What Lies Behind the Law

Today's Scripture

Two witnesses speak today: the night sky, and the God who planted ears that hear.

Psalm 8:3-4 — "When I look at 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, and the son of man that you care for him?"

Psalm 94:9 — "He who planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not see?"

Acts 17:27-28 — "Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for 'In him we live and move and have our being.'"

The Big Idea

Three days of clues now demand a verdict. Is the universe just stuff — matter bumping into matter for no reason — or is there a Mind behind it? Lewis argues that science, for all its power, cannot answer that question from the outside. But there is one place we get inside information about the universe: ourselves. And what we find inside is a law pressing on us — exactly what we would expect if the Power behind everything were more like a mind than a fog.

Reflection

The question science cannot reach

Lewis now asks the biggest question there is:

"We want to know whether the universe simply happens to be what it is for no reason or whether there is a power behind it that makes it what it is." — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Be careful here, because Lewis is not attacking science — he respected it deeply. He is marking its edges. Science observes what the universe does: how fast objects fall, how cells divide, how stars burn. Those are wonderful questions with findable answers. But there is a different kind of question underneath them all:

"Supposing science ever became complete so that it knew every single thing in the whole universe. Is it not plain that the questions, 'Why is there a universe?' 'Why does it go on as it does?' 'Has it any meaning?' would remain just as they were?" — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

A complete chemical analysis of the ink and paper of a letter would still not tell you why it was written, or whether anyone loves you. Your phone's spec sheet — processor speed, screen size, battery life — is all true, and none of it explains why your friend texted you at midnight to see if you were okay. "What is it made of?" and "What is it for?" are different questions, and the second kind cannot be answered by measuring harder.

God put this same boundary-question to Job: Job 38:4 — "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding." None of us was there. No instrument was there. If we are going to find out whether Something is behind the universe, the evidence will have to come another way.

The architect is not a staircase

Why doesn't God just show up as an object we can examine — put himself under the microscope? Lewis answers with his famous picture:

"If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe — no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase or fireplace in that house." — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

You will never find the architect by prying up floorboards. He is not in the house that way; the whole house is his idea. A character inside a video game could search every map and never bump into the designer, because the designer is not one of the objects in the game — the whole game exists inside the designer's mind. So when someone says, "I'll believe in God when a telescope spots him," they are demanding the wrong kind of evidence, like demanding to taste a sound. Paul said exactly this to the philosophers of Athens. Acts 17:24-25 — "The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything." You cannot put the Giver of breath in a box made by breathing creatures.

And yet the house is full of his fingerprints. Psalm 8:3-4 — "When I look at 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?" John Calvin loved this thought so much he called creation a theater:

"Let us not be ashamed to take pious delight in the works of God open and manifest in this most beautiful theater." — John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion

A theater exists so that something can be shown. Acts 14:17 says God "did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness." Every harvest is a hint. Every sunset is a signed program from the playwright. But hints outside us only go so far. Lewis's argument now takes its most original step — inward.

Inside information

There is exactly one object in the universe you know from the inside: you. You do not just observe yourself the way you observe a rock; you are yourself. And Lewis says that is precisely where we should expect the Power behind the universe to leak through, if that Power is interested in us:

"The only way in which we could expect it to show itself would be inside ourselves as an influence or a command trying to get us to behave in a certain way. And that is just what we do find inside ourselves. Surely this ought to arouse our suspicions?" — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Three days of this plan have established that command: a real law, pressing on us, which none of us made. Now connect the dots. Matter does not issue commands. Fog does not care whether you keep promises. But the Something behind the universe evidently does care — which means it is more like a mind than like anything else we know.

This is why Lewis calls conscience our piece of inside information. Studied from the outside — height, weight, brain scans — a human being looks like one more object in the universe. But you are the one object you also know from within, and from within comes news no scanner detects: a command, an ought, a Sender's note slipped under the door of your own heart. If the universe were a sealed package, we are the one spot where we can see what is being packed inside. Psalm 94:9 makes the argument in two lines of poetry: "He who planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not see?" Could a universe that produced hearing come from total deafness? Could a Power that wrote "be fair" into every conscience be indifferent to fairness?

Blaise Pascal, the brilliant French mathematician, marveled that the universe's strangest feature is not its size but the small creature measuring it:

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed." — Blaise Pascal, Pensées

The galaxies are bigger than you, but you know about them and they know nothing about you. A reed that thinks is stranger than a billion stars that don't. Thought, conscience, the ache to ask why — none of these are what you would expect blind matter to cough up, but they are exactly what you would expect if a Mind made minds. The clues inside us and the spectacle outside us agree: mind, not matter, sits at the bottom of everything.

The Mind has spoken

Lewis is careful to say that the argument so far does not get us all the way to the God of the Bible. It gets us to Somebody — a directing Mind, intensely interested in right conduct. Notice how honest that is. Lewis refuses to claim more than the evidence gives, which is one reason skeptics have trusted this book for eighty years. But a clue is not meant to be the end of a search; it is meant to start one. To go further, the Mind would have to speak. Hebrews 11:6 — "whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him." Seeking is the right response to a clue, and God promises seekers a reward. Paul told the Athenians that God arranged the whole world precisely so "that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us" (Acts 17:27).

How near? Here the gospel goes far beyond philosophy. John 1:1-3 — "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... All things were made through him." The Mind behind the universe is called the Word — which means he was never silent by nature. And then the staggering claim of Hebrews 1:1-2 — "Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son... through whom also he created the world."

The architect could not be a staircase — but he could walk through the front door. In Jesus, the Power behind the universe entered the house he designed, ate at its tables, wept at its funerals, and died on one of its hills to bring its runaway residents home. That is why Lewis, the former atheist, finally said of this faith:

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." — C.S. Lewis, 'Is Theology Poetry?'

Christianity is not one more object in the room to squint at. It is the light that makes the whole room — moral law, starry sky, restless heart — finally make sense. The clue we have followed for four days was never meant to end in a philosophy. It ends in a Person who knows your name, and who crossed the distance himself because you never could.

Going Deeper

Tonight, give God two minutes of actual attention in his "theater." Step outside or lean on a windowsill. Look up and say Psalm 8 slowly: "When I look at your heavens... what is man that you are mindful of him?" Then put your hand over your chest and remember the other witness — the law that has been pressing on you since before you could name it. Two messengers, outside and inside, one Sender. Thank him that he did not stay behind the scenery, but stepped onto the stage in Jesus.