someone. No amount of describing neurons firing explains why there is someone home to experience it.

Here’s another way to see the difference: you can fully describe wetness by describing how water molecules behave. But you cannot fully describe consciousness by describing how neurons fire. Why? Because consciousness has an inside view. There’s what it feels like from your perspective. Someone can study your brain all day long and see exactly which neurons are firing when you taste chocolate. But they still don’t know what it’s like for you to taste chocolate. That inside experience, that ‘you’ experiencing your life, can’t be captured by studying the outside. The subjective experience isn’t the same as the objective description.

The self-refuting position

That is why this question matters so much: if the universe is ultimately impersonal, then personhood is an accident, and meaning is an illusion, and conscience is a chemical trick. But we do not live that way. We live as though truth matters, as though love matters, as though right and wrong are real, and as though persons have value. The worldview has to account for the world we actually inhabit.

There’s another problem: anyone who says “all meaning is illusion” or “conscience is just chemistry” is making a truth claim. They are asking you to believe them because what they say is true. But if truth itself is an illusion, why believe them? The position refutes itself.

C.S. Lewis pressed this problem even further. He pointed out that if all our thoughts are just the result of brain chemistry and survival instincts, not aimed at truth, then why should we trust them when they reason about anything? If naturalism is true, your brain only cares whether you survive and reproduce, not whether your beliefs are actually true. A useful false belief works just as well as a true one, as long as it keeps you alive. So if your brain is just chemistry shaped by survival pressures, why trust it when it reasons about chemistry, survival, or anything else? The naturalist who argues for naturalism is sawing off the branch he’s sitting on. The very act of reasoning assumes our minds can track truth, not just survival. And that makes sense if we’re made in the image of a rational God. It makes no sense if we’re cosmic accidents.

Christianity’s answer: the personal God

Christianity does. Scripture begins, “In the beginning, God.” Not impersonal forces, not blind matter, not fate. A living, personal God. And the Bible says we are persons because we are made in His image (Genesis 1:26–27). This means your capacity to think, choose, love, and recognize right from wrong isn’t the result of random chance. And here’s something important to understand: chance isn’t actually a thing with power to make anything happen. When you flip a coin, it has a 50% chance of landing heads and a 50% chance of landing tails. But ‘chance’ doesn’t make it land one way or the other. Chance is just a word we use to describe potential outcomes. [2] This is the difference between mathematical description and causal power. Chance has no creative power. It can’t build anything. It can’t design anything. Your personhood, your capacity to think and love and choose, requires an explanation with actual creative power behind it. And Christianity says that power is God. You’re not a mistake. You’re made for relationship with your Creator. That explains why the universe is intelligible, why our minds can grasp it, and why personhood is not an intruder in reality but part of its design.

And it goes further. The Bible says all things were made through the eternal Word, and that in Christ “all things hold together” (John 1:1–3; Colossians 1:16–17). In other words, the foundation of reality is not less than mind. It is more than mind. Not less than personality, but the living God who speaks, commands, loves, and saves.

And here’s the stunning claim of Christianity: this personal God didn’t remain distant. He entered history as a person, Jesus Christ, so we could know Him personally. The question isn’t whether personhood is real. You already know it is. The question is whether you’ll acknowledge the Person who made you a person.

An invitation to follow the evidence

Anthony Flew was one of the 20th century’s most influential atheist philosophers. For decades he argued against God’s existence. But late in life, he abandoned atheism. Why? He said the origin of life, the fine-tuning of the universe, and especially the existence of rationality itself pointed to Mind behind it all. He wrote, “I now believe that the universe was brought into existence by an infinite Intelligence.” By all accounts, Flew didn’t become a Christian, but he recognized what the evidence points to. If you’re an honest thinker, you can’t ignore the evidence forever. The question is whether you’ll follow it all the way to Christ.

If you are wrestling with these questions, start here: read the Gospel of John slowly and honestly, with an open Bible and an open mind. Ask God to show you the truth. Since God is personal, your personhood is not an accident, and your conscience is not an illusion. It is a signpost. Christianity is not offering God as one option among many. It is announcing that God has made Himself known in the Person of Jesus Christ, and that He now calls you to respond to Him. And if you would like to talk it through, come speak with us.

Footnotes

[1] “Design and Synthesis of a Minimal Bacterial Genome,” Clyde A. Hutchison III et al., Science, March 25, 2016, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). (JCVI-syn3.0 reported with 473 genes; includes 149 genes of unknown function.)

[2] This insight comes from R.C. Sproul, who developed this argument extensively in his book Not a Chance: The Myth of Chance in Modern Science and Cosmology (Baker Books, 1994). Sproul demonstrated that “chance” is a mathematical description, not a causal agent.

Does Science Make God Unnecessary, or Does It Actually Point to Him?

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In the first article of our “Got Questions?” series, we asked: How can we know God exists? We considered the Bible’s claim that God has not left Himself without witness: in creation, in conscience, and supremely in Jesus Christ.

A natural follow-up often sounds like this: “I trust science. I trust airplanes. I trust the laws of nature. I do not need to add God.”

