‘Why do you believe in God, Grandpa?’
‘Because He made you, Jessie.’
Jessie frowned and stared straight ahead out of the windshield of the truck, as they drove along the dirt road. ‘No, Grandpa. Why do you really believe in God?’
Grandpa glanced quickly at Jessie and saw the serious look. ‘You really want to know why?’ he asked.
Jessie turned to him. ‘Yeah, I do. Billy at school said there is no God, said I’m stupid to be wearing this crucifix around my neck, and I argued with him, and we got into a fight.’
‘Why didn’t you tell Grandma and I yesterday when you got home from school? I know Principal Durn wants to see you this morning, but she didn’t say why when she called. You know you can tell us anything, and whatever it is we’ll talk it out.’
‘I know. I didn’t want to talk about it yesterday. I’m telling you now.’
He was quiet as they came to a four-way stop at an intersection with another dirt road. Both roads ran straight off to the horizon, with farmers fields on every side. The sky was clear, bright, and a deep blue. The sun shone bright and hot as Grandpa pulled away from the stop and accelerated down the road. He was glad he had listened to Grandma and got the air conditioning. It kept things cool inside, and the dust outside.
‘Fair enough. You shouldn’t be fighting with Billy, though. It’s good that you stand up for yourself, and argue what you believe, but if it comes to a fight, you’ve failed. Any fight…’.
‘….is a failure of politics’, Jessie said. ‘I know Grandpa, you’ve said it before. A lot. It’s just that he was mocking everything I believe, he wouldn’t listen to me, and I couldn’t take it anymore.’
‘I get it’, said Grandpa. ‘Just don’t let it become a habit. I taught you to fight so you could defend yourself, not so you could settle arguments. Is Billy OK?’
‘He’s fine. I took it easy on him. He fights like a girl.’
Grandpa laughed. ‘OK. You asked me why I believe in God?’
‘Yeah. I want to have better ideas when I’m arguing with Billy’.
‘We don’t have a lot of time until we get to school so I’ll just cover a few reasons quickly, but anytime you want to talk about it, just let me know. I’d be happy to talk about it in more detail. OK?’
‘Sounds good, Grandpa. Thanks.’
‘OK, well there are many reasons that people believe in God. Some reasons are very emotional, and some are very logical. My reasons lean a little more to the logical side, but I don’t take anything away from anyone on their beliefs in God. While we are all the same in general, we are all made different in the details for a reason, and I figure we all have our own way to think. So, as long as someone believes in God, and follows the teachings of Jesus and the Church, I figure it’s all good.’
Grandpa continued, ‘So, to understand the first reason I believe in God, you have to ask yourself, ‘How did everything begin?’.
Jessie said, ‘Right, and Billy said it’s the Big Bang, and everybody knows that.’
Grandpa chuckled. ‘Well that’s the big theory now. I’d call it more a hypothesis than a theory, but personally I think it’s quite possible there was a big bang. That’s not what you have to ask yourself, though. The question to ask is, ‘What started the Big Bang?’. Something had to come before it and cause it, or you have to believe that everything came from nothing. Can nothing produce something? I’ve never seen evidence of that, and it just doesn’t make sense. So, something had to be there right at the start to get things started, and that’s what we call ‘God’.
Jessie looked at Grandpa and said, ‘OK, I think I understand that. But what if scientists find something that existed before the Big Bang, like a super dense star or something.’
‘Well, then how did that come to be? What caused that super dense star, or black hole, or whatever, to exist? You can go back as far as you want, but at some point you get to the very beginning where something had to have started everything off. That’s the point where God enters the picture.’
Grandpa slowed the truck as they came to the end of the gravel road where it met the main road. He stopped, looked, saw no one coming, and turned right onto the paved road.
‘I would add that in science there is a principle where everything must have a cause. Why they apply that principle to everything, but not to the absolute beginning is beyond me.’
They passed a sign that said ‘Jamesville 5 miles’. He glanced at the fuel gauge and made a mental note to gas up after he dropped Jessie off at school.
