1. It pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for the manifestation of the glory of his eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, to create, or make of nothing, the world and all things in it, whether visible or invisible, in the beginning in the space of six days; all of this was very good. (WCF 4.1)
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall nd; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh ndeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. (Matt 7:7-8, KJV)
Many years ago before I was a Christian, I was challenged by a friend of mine to think about what sets humanity apart from every other living creature in the universe. It wasn’t something that I had really thought about before because being around musicians, it didn’t really come up all that much in conversation. Now there were many many things that could have been pointed to, but what got me thinking in my agnostic worldview was that humans are the only creature in the known universe to ask the question why.
I love visiting the zoo with my children, but out of all the animals, out of all the creatures with brains larger than ours, not one of them sits there looking at the night sky asking the question why, not one creature on earth apart from us humans has philosophy, science and religion to try to answer the question of why, and why on earth do we ask why in the first place? Why why why?
Well this was all answered for me when I first became a Christian. God has spoken and gives the answers in scripture. God is the greatest artist of all in that out of nothing He created everything by just the word of His mouth (Gen 1, Col 1:16) and He did it all in 6 days (Gen 2:1-3, Ex 20:11, 31:17). Meaning we are living in His masterpiece, which is all around us with is colours, smells, sounds, rhythms and beauty (Ps 8,19) or as the confession puts it, God made all that there is as a “manifestation of the glory of his eternal power, wisdom, and goodness”, so that we humans might employ the tools that He gave us to look and ask - who, what, when, how and most importantly why (Rom 1:18-32) - all so that we might glorify Him.
Now that’s not to say that we will arrive at the right conclusions by just looking at His creation (see WCF 1.1), but it is to say that through the very uniquely human quality of questioning (Deut 4:29, Jer 33:3, Matt 7:7), which no other creature on earth does, we might come to the conclusion and understanding that we are indeed a part of a created order and unique to the Creator in this world.