Every Perfect Gift by Ryan Goodwin
290 | Seven sermon summer surfin’ spectacular
Peel Back the Layers of God's Grace
Grab your sunscreen and a cold glass of homemade watermelon agua fresca — the Seven Sermon Summer Surfin' Spectacular is rolling on! This week, guest speaker Ryan Goodwin joins us to unpack a fascinating question: Why does James 1:17 make a distinction between "every good thing given" and "every perfect gift"? Through a beautifully illustrated lesson with Grandpa's baseball mitt, a hand-forged Roman iron spike, and a set of custom Russian nesting dolls, Ryan breaks down "the gift behind the gift." We'll explore how our human craving for sentiment, beauty, and relational depth completely dismantles pure materialism and serves as an undeniable, built-in proof of God's existence. Get ready to peel back the layers of God's perfect gifts!
Takeaways
The Big Idea: While "good things" satisfy our immediate physical needs, "perfect gifts" point directly back to our Creator.
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Summer Surfing Welcome
Bryan: Well, surf's up everyone, and thanks for tuning in to the Bible Geeks podcast.
I'm Bryan Schiele.
Ryan: I'm Ryan Joy
Bryan: And thanks for tuning in to our Seven Sermon Summer Surfing Spectacular. Today's episode we've got Ryan Goodwin joining us. He's gonna have a sermon about all good things that we're gonna talk about in just a little bit.
Favorite Summer Treats
Bryan: But Ryan, before we begin, it's the summertime. Let's kinda just talk s- about some of our favorite things in the summer.
Do you have, like, a favorite summer treat that you lean on that's something that, like, you have to have when you're at the beach or, like, outside working in the yard or something like that?
Ryan: Okay, I'm so glad you asked me this because I just discovered watermelon aguas frescas homemade. Like, watermelon's cheap right now, and so I've been buying big th- you know, a bunch of watermelon, chopping them up, running them through the blender. You know, throw in some lemon juice, maybe a little sweetener, a little, you know...
Y- I, I put some strawberries in there, blend it up, and then you just filter it out, chill it. It is so refreshing. It's, like, my favorite thing of the summer. What about you?
Bryan: I don't really have a go-to like that right now. Uh, nothing obviously in mind, but we just did buy a whole bunch of, Island Way. I don't know if you've... Like, Costco sells these, uh, uh, it's like fruit sorbet and stuff, but it's put inside of, like, half cut out, like, oranges or coconut shells or whatever.
Ryan: I remember those. It's been a decade or more since I've had one, but yeah, those are cool. I forgot
Bryan: they're kind of a seasonal thing that we get around the summer every time, and boy, that's like, my daughter will devour those things, and she leaves me all the coconut ones. summery, uh, around that time. But you know, we're talking about favorite things and good stuff, and that's really what Ryan's sermon here is about, and I'm really getting excited about this, uh, this conversation you guys are gonna have about his sermon, and then we'll dive right into the sermon.
So, uh, without further ado, here's the conversation with Ryan and Ryan
Meet Ryan Goodwin
Ryan: Well, Ryan, it has been, uh, too long since we got to really hang out and talk, but, uh, it's such a blessing, I think, to all of our listeners and to me to be able to feature one of your sermons. You are one of my favorite preachers to listen to. And, uh, we, we've got a, a treat here, a lesson that goes into All kinds of, all kinds of layers.
You make this reference several times to Russian nesting dolls, and that's kind of how I thought of this sermon, is it's like we keep opening up the nesting dolls, and there's more layers to this lesson as we sort of unpack. But thanks for being on today.
Goodwin: Oh, thank you. I'll say that this, when I put this lesson together, it, it was also a lesson that in constructing it, I kept discovering new layers.
Mm. I'll tell you right away what the inspiration was. I was having a Bible study with a member from our congregation, and we just, we get together almost every week. Um, he's a really neat guy. He's got a great life story, and we just... We have kind of a standing appointment to get together and study. And we just ask neat questions.
