The Big Picture

Every consequence has an action that begins it. Every l e t t e r and every space on this page is the consequence of pressing labelled buttons on a keyboard. My personality is the consequence of the actions of other people - I play guitar because my step-brother left one in my dad’s living room once. I’m pretty good at maths because when my mum was getting to know my step-dad he used to teach it to me...which in turn led to a strong relationship with him. I don’t use abbreviations when I type because when I was 13 or 14 I used them so much that I had to constantly go back and correct my essays. I can picture the business studies classroom - I can even picture the computer I was sat at when I made that decision. Such a small action helped define a small part of who I am.

Looking further back, I am the consequence of two people deciding they wanted to have children together. Their actions (in not too much detail please) resulted in my very existence. Every breath that you take is the result of a series of actions over thousands of years making you into you, at the time and place you’re in.

Ok. I think that’s pretty mind-blowing. There is nothing on this planet that isn’t the consequence of some sort of action, and every action is the result of a previous action, which was the consequence of another action, and so on. Still with me?

So let’s talk about the big picture. Imagine a blank white canvas. With the right materials, you could paint anything you wanted on there. It could look beautiful. But what if you don’t have any paint? What if you had no materials whatsoever? Suddenly, it becomes physically impossible to create anything. Let me ask you a bigger question:

How was the universe created from nothing?

The blank white canvas analogy only works to a certain extent - it’s not like the universe was there, but purely white when it began...the ‘canvas’ of the universe didn’t even exist! Not only can you not paint with no paint, you can’t even think about painting if you don’t have a canvas to paint on! Excuse my rambling, but what I'm getting at is that the universe must surely be a consequence of a previous action. Scientists tell us that the Big Bang is that action. But to what is the Big Bang a consequence of if there was nothing?

Surely it has to be God. As Wayne Grudem summarizes, ‘God has no beginning, end or succession of moments in his own being, and he sees all time equally vividly, yet God sees events in time and acts in time.’ God is the exception - It can only be God who does not follow these rules. Only God who is not restricted by actions or consequences, or by space, time or matter.

Remember the former things, those of long ago;

I am God, and there is no other;

I am God, and there is none like me.

I make known the end from the beginning,

from ancient times, what is still to come. 


I say: My purpose will stand, 


and I will do all that I please.

Isaiah 46:9-10

Surely it follows that it’s more plausible that God did create the universe than it is that God didn’t create the universe? Surely only God can be the artist behind the big picture?

I'll leave you with a quote from a scientist named Francis Colins in his book The Language of God:

We have this very solid conclusion that the universe had an origin, the Big Bang. Fifteen billion years ago, the universe began with an unimaginably bright flash of energy from an infinitesimally small point. That implies that before that, there was nothing. I can't imagine how nature, in this case the universe, could have created itself. And the very fact that the universe had a beginning implies that someone was able to begin it. And it seems to me that had to be outside of nature.

I know what I believe!