I’ve just read about the Thai boys soccer team that has been trapped in a cave for 12 days since water filled it and prevented their exit. They are in perilous danger as monsoon rains are threatening to fill the caves further. Options for rescue include draining as much water as possible so that the boys (many of whom cannot swim) can wade to safety, drilling a hole to the cave where they are located, and using scuba gear to help the boys swim out. It’s a frantic operation that has drawn an international team of rescuers.
If I take off my biblical worldview glasses, I have to ask: why all the fuss? From where does this impulse come to help these boys and their coach? Why would any of these rescuers risk their lives for a chance to rescue anyone?
On a naturalistic worldview, where all living things are a product of blind, evolutionary forces, this situation is just one of many ways in which “mother nature” is weeding out the weak. This is survival of the fittest taking place before our very eyes. Nature is picking off the least suitable for survival in this harsh world. We’re evolving as a species…and we’re getting to watch it happen. Atheists and so-called agnostics should watch with dispassionate, yet rapt attention.
However, no one seems to be watching this situation develop as if observing a scientific process. It’s a human crisis. I dare say that among the international rescue teams there are those who would be self-described atheists. Given how vilified creation science is in this country, its possible that a many of those helping with the rescue assume an evolutionary explanation of life. But how can that be? How can they hold to naturalistic beliefs while risking their lives to save others?
They can’t help it. They are made in the image of God.
You see, we can claim to believe wrong things and convince ourselves to some extent that we are right, but we have no choice but to live in God’s world where His truth reigns (Rom 1:17-19). Fallen as we are, marred as His image is in us, it is not gone. God values human life because He made man in His own image (Gen 9:6). Because we are made in His image, deep down we value human life. This is why we almost universally experience outrage when the weakest among us are victimized, contrary to the dictates of evolutionary thinking.
In moments of great danger, when we see others in peril, the image of God in us moves us impulsively to move to help. Without thinking, we risk our lives to save strangers. These actions do not comport with survival of the fittest, but they coincide perfectly with the character of the God who made us and in whose image we are created.
The natural man may deny the existence of God with his mouth, but he cannot deny the existence of God with his life. He will not naturally live for the glory of God, but he cannot help but live as if God exists. God’s image is woven into every part of the natural man’s being - it shows up in the way he impulsively values human life.
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