Grandpa said, ‘We are almost there, so I’ll just mention a couple of other reasons, and we can talk about it later. In school, have you talked about how the sun is going to eventually burn out?’
Jessie said, ‘Yeah. Early this term Mr. Miller said it would shine 4 or 5 billion more years, and then it would change into another type of star until it finally goes dark.’
‘Right. I wanted to know if you knew that because I want to make the point that all non-living things in the universe are breaking down. I’m not saying it happens overnight, but the constant momentum of the universe is to go from a higher level of complexity to a lower level of complexity, where complex things that are a combination of different elements, break down into their constituent parts. On earth, for instance, we see constant erosion, and all the mountains will eventually be sand.’
‘I’ve never thought about that, but OK, I see what you mean,’ said Jessie, ‘but what does that have to do with God existing?’
Grandpa smiled, ‘I thought you’d never ask. Well, now look at people and other living things. All living things take bits and pieces of things and absorb them into themselves, taking simpler things and making something more complex. That’s the opposite of the rest of the universe. All living things are doing the opposite of what the rest of the universe is doing.’
‘So?’, Jessie asked.
‘So, how does a universe, that supposedly has no God, create living things that work the exact opposite of everything else in the universe? I say there’s no way that can happen by accident. I believe that the existence of living things is another sign that God exists. There’s no way that a universe without a God can create things by some miraculous accident that are the opposite of how everything else works. There has to be God.’
They were coming up to town, passing a few houses on the outskirts. The school was on the other side of town, and there would be a traffic light in the center of town, although it was usually just showing green.
Jessie said, ‘OK. I’ll have to think about that one for a while, and it’ll probably be over Billy’s head, too. What else have you got?’
‘Well, I’d say you should ask your biology teacher, Mr. Miller, to take you through the latest things that have been learned. A lot of what has been learned in the last 10 to 20 years points to a creator, as far as I’m concerned. If you just look at the details of how cells work, for instance, and the fact that all the pieces must have been there right from the beginning or the cells would have never survived, shows they couldn’t have evolved. Or look at the human eye, or look at the complexity of human conception, and then have them explain how the incredible engineering that they represent could have evolved. Or look at the simple chicken egg, which we have plenty of back at the farm. They are an extremely complex system that allows just the right nutrients to be available, just the right air to be available, and just the right garbage to come out. It’s an incredible feat of engineering. And it only works because all of it is there, and it wouldn’t work if even one piece wasn’t. There’s no way the chicken egg evolved. It was created by God, just like all the other living things. Science took people away from God 100 years ago, but given the incredible detail that we are now learning, I think it’s going to take everyone back to God very soon. The engineering that has gone into living things is just incredible, and there’s no way they could have been created by accident.’
Grandpa turned into the parking lot of the high school. He drove past the parked cars that filled about half the parking lot and made his way to the side door that was closest to the principal’s office. At the back of the parking lot was a line of empty school buses. School had been underway for an hour already.
As he stopped the truck, Grandpa said, ‘OK, here you go Jessie. Good luck talking to Principal Durn. Have you got everything you need?’
‘Yes, Grandpa. I think I’ll be spending the rest of the day here at school. If that’s not going to happen, though, I’ll call you on your cell.’
‘Sounds good. I’ve got to gas up the truck, and then do some shopping for Grandma, so I’ll be around town for a while. I hope my rambling on about my reasons for believing in God was helpful’.
‘It was great, Grandpa. I’d like to talk about it more when I get home.’
‘Anytime, Jess. Just let me know’.
Jessie leaned over and kissed Grandpa on the cheek, undid her seatbelt, and opened the door. She climbed out, closed the truck door, and walked to the school. As she opened the door, she turned around, blew him a kiss, and went inside.
Grandpa smiled, shook his head in wonder, and started making his way through the parking lot back to the road. First, he’d gas up the truck and then he’d head over to the grocery store.
‘Oh, oh’, he thought, ‘Did I remember to bring Grandma’s grocery list?’. He stopped the truck and started going through the stuff in his pockets.
The end.
Peace be with you.
Steve.
Peace Be With You 