James 1 Spark
Goodwin: And so one time, just out of the blue, he's like, "Listen, I know we're studying something else, but I wanna get your take on James 1:17. Why, in James 1:17, why does he say two different things here?" And I said, "Well, what do you mean by that?" And he- Mm ... he pointed out the passage that's, you know, the, the centerpiece of this sermon, "Every good thing bestowed and every perfect gift is from above."
And he said, "Why would the writer say every good thing, but then also every perfect gift?" And I guess I didn't have a good answer at the moment, because I guess I've read this verse 1,000 times. It never occurred to me. I thought that they were just synonyms for the same thing, and James was just being, you know, I don't know, elaborating.
And he said, "Think about it. Are they two different things?" And the more I thought about it, and we discussed it for a little while, um, he was the inspiration for kind of going down this rabbit trail that every good thing, and also every perfect gift, comes from God. And so the good things that God gives, and also the perfect gifts that He gives, I, I just realized, I think that James is talking about two different things there.
So then I studied it, and then I realized, like, wait a minute, there's actually a deeper point here, and it's really a theological lesson about God's very existence and how do we prove God's existence. You know, proof not in the scientific sense of proof- Mm-hmm ... but proof in an argument sense, right? A, a- Yeah
logic sense. So that's kind of where this lesson came from. So I, I... If you enjoyed it listening to it, I enjoyed it putting it together.
Ryan: That's so cool, that, that double statement there, that we just did an episode, uh, this last season on James where we really focused a lot of the discussion around this word for perfect, the, the telios, the, this completeness and perfection.
And that's such a theme. He wants us to be whole like God the Father is perfect and consistent and whole and complete, and his gifts are Multi-dimensional, many layered, I guess- Yeah ... as you, you, you play this out. And you talked about this idea of the gift behind the gift. And without, you know, giving everything away, I guess, I mean, we don't have to, you don't have to re-preach the sermon, but w- can you just help us make this connection between perfect gift and meaning, or this gift behind the gift?
Gift Behind Gift
Goodwin: Well, we can give a lot of different things, right? We can give things that are very utilitarian. Uh, you know, a package of socks for Christmas, right? That, that's a, and that's a good thing. Like-
Ryan: Worst gift ever ...
Goodwin: I mean, n- nobody's gonna say no to a packet of new socks.
Ryan: Sure.
Goodwin: It's a good thing to have new socks, but is a, is a packet of socks, is it a perfect gift?
And perfect- Mm ... in the sense of what you're talking about, is it a complete gift? It's a- Yeah ... a gift that is brought to its fullness.
Ryan: Mm.
Goodwin: But then there are certain gifts that we give that are, they're not a packet of socks, it's not an Applebee's gift card. It's, it's something that we, we know something from a loved one's childhood, something with sentiment and meaning behind it, maybe a, a story behind it, a book that this person read as a child.
They've never been to f- been able to find it 'cause it's out of print. Um, uh, you know, a f- a pho- a framed photograph of a special moment that, that's on film, it's not digitized. So we, we give this gift, and it's not even the thing about the thing itself, the object. Mm-hmm. It's about the sentiment behind it.
What does the gift mean? The gift means, uh, love. The gift means memories. The gift means, um, connection to other people and relationship and special moments. And so there, there is a gift behind the gift when you put thought into it, at least. Again, we're talking about- Yeah ... the difference between a, a pair of socks and s- and an object that is deeply sentimental and has meaning behind it.
It's the meaning that's the gift, not the thing itself.
Ryan: Yeah, we s- we sometimes say almost dismissively, "Well, it's the thought that counts," for a for a bad gift. But really what we're, what we're talking underneath that is that idea of, like, whenever somebody... You said something six months ago about something you love just as a throwaway line in a conversation, and they remembered, and it shows up, you know, in December as they're giving you a Christmas gift, and you know, okay, they care.
