“Scrambled Eggs”

Jim Shelton

            One of my favorite things to do on a Saturday is to rise early, read the newspaper with my morning cup of coffee, and then cook breakfast for the girls. I went outside, put a skillet on the side burner of the grill and cooked some bacon. Nothing smells better when it is cooking than bacon and I took some sort of sadistic satisfaction in thinking the smell wafting over the neighborhood would make the neighbors envious. After breaking the bacon into very small pieces, I mixed it with eight eggs and added some cheese, a little milk, and some minced onion. My version of an omelet.

            I poured the concoction into the skillet and started to stir. The egg yolks began to break apart and what had been eight very distinct centers became an unrecognizable, but soon to be delectable, mixture. As I stirred, I thought about how difficult it would be – yea, impossible – to put those eggs back together. I briefly wondered if men of science, should they ever undertake such a task, could unscramble eight scrambled eggs – an adult contemplation of Humpty Dumpty. Almost immediately I decided only God could pull off such a feat.

            As my omelet slowly cooked, I looked around the backyard. The woods behind our house were in full fall splendor. The little black gum tree had lost nearly all of its leaves, but there were some left that were still a brilliant red. The maples were absolutely indescribable in their hues that ranged from red to orange to yellow. A cold front had moved through and the sky was now a brilliant blue as the sun began to peak over the corner of my house onto the deck. As I looked around, I wondered how anyone could believe all of nature just happened.

            I must confess that sometimes as I listen to all of the paleontologists, geologists, and other experts proclaim the “fact” of evolution with such confidence, my faith often wavers. I entertain the thought, “What if they are right?” After all, I cannot even begin to comprehend God. However, as I think about it, I have just as much trouble comprehending something coming from nothing. Non-life producing life. Disorder producing order. How could unintelligent randomness produce man who can be intelligent and rational? If we are nothing but matter in motion, then why do we contemplate things like beauty, morality, and truth? How can the haphazard collision of molecules over eons of time in the vacuum of space produce such questions in the mind of man? Surely it takes as much faith to believe that God is not as to believe that God is.

            However, we are constantly pelted with the “fact” that all of us are monkeys’ uncles or rather have monkeys for distant uncles. When you listen to evolutionists, they can make a very impressive sounding case as to how man and ape are related. The “ape thing” has perturbed me. If God created the universe as described in Genesis, then why did he create the ape? Was it just to confuse us – to throw us off? Is it possible that God created the ape so He could show us what man would be like without a soul? Is it possible that God created other creatures similar to us physically in order to make us see our spiritual nature? Instead, we look at the ape, only seeing the physical, then look in the mirror and think, “monkey.” How sad.