Before we go further, let me say this plainly: Christians are not anti-science. We are grateful for careful observation, honest experimentation, and true discoveries. Historically, many of the pioneers who helped build modern science were Christians, convinced that the universe is orderly and intelligible because it was made by a wise Creator. [1] The question is not whether science works. It does. The question is whether science, when you think it through, quietly points beyond itself.

Trusting the airplane assumes more than aerodynamics

When you step onto a plane, you trust that it will fly and reach your intended destination safely. You trust the engineers, the pilot, the maintenance, and yes, the laws of aerodynamics. And you trust them because you have seen patterns. Planes have flown many times before. Experience teaches you to expect they will fly again.

That everyday confidence depends on something most of us rarely stop to examine: the reliability of human rationality. It depends on your mind being able to reason from repeated experience. It depends on the world being stable enough that patterns can be discovered and trusted.

In other words, you are not only trusting a machine. You are trusting that your mind can know real things about the world.

Now, a skeptic may say, “Evolution explains why our brains work well enough to survive.” Perhaps. But that still leaves a serious question: why should we assume our reasoning is aimed at truth, rather than merely at survival? If our brains are merely survival machines shaped by blind evolutionary pressures, why trust them when they make claims about evolution, mathematics, or logic itself? Natural selection cares whether you survive and reproduce, not whether your beliefs are true. A useful false belief works just as well as a true one, as long as it helps you survive. So if naturalism is true, we have undermined our own confidence in the reasoning that led us to naturalism in the first place.

Christianity offers an answer that fits the world we actually inhabit: the universe is intelligible because it is created by a rational God, and our minds can grasp reality because we are made in His image (Genesis 1:26–27). That does not discourage investigation. It explains why investigation works.

Looking for God in the machine is the wrong category

Some people say, “I do not see God in the laws of aerodynamics, so God is unnecessary.”

But of course you do not “see” the maker of something as a component inside the thing. You can investigate a car for a lifetime and never find the inventor sitting under the hood. That does not mean there was no inventor. It means you are asking the wrong kind of question.

God is not a part of the universe, as though He were one more object inside the system. He is the Creator of the system. So the question is not, “Where is God inside the machinery?” The more foundational question is, “Why is there an intelligible, law-governed world at all, and why do we have minds capable of discovering it?”

And this matters: God is not a “gap filler” for what science cannot yet explain. He is the reason there is anything for science to explain at all. Christianity does not set God against aerodynamics, chemistry, or physics. He is not a plug-in explanation for what we cannot yet understand. He is the foundation that makes the entire scientific enterprise possible in the first place.

The design discussion goes deeper than complexity, it goes to meaning

Many debates about God and science orbit around “design.” People discuss whether a biological structure is too complex to arise by evolutionary processes. Those conversations can be detailed and technical.

But there is another layer that often gets overlooked, a layer that is more basic than questions about biological machinery.

It is the layer of information and meaning.

Modern genetics shows that DNA is not merely “stuff.” It is an ordered sequence that carries biological information. DNA uses a four-letter “alphabet”: A, C, G, and T. [2]

One complete set of your DNA instructions contains about 3 billion DNA “letters,” arranged across 23 chromosomes. Most of your cells carry two complete sets, one from your mother and one from your father. [3] If you want the exact reference benchmark scientists use, the Genome Reference Consortium’s GRCh38.p14 assembly lists a total human genome length (all scaffolds) of 3,099,734,149 base pairs. [4] A base pair is simply two matching DNA letters paired together, like one rung on a ladder, so that is about 3.1 billion rungs in one genome copy. [5]

Put simply, we are not talking about a seven-letter word on a sign, but a code in the billions. The question is how meaningful, instruction-carrying order like that arises in the first place.

Let me illustrate this concept in simple terms. If you see the seven letters F-R-E-E-W-A-Y on a sign, you do not treat them as random shapes. They communicate because an agreed-upon language already exists, and because you have a mind that can read and understand. In the cell, something parallel is true: DNA’s “letters” only function as information because there is a code and a translation process that reads and applies them. So the question is not only, “Where did the letters come from?” but also, “Where did the language system come from?”

We are not claiming evolutionary processes cannot produce complexity. But information systems with codes and interpreters consistently point to intelligence. Some will object, “Codes can arise from mindless, unguided processes.” All right. Show me one, not merely a pattern, but a true code, with a key and an interpreting process.

Some will point to computer simulations where code “evolves” solutions, or genetic algorithms that optimize designs. But notice: those programs were written by programmers, run on designed computers, with fitness functions defined by minds. The “evolution” happens within an intelligently designed system targeting specific goals. You haven’t eliminated intelligence; you’ve just moved it back one step to the programmer who set up the entire framework.

And the startling thing is that you do not have to imagine such a system. It is already there in every living cell.

In the cell, that translation system is real and specific. The DNA message is first copied into a working message, and then a tiny molecular machine in the cell reads that message in three-letter “words.” Helper molecules act like carriers, bringing the right building blocks at the right time, so the cell can assemble proteins. [6] In other words, the cell has a built-in reading and translating system that takes the DNA message and turns it into working parts.

