Sermon Illustrations
Science Can't Provide Solution for the Deepest Need of the Heart
Consider this comment a girl posted on an atheist website:
I'm confused ... I always believed science would be the cure-all for my problems, but I don’t know if I can keep living without eternal life. I guess I'll just have to find a way myself to make it through this meaningless existence. I just wish I knew of someone who could show me the path to eternal life. If science can't provide the answers, though, then who or what can!? *sigh* Doesn't it seem like there is a higher power that gives our lives purpose? Well, science says there isn't, so there isn't.
Have you ever felt like this girl? Can you relate to her angst? Have you ever really wondered, in an atheistic universe, if there is any point at all? Even Bertrand Russell, the great and influential philosopher, realized that an atheistic universe is truly meaningless.
Hope is in short supply in our culture these days. If life as one sees it now on this pain-filled planet is all there is, then existence is indeed meaningless and one must, as this girl says, "find a way myself." She realizes there is one thing that would make everything meaningful: eternal life. She once expected science to find a way for humans to live forever, but she has come to realize that it cannot.
At one point in history, there was a band of people who trusted in someone they fervently believed would truly change the world for good. A handful of devout Jewish people thought a man named Jesus was the Messiah—the deliverer who would break their oppressive bondage under the Romans and set up a permanent and truly godly kingdom on earth. Their prophet Isaiah had prophesied in the ancient Jewish writings that the Messiah would come and restore all things to a paradise, where there would be no more fighting, oppression, fear, or death (Isa. 11; Isa. 35). Everyone would live together in peace forever.
Source: Josh and Sean McDowell, The Resurrection and You, (Baker Books, 2017), Pages 11-12