Happenstance and Wedding Rehearsals

I downloaded this book to my Kindle and started reading it yesterday.  It is called Evidence Unseen by James Rochford. 

I've only read one chapter so far, and it is indeed a clever book on Christian apologetics.

I thought I'd bring up one of the evidences and also recall my own wedding rehearsal. 

My sister-in-law gets married this Saturday.  She will have a normal rehearsal and dinner afterwards.

When I got married to her brother over a year ago, we did something different.  We rented a pavilion in Clark Park.  We could only rent for the afternoon so we decided to do a lunch instead of a dinner.  We also had my favorite barbecue place cater for the occasion.  Sadly Glenn's BBQ is closed now, but praise God it was open long enough to cater my rehearsal.

We had a lovely luncheon, a vast cross section of bridesmaids, groomsmen, and family, played some Cornhole, and even got to sit in the pavilion while it rained.  I can't think of any rehearsal dinner that can top that.  I look back with pride on that day.  (Not that Bethany's won't be good.  I'm still happy with the way mine turned out.)

But the thing is, if there is no God in the universe, and nobody made us, then we really have no choices as to decide if we want a traditional wedding rehearsal dinner or a casual picnic in the park.  Every decision we make is based on biological chain reactions and would have happened anyway.  In fact, neither rehearsal would have happened because marriage is something that doesn't just happen.  It's planned.  In a Godless world, we would just be amoebas going around and reproducing asexually with anyone and everyone, only following our pheromones. 

But we know that this is not true because we know we consciously make decisions every day.  We have a subconscious that makes us more than animal.  The fact that Bethany and I have two different kinds of rehearsals, much less weddings in general, show that we in fact both make decisions and that the outcomes were not just inevitable.  There has to be a God in the universe making sense of all of this.

This is the huge difference between fate and God's predestination.  Without God, things just happen.  With God, it is all planned and all has a purpose.

Ephesians 1:3-6, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, ⁴ even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love ⁵ he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, ⁶ to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.

We have one situation where we are purposeless chemical reactions.  We have another much better and more real situation where God plans our lives while still making us responsible for our own personal decisions.  In fact, even from the atheist perspective, the idea of two cells coming together to create a different life is proof enough that it had to be planned and that there is a God.  How much better to believe in our colorful Yahweh who created us to all be unique and loved us even when we hated him and sent Jesus to live for us and to take our punishment on the cross.  How can people live without such a believe giving them backbone?