Where did we come from?

Look up at a clear night sky, away from city lights, and it's hard not to feel small. Some people look at that sky and conclude, "We're just specks on a rock." Others look at the same sky and feel amazed that anyone noticed them at all. Same stars, opposite conclusions.

This lesson tackles the first big question: where did we come from? And it turns out the deepest part of that question isn't "how?" or "when?" but something simpler and much bigger: on purpose, or by accident?

What you'll learn

• The difference between "how" questions and "why" questions
• Three things all Christians agree on about creation, and where they differ
• How the secular materialist view answers this question, at its strongest

Two kinds of questions

Imagine a birthday cake on the table. Why does it exist? You could answer: "Flour, eggs and sugar, heated at 180°C, and chemical reactions made it rise." Or you could answer: "My aunt baked it for my birthday, because she loves me."

Both answers are true. They just answer different questions. A food scientist could explain every reaction in that cake and still never tell you it was a birthday present. (Christian mathematician John Lennox likes to use this example.)

Science is brilliant at "how" questions. "Why" and "who" questions need another kind of answer. So the biggest question about where we came from is not "how long did it take?" but "Is there a Someone behind it all, or not?"

What Genesis 1 says

The Bible opens with this:

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:1)

Later in the chapter, God makes humans, and then looks at everything:

"And God looked upon all that He had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day." (Genesis 1:31)

From Genesis 1, all Bible-believing Christians agree on a shared core:

1. God created everything. He wasn't made; everything else was.
2. On purpose. Creation was planned and ordered, not an accident.
3. Good. The world, including our bodies, was "very good".

Where Christians differ is on how and when God created:

Each of these is held by faithful Christians and serious scientists. For example, geneticist Francis Collins, who led the Human Genome Project, is an evolutionary creationist. Here's the key point: evolution as a scientific theory is not the same thing as materialism. The real fork in the road is purpose versus no purpose.

The poet-king David felt tiny under the stars too, but he reached a surprising conclusion:

"When I behold Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place— what is man that You are mindful of him, or the son of man that You care for him?" (Psalm 8:3–4)

He doesn't say "so we don't matter". He's amazed that the God who made the stars cares about him.

The secular materialist answer, fairly

Using our steel-man rule, here's this view at its strongest. The universe began about 13.8 billion years ago. Stars, planets and life developed through natural processes over vast time. There is no designer and no built-in purpose. Science has explained a huge amount without needing God, and it will keep explaining more. Honest materialists face the hard edges of this: philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote that humans are the product of causes that had no idea what they were producing. Many materialists find this freeing. We are the universe becoming aware of itself, and we get to make our own meaning.

Every worldview has hard questions to answer, and this one has some too:

• Why is there anything at all, rather than nothing?
• Why does the universe follow orderly laws that human minds can understand? Many early scientists (Kepler, Boyle, Newton, Faraday) studied nature because they believed a rational God made it.
• If our minds are only the product of processes aimed at survival, can we trust them to find truth? C. S. Lewis made this argument, and the atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel has raised similar concerns.

Materialists do have responses ("the universe is just a brute fact", or "there may be many universes"). The aim isn't to win a debate but to see what each view has to explain.

And "be true to yourself"? It mostly doesn't answer this question. It's a story about the self, not the universe, and it often borrows the materialist answer in the background.

Key words

• Creation: everything God has made; also the act of making it.
• Shared core: what all Bible-believing Christians agree on, even when they differ on details.
• Materialism: the belief that physical matter and energy are all that exist.
• Purpose: the reason something exists or is made.

How this points to Jesus

The New Testament says that everything was made through Jesus (John 1:1–3; Colossians 1:16). The One who spoke the world into being later stepped into it as a human being. The Creator didn't stay far away from his creation; he came close enough to touch.

Think about it

Take it further

This week, take a few minutes outside at night (or look at a deep-space photo online). Ask yourself honestly: does this feel like an accident, or like something made? What makes you answer the way you do? Your worksheet helps you add the "Where did we come from?" row to your worldview table.

If you'd like to, you could pray: Creator God, thank you for the size and beauty of the universe, and that you still notice me. Amen.