The Gift of Being
This week I’m reading a little book called Enduring Divine Absence: The Challenge of Modern Atheism which was written by my friend Joseph Minich (very sharp dude). It’s a fascinating study of how modern technology (man’s knowledge of and *apparent* control over nature) makes atheism seem like a plausible philosophical option, and how this relates to the hiddenness of God and his purposes in revealing himself (and not revealing himself). I want to share a quote from this book with you, but first a little ordering of our thoughts.
In the book he does some philosophical heavy-lifting (at least for normal people like me) which quite blew my mind. Everything that exists (but which could very easily not have existed) has gone from not existing (and not having to exist) to existing. How? By receiving its being. “If a thing does not have its being in itself,” writes the Minich (by which he means, if a thing did not create itself), “it must have it in another” (44). Therefore, everything that exists but didn’t have to, received its being from that which never received its being at all but exists in and by itself (I told you, heavy-lifting).
One payout of this concept is that it shows us why the being or existence behind and under everything that exists must also be personal, namely, because this being chose to give us existence, as a gift. We see that this Being is a Personal Agent who wills and acts. He donated our being to us all, whether “we” are people, animals, plants, or even elements. He is the one who bridged the gap between the possibility of our existence and our actual existence, even though he didn’t have to.
Very well, enough! Now you are ready for the quote:
The gap between what must exist and what does but need not exist is necessarily mediated by a non-necessary donation from what necessarily exists, and that requires will and personality. Our act of existence is suspended in and is a donation of Existence Himself—Being Himself, Life Himself—in whom all things are what and as they are—from whom are all things, for whom are all things, and in whom all things hold together.
Wowzers. Truly “he is actually not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’” (Acts 17:27-28). Let’s trust this astounding God with our lives today.