This is not a claim that chemistry is irrelevant. Chemistry is obviously involved. The point is that when you encounter coded information and an interpreter system, you are dealing with something that looks very different from mere chemistry. Words and languages are not the same kind of thing as ink and paper.

This is not a quiet whisper. It shouts. A message, a code, and an interpreter are not the kind of thing we ever attribute to mindless, unguided processes.

A brief note for clarity

Some Christians believe God used evolutionary processes as His means of creating life over long ages. That’s a discussion for another time, and faithful believers hold different views. But even if evolutionary processes played a role, they don’t eliminate the need for God. They just relocate Him from direct special creation to sovereign design of the entire process, including the laws that govern it. Either way, intelligence and intentionality are foundational, not accidental. The question isn’t whether God could use gradual processes, but whether mindless, purposeless processes can account for specified information systems like DNA without any intelligent input.

Christianity says the universe is word-shaped because it comes from the Word

Here is where Christianity becomes both bold and beautifully coherent.

The Bible does not say, “In the beginning were the particles, and later, somehow, mind appeared.” It says the opposite:

“In the beginning was the Word … and all things were made through him” (John 1:1–3).

And Scripture adds that this same Christ is not only the origin of all things, but the One who sustains them:

“By him all things were created … and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16–17).

Christians are not surprised to find order, meaning, and intelligibility woven into reality. We expect it, because we believe the universe is created and upheld by the eternal Word.

Now, you might think this is just philosophical speculation, elegant but ultimately unprovable. But Christianity makes a falsifiable historical claim: the Word who made everything actually entered history in a specific time and place, performed public miracles, died, and rose from the dead. This is what makes Christianity unique among worldviews: it stakes everything on a checkable historical claim. If Jesus didn’t rise, Christianity collapses. But if He did, everything changes. That’s not blind faith; that’s an invitation to investigate historical evidence (1 Corinthians 15:14).

And then the Christian claim becomes concrete. The Word entered the universe.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14).

So the question is not merely, “Can I win an argument?” The deeper question is, “What will I do with the God who has made Himself known?”

The heart of the matter

The Bible teaches that our problem is not a lack of evidence, but a resistance of heart. We suppress the truth, not because it is absent, but because it is inconvenient (Romans 1:18–20). If you feel that resistance in yourself, you are not alone. That is simply the human condition. And it is exactly why we need not only arguments, but grace.

The good news is that God doesn’t just confront us with evidence and leave us to figure it out alone. He sent His Son to seek and save the lost. Jesus didn’t come primarily to win debates but to reconcile rebels. The same God whose wisdom we see in DNA became flesh to die for our sins and rise for our justification.

An invitation

If you are wrestling with these questions, here is a simple next step: read the Gospel of John slowly and honestly, with an open Bible and an open mind. Ask God to show you the truth. Christianity is not afraid of investigation. It welcomes it. And it ultimately invites you not merely to conclude that God exists, but to come to know Him through Jesus Christ.

Christianity is not offering God as one option among many, or even as the best option out there. It is announcing that God has made Himself known, and that He now calls us to respond to Him.

Francis Collins, who led the Human Genome Project and is one of the world’s leading geneticists, was an atheist when he began reading DNA. The elegance and information he discovered pointed him toward God. He later wrote that the DNA molecule is “our own instruction book, previously known only to God.” That led him not just to theism, but to Christ. If you’re a scientist or love science, don’t think faith means checking your brain at the door. Christianity invites you to bring all your questions and promises you’ll find the One who is Himself the Answer.

If you would like to talk it through, come speak with us.

Footnotes

[1] “Modern Science’s Christian Sources,” James Hannam, First Things, October 1, 2011, First Things.

[2] “ACGT,” National Human Genome Research Institute, Genetics Glossary, date not listed, Genome.gov.

[3] “Human Genomic Variation,” National Human Genome Research Institute, Fact Sheet, February 1, 2023, Genome.gov. In simple terms, DNA is written using four chemical “letters” (A, C, G, and T), often called bases or nucleotides. A chromosome is a long, packaged DNA molecule, humans have 23 chromosomes in one complete set. Most human body cells have two complete sets (often called “two copies” of the genome), one inherited from the mother and one from the father. This two-set arrangement is why we speak of pairs of chromosomes. (A small note for curious readers: some cells are exceptions, for example, mature red blood cells do not have a nucleus, and therefore do not carry nuclear DNA in the usual way.)

[4] “Human Genome Assembly GRCh38.p14,” Genome Reference Consortium, National Center for Biotechnology Information, date not listed, NCBI.

[5] “Base Pair,” National Human Genome Research Institute, Genetics Glossary, date not listed, Genome.gov.

[6] “From RNA to Protein,” Bruce Alberts et al., Molecular Biology of the Cell (4th ed.), Garland Science, 2002, NCBI Bookshelf. In standard biological terms, the DNA sequence is transcribed into messenger RNA (mRNA). A ribosome (a molecular machine) then reads the mRNA in three-letter units called codons. Transfer RNAs (tRNAs) act as adaptors, matching codons to specific amino acids, which the ribosome links together to form a protein.