Functioning as Designed

Chapter 1

The Premise

There is an exquisite agony endured by older baby boomers that has been more acutely felt by us than by any succeeding generation. For me, the torture began in earnest in 1998 when I realized I had no choice but to submit to it if I were to continue to effectively pursue my calling as an educator especially in my role as a Christian school administrator.

I recall the terror of contemplating those first few tentative steps into the forebodingly foreign world of computers. As I slogged my way through the muck and mire of mastering basic internet skills and word processing, I discovered an acronym whose application stretches far beyond the realm of technology: FAD. I learned that when a technological tool is working as it should, it is said to be FAD—functioning as designed. I also learned that the technical term for when the tool (my computer in this case) was not functioning as designed is error.

It dawned on me pretty quickly that as much as I imagined computers to be the sinister second of Satan, there are no gray areas in technology. It’s either FAD or in error; no middle of the road. My left brain appreciated that reality even while it was driving my right brain crazy. (For what it’s worth, I have consistently tested balanced-brained throughout my adult life.)

Speaking of left brain (logic) versus right brain (emotion) and considering the implications of FAD beyond technology, I am convicted that the single greatest error we make in our contemplation of and conversation on all things theological is to relegate such to the right-brain realm of religion. Beginning with the most fundamental question of our existence—Is existence by design or by chance?—intellectual honesty and logic demand that such consideration must be an exercise of the left brain rather than the right brain since the truth of one option renders false the other. As comfortable as the middle of the road is for our right brain, there is no logical third option in answer to this question.

As much as I appreciate the opportunity to engage the atheist, the skeptic, and the agnostic in discourse on the fundamental question of our existence, the title of this book implies that it is settled science that existence is by design and therefore not by chance. If you are unable or unwilling to accept that premise, I probably don’t have much to offer you. However, for those who embrace the notion that existence is on purpose and not by accident, I invite you now to switch anything and everything you’ve ever considered theologically from your right brain to your left brain so that we can examine it all logically and objectively rather than emotionally and subjectively.

No doubt as you were switching brain hemispheres, you noticed that you have a whole lot more thoughts, suppositions, opinions, and notions about theology than you might have realized. Now consider that most statistical models estimate that at least 90 percent of the almost 8 billion people worldwide believe in some kind of transcendent, creative entity or supernatural power. For the purposes of this book, we must further narrow the premise that existence is on purpose and not by accident. As such, the following prose flows from the premise that human beings are the purposeful, beloved handiwork of an eternally existent, intelligent Designer/Creator whose being and existence transcend human understanding. Our target audience consists of all who embrace that premise literally.

Long Live the Queen

As Western civilization progressed from the decline and fall of the Roman Empire through the Dark Ages and to the High Middle Ages, some of the greatest thinkers and intellectual shapers of Western thought came to consider theology to be the queen of the sciences. Most of those whose names we associate today with key foundational scientific discoveries were in full agreement with Augustine among others who understood that science included anything related to knowledge of the temporal world. Since they also understood theology as the queen of the sciences, they took for granted that science was dedicated to discovering all that the Designer/Creator had put in place according to Western theology’s primary textbook, the Bible. (Much more to come about the Bible later.) For them, the existence of a Designer/Creator was a fact that no jolly good fellow could deny. Therefore, it was only logical that if there was a Designer/Creator, there must be reliable consistency in nature that we can count on and use for the benefit of our fellow created beings. By the way, no such reliability and consistency can logically exist in a randomly evolved natural state of existence.

Galileo expressed his belief in the reality of intelligent design in what he saw as an orderly, finely tuned creation when he observed, “Mathematics is the alphabet in which God has written the universe.” One of the most basic, useful, and dependable realities of nature is the mathematical axiom that any two distinct points determine a unique line. Theologically, I submit that acknowledgment of God’s existence and recognition of who He is—beyond the constraints of irrelevancies including religion, ethnicity, and culture—are the two points that determine the starting line of every human odyssey dedicated to the discovery of what it means to function as designed.