Their, the gift behind the gift is their love, their friendship. There is meaning in this gift. And we mentioned it, and you, you set it up, this idea that there's a turn mid-sermon, and, and I love sermons that do this, where you're, you're talking about one thing and then, like you said, you discovered something that becomes this part two of the sermon within the whole sermon, and it becomes not just about gratitude, but about apologetics.
And I have... I just, I preached, uh, last year, I think, on this, the, the argument from meaning. Mm-hmm. And I've found that, besides maybe the resurrection of Jesus and the facts there, for me personally, as far as the philosophical arguments for God- Seeing how we are these meaning-making machines who see meaning in everything and just want to discover that and, and life wants to have meaning, and how sad if, if our suffering doesn't have meaning and our difficulties and our good things don't have meaning.
Um, but you really unpack that, and I wonder if you could just give a summary of how good things with rich meaning behind them point to a reality beyond this material world
Meaning Points Beyond
Goodwin: So what I really like about, and, and again, I won't give away the sermon, but i- and none of this is original to me, of course. I mean, if you, if you read a lot of C.S.
Lewis- Mm ... and if you, if you read a lot of G.K. Chesterton, who inspired a lot of what C.S. Lewis wrote, you're going through Mere Christianity, right?
Ryan: Right.
Goodwin: When you read a lot of the, the great thinkers, philosophers, writers, and theologians on this subject, this is not original to me. But when you read their material, they also point to the fact that a- all of human experience militates against a meaningless existence.
Like, it, like just, just ask a- any atheist, any agnostic, anybody who's skeptical of God, just say, "Your assertion that this universe is meaningless goes against all of the experiences of your life." Like, you know, a, a, a pure naturalist, a pure materialist, a, a p- a pure atheist would say, "Yeah, there is no ultimate meaning.
We're, we're, we're just cells bound together for a time until we begin to decay, then we fall apart, and our cells dis- you know, just fall apart, and we become dirt in the ground. And in a million years or a billion years or 10 billion years, the sun is gonna burn itself out, or we're gonna get hit by an asteroid, and our atmosphere is going to..."
And so they, they would say that life is meaningless. But I say, "Okay, you make that assertion So then why do you find aesthetic beauty? Why, why can the most diehard atheist wander through an art museum and be touched by one painting versus another? It's just, it's just oil paint on canvas. It means nothing.
Right. But one painting or another painting will touch your soul. Why does one song, why does one song have special meaning versus another? And, and tell me what the evolutionary explanation is for that. Like, that's the challenge to me is a lot of the greatest gifts in our experiences are our sweet relationships, our appreciation for aesthetic beauty, our appreciation for music and the memories imbued.
A lot of that not only cannot be explained by evolution, but a lot of those things, again, militate against evolution. Our most cherished experiences are not, uh, biologically productive. They're not conducive to survival. They don't perpetuate DNA or the species. In fact, a lot of our greatest experiences, our most treasured relationships, um, are, are...
I don't know what the word would be for anti-utilitarian. Yeah. But they, they're, they're anti-productive, anti-evolutionary. They, they, again, they militate against what would be pure materialism. So I just think it's, it's, um, it's, it's a self-defeating argument. It is. Because if you're gonna make the argument that God doesn't exist and life is ultimately meaningless, well, okay, let's...
Rubber meets the road now. Put that into action. I, I wanna see, I wanna see what that life looks like for you, because clearly you are seeking as much meaning in your life as I am.
Ryan: Yeah. Yeah, you know, it's, it's like saying there is no true morality or there is no, conscious free will. I mean, they're easy ideas to say, and you can argue for it, but you can't live that way.
Yeah. No one lives that way, and no one lives as if there's no meaning in their life. You, you can't do it. God built this into it, into, into our hearts, you know? He set this in us. And, um, y- I really appreciate that explanation, and I think maybe our listeners can already hear what a treat they're in for, and, just a, another good and perfect gift, this, this sermon.
