Douglas Adams, a science fiction writer, once wrote in his famous Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that the answer to life, the universe and everything was 42. His point, of course that there was no meaning to life, the universe or everything.
But is that all there is to the story?
I believe that for every person on this planet, the same three questions are asked as an initial starting point when looking for purpose and meaning: 1) is there a God? 2.) Can I know Him? And 3.) Is He worth knowing? Every other question is an off-shoot of these three questions.
Painted in a very broad stroke atheists stop with question 1. People who speak of a "Higher Power" or "Karma" are working with question 2, while people who struggle with the nature of evil, pain, sickness and death are wrestling with an answer to number 3.
As Christians we yell out yes to these three questions. But why and secondly, how can we share this with other people?
To begin to give an answer to these three questions, we need to start with the idea of revelation. That is, if there is a God, has this being made him/her/itself known to us? From there we can move to the third question.
When we talk about revelation we are really discussing two different items. These items are related and overlap but they are not interchangeable. The first is what is called general revelation - that is knowledge about God that is given to all people by the simple fact they are human. The second is called specific revelation which is knowledge given only to believers who have been shown through the Holy Spirit.
General revelation which we will talk about next week can answer only 1.5 of the 3 questions. To complete the puzzle, we need to have all three questions answered.
Next time, general revelation- what it can and can't do.
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