Las Vegas vs. National Parks: Can we know God through Nature?

As I drove through the desert of Nevada this afternoon Las Vegas appeared like a mirage in the distance. It seemed so out of place in this hot and barren land, in a place where nothing but rocks, cacti and a few hardy animals survive. But nonetheless here it was, with the spire of Stratosphere jutting prominently into the sky.

This is my third time to Las Vegas and each time it has been very thought provoking. The difference between this time and the other two was that now I was arriving by car whereas the other two times I came in by plane. And not only was I arrive by car but that same day and the seven days prior I had spent my time driving through Arches, Grand Escalante, Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park. I had witnessed first hand the amazing power of water as it flowed over sandstone for millions of years and carved out strange and wonderful shapes. I had floated down the Colorado River that cut through the desert so deep that it exposed rock over 2 billion years old. I saw the heavens light up before my eyes 8000 feet above the sea with shooting stars. And here I was, nearing the end of my journey, moving towards a city made by humans.

This stark contrast couldn’t help but bring about a comparison between God’s creation and our creation. While some might say that anything we create is God’s creation there are some subtle differences.

First, when we create something we say, “Look at what I have created,” for indeed we have created it. When we look at nature, and by that I mean the forces that we, at this point, have little or no control over, we say, “Look what God has created.” Our own creations often point to ourselves while nature has a tendency to point towards God.

Second, we only have a finite amount of time to create. As I visited Salt Lake City on the first leg of my journey through Utah I saw the first and most important Mormon Temple, built in the late 1900’s. The Salt Lake Temple took forty years to build; half a life time and probably a persons full working career. And while the temple is a masterpiece I found myself being overwhelmed to a much greater degree once I reached Bryce Canyon. Here  the Hoodoos had taken hundreds of millions of years to be created by the shifting of earth and water. Here I found nature pointing to the incomprehensible amount of time that God has and as a consequence the finitude of his creation, especially humans, and all their attempts at grandeur.

Perhaps my inability to comprehend the complexity of God creating the Hoodoos was what led me to be so awe struck by them. Nature cannot help but point to God, for we have no control over it, we can take no credit, we are but dust.

This leads me to a second and perhaps less interesting point, yet it is one I have thought extensively about. If God is so intricately linked to nature, that is if we see who God is in nature, then wouldn’t God would also decay, fall apart, break down, die. Indeed God does all those things in Jesus. For in Jesus Christ, God decayed in death on the cross, God broke apart into little pieces and died. But like so many of the amazing creations that I saw, it was in the decay that new life was created, something more amazing than we could ever imagine was accomplished.

But less I begin to sound like a Buddhist, who would say that each part of nature is a drop taken from the pool of water that is God, that is to say God is nature, I have to clarify that nature is not synonymous with God, they are not one in the same. For while the creation reveals attributes of the creator, it is limited in what it can reveal. To make God and nature synonymous would limit God by basing our understanding of God on that which we could see and understand. If this was true, then it would only be a matter of time before we understood the secrets of nature, and therefore God, and as appealing as that may sound God is far beyond what we could ever hope to understand. God is not an object to be studied but a subject, a living God that acts in ways that often seem out of sorts and surprising to us. No, God is not synonymous with nature, but we can definitely look to nature as a  revelation, just not the revelation. Jesus truly reveals who God is.