And, uh, so we'll listen to that right now. Every Perfect Gift by Ryan Goodwin, preached at the Glen Springs Church of Christ. Thanks again for being on. Let's listen to the sermon
Sermon Begins Text
Goodwin: So if you've got your Bibles open to James 1:17, in New American Standard that passage reads, "Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow." So James 1:17 is actually holding a little bit of nuance in those phrases.
And again, in New American Standard you have two kind of separate things here, that God is both the giver of every good thing given, okay, so you have good things given, but then He's also the giver of every perfect gift bestowed. And again, there's some nuance there, 'cause if you actually look in those words in the Greek, they come from the same Greek root word essentially for, for gift, and some, uh, English translations even have it just as gift and gift, as in, like, American Standard Version, King James Version, New King James, even ESV all say, "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above," as if they're both the same thing.
God gives good gifts, God gives perfect gifts. And, and I think that that does not really convey the sense of what James is trying to say here. It's not just that God gives, eh, He gives good gifts, eh, ho-hum gifts, uh, like a pair of socks at Christmastime, but God also gives perfect gifts, like really thoughtful gifts as well.
That's actually not what James is trying to say. They're two separate things that he's saying. They differ even though they come from the same basic Greek w- root word. They differ in form and spelling and meaning. The first is the actual act of giving something, that every good thing given, as in God gives every good thing.
It is not just the act of the giving itself, but also the perfect gift that comes as a result of it That is in fact what makes a gift perfect. It, it's not necessarily the thing itself that makes the gift perfect, it's what's behind the gift. It's the meaning behind the gift. God gives us good things, but what is the gift behind the good things that God gives us?
Objects With Meaning
Goodwin: Let me give you a perfect example. Uh, I, I like knick-knacks. I'm not a, I'm not a hoarder or anything, but I, I like my knick-knacks. Uh, if you go into my office down the hallway, there's a lot of random stuff. I view them as conversation starters. I think it's nice when someone comes into your office and you can have, like, a baseline of things that you can talk about.
They'll say, "Hey, what, what's this thing for? Well, what's that thing for?" And a lot of the knick-knacks in my office are gifts from people. Now, they don't mean anything to you, and at face value, they really don't mean anything at all. They're just things. But there's meaning behind the things. This is my grandpa's mitt.
Now, this does not have any obvious value to me. I didn't play baseball. I didn't play adult league softball. So why do I have a mitt? Well, because there's attachment to it because of the family relationship. That means something. This, I kind of have a thing for Russian nesting dolls. Uh, not a, like a, like a big thing or anything.
I have a small collection of Russian nesting dolls, okay? But this is me as a Russian nesting doll. If you look closely at it, that's me. And guess what's inside? Rebecca. And guess what's inside of that? Sterling. And what's inside of that is Heidi, and what's inside of that is Bennett, and what's inside of that is a, a little tiny baby Mae.
Somebody made these for us, hand-painted these, a friend of mine. Now, to you, it's just Russian nesting dolls, but to me, it's friendship and memories and relationship with very special people from our past. This is an iron spike. This is a replica of what a Roman iron spike was. Now, Romans used these for building bridges and buildings and those sorts of things.
Very common sort of thing in Rome. And so you would think, like, basically a giant Roman nail doesn't have much meaning. It has about as much meaning as, like, your leftover, like, nuts and bolts, uh, bolts box that you keep in your garage, in your toolbox. But a friend of mine who works with iron made this for me a long time ago, I don't know, 23, 24 years ago, something like that.
And he made this for me and said, "Yeah, this is what the Romans used for making bridges and buildings, but it's also a pretty accurate replica of what they would have used to crucify Jesus." And so a very common object, a little bit of iron hammered out, actually has a ton of meaning behind it. It's just a myth.
