Chance or Purpose? What’s the Difference?

Some people want life to be random because then nothing they do will ever matter. Good or bad, it’s no big deal. Just so long as it makes them feel good, that’s all that matters.

Other people desire purpose, though, because they find the idea of a universe without purpose incredibly depressing. Have you ever helped someone? Made you feel good, didn’t it? But if there’s no purpose in the universe, what’s the real difference between helping someone and kicking them?

Genesis 1:1-19
First this: God created the Heavens and Earth--all you see, all you don't see. Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness. God's Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss. God spoke: "Light!" And light appeared. God saw that light was good and separated light from dark. God named the light Day, he named the dark Night. It was evening, it was morning-- Day One.

God spoke: "Sky! In the middle of the waters; separate water from water!" God made sky. He separated the water under sky from the water above sky. And there it was: he named sky the Heavens; It was evening, it was morning-- Day Two.

God spoke: "Separate! Water-beneath-Heaven, gather into one place; Land, appear!" And there it was. God named the land Earth. He named the pooled water Ocean. God saw that it was good. God spoke: "Earth, green up! Grow all varieties of seed-bearing plants, Every sort of fruit-bearing tree." And there it was. Earth produced green seed-bearing plants, all varieties, And fruit-bearing trees of all sorts. God saw that it was good. It was evening, it was morning-- Day Three.

God spoke: "Lights! Come out! Shine in Heaven's sky! Separate Day from Night. Mark seasons and days and years, Lights in Heaven's sky to give light to Earth." And there it was. God made two big lights, the larger to take charge of Day, The smaller to be in charge of Night; and he made the stars. God placed them in the heavenly sky to light up Earth And oversee Day and Night, to separate light and dark. God saw that it was good. It was evening, it was morning-- Day Four. (The Message)

Did God create the universe in 7 literal days, or were they aeons of time? People have been debating that for millennia and will—in all probability—debate the topic until Christ returns. Maybe, though,in what we do have before us in Genesis 1, we learn something about the character of God that’s way more important than anything we might learn about the “how”: “The step-by-step design suggests that God works with a purpose.” –CC Crawford

And that’s the crux of the matter that really bugs everyone at one time or another: is life just random chance or is there purpose?

What if life—and the universe life exists in—have a purpose? Then don’t you want to get to know the author of that purpose?

So we start here at the beginning of the story. As Christians, sometimes we spend so much time in the New Testament that we neglect the first 2/3 of our manual. And we know the creation story, but when was the last time we really paid attention to it?

Method and Order

Within all this talk of creation is a refutation of the idea that either a] matter (and organized matter) just appeared from nowhere or 2] the universe just emerged from some supernatural being (i.e. many pagan beliefs where the world comes not as an exercise of free will by a supreme being but rather like an uncontrolled bodily excretion).

Check out what we have recorded here. Do we have a moment by moment account? No. Do we have a scientific explanation of why the electrons of any give atom don’t just zip off into space? No. But we also don’t have an answer to the question of why it took God seven days. I get offended by people who say God “had to have had millions of years” to do his work. But really, why would he need 7 days? Why not just do it all in half an instant?

Joel 2:13
Change your life, not just your clothes. Come back to GOD, your God. And here's why: God is kind and merciful. He takes a deep breath, puts up with a lot, this most patient God, extravagant in love, always ready to cancel catastrophe. (MSG)

“It is this order which makes human life possible; man simply could not live in an unpredictable world.” – CC Crawford

From the very first chapter of the manual for life, we find that God is a God of meticulous care, rushing through nothing and doing everything …
It was Good

That last sentence would have sounded (grammatically) terrible if I had said, “doing everything good.” In Scripture, anything is called “good” that is doing what the Creator designed it to do. Look at something with me:

1:17-18
And God put them in the arch of heaven, to give light on the earth; to have rule over the day and the night, and for a division between the light and the dark: and God saw that it was good. (BBE)

Note that (here) only the light is called good. Not the darkness. However, at the end of the creation process, God calls it all good (which would presumably include the darkness).

It is indeed significant that the two characteristics of the primordial chaos which occur in all the ancient traditions are those of emptiness and darkness. That is to say, where God is not, there is always emptiness, darkness, non-being. Where God is, by way of vivid contrast, there is life, light, and being!

According to Scripture, God as father plans, God as the Word executes, and God as the Spirit actualizes that which is decreed. (Psalm 148:6; Isaiah 45:22-23; 46:9-11; Ephesians 3:9-12)

What do I DO with this?

--“This, then, is the first lesson of the Bible: that at the root and origin of all this vast universe, before whose laws we are crushed as the moth, there abides a living, conscious Spirit, who wills and knows and fashions all things.” – M. Dods

--“There were no indications of life in the great deep until the Holy Spirit began to brood ‘upon the face of the waters.’ So, until the human soul yields itself to the quickening pulse of the Holy Spirit, it is dead in its own trespasses and sins.” –CC