It's just some wood and paint. It's just a piece of iron But there's a perfect gift behind those things. It's the gift behind the gift. God doesn't just give us good things. God gives us good things and perfect gifts. God gives us air to breathe and soil to grow things and food and plants, vegetables, and fruits.
God gives us the beauty of the stars and the other heavenly bodies. God gives us our own physical bodies and all of the advantages to that. These are good things that God gives. But there are gifts behind the gifts that are of so much more value. Really, every gift that we get-- give has more or less meaning attached to it.
Going beyond things like a package of socks or an Applebee's gift card, a thing given is more than just the material object itself. It's the sentiment. It's the memory. It's the fostering of trust, building relationships, expressing love, expressing gratitude. Objects, after all, mere objects can be purchased or stolen or thrown away in the trash.
They may deteriorate and fade and become useless or ill-fitting.
God Models Giving
Goodwin: But the real gift behind a gift may last forever Now, the reason why we're able to detect this gift behind the gift is because we're made in God's image. We are like God. We understand and have an innate awareness of the value of emptying ourselves and giving gifts to other people.
Jesus even points this out. In Matthew chapter 7, he talks about our ability to discern and understand good gift-giving. In Matthew chapter 7, he makes the following comment in verse 9, "Or what man among you, or what man is there among you, when he shall ask him for a loaf will give his son a stone? Or if he shall ask for a fish, you'll not give him a snake, will he?"
He's basically saying, like, it's built-in. We know what good gifts are and what bad gifts are, and when your son asks for food, you don't give him poison. We understand that, and we're just people. If you then, being at least relatively evil compared to God, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask him?
So we have a built-in innate sense of gift-giving because we are like our Father, who is the ultimate gift-giver. From the creation account, we can see all future gifts modeled by God. Just read Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis chapter 2, and you can see every single gift that you've ever given, at least gifts that you've given with some thought behind them, modeled in the creation of this world and of man and of everything that dwells on this beautiful planet of ours.
From the creation account, we have the gift of life, of will, of intelligence, of family, of relationships, of food, and ultimately even of grace, which is the great theme that's carried throughout the scriptures and especially into the New Testament. Grace is described as a gift in various passages. In Ephesians 2 and verse 8, "For by the grace-- For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves.
It is the gift of God." Romans chapter 6 and verse 23 Similarly, in Romans chapter six in verse twenty-three, "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." And even pagans can see the gift behind the gift. Even pagans can recognize that there is something going on that is beyond just air to breathe and water to drink and food to eat from the soil.
Even pagans can attribute and recognize and understand that there's a power behind these things, and some depth and some substance to it beyond just the thing itself. There's an old hymn called Back of the Loaf, and part of the lyrics are very poetic as they say, "Back of the loaf is the snowy flour, and back of the flour is the mill.
Back of the mill is the wheat and the shower and the sun and the Father's will." And what that poem is saying is if you just follow things backward, you go from the loaf of bread that's on your table, there's something behind that. And what's behind that is the process involved in milling the flour. But behind the mill and the flour, you go before that, and it's the wheat in the field.
And before the wheat in the field is the soil and the sunshine and the rain. And what is before that? Well, what is before that is the God who is the giver of every good thing and every perfect gift bestowed.
Israel Missed Gifts
Goodwin: Let me give you a few considerations here. You can have all the good things bestowed but fail to find the perfect gift.
Take the Israelites, for example, which could probably be a sermon all its own. I'll go very quickly here and move on because maybe I'll double back and preach a whole sermon about this at some point. But think about every good thing that the Israelites had, right? Just the good things, not even the perfect gifts yet.
But think about the good things that Israel had. The good things of being rescued from Egyptian slavery. The good thing of being rescued at the Red Sea from Pharaoh's army. The good thing of manna in the wilderness. Of birds descending upon them to bring meat. Of water literally breaking forth from rocks in the desert.
The good thing of the law at Mount Sinai. The good thing of the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. God's presence in the camp and the tabernacle. And then go through their whole history of prophets leading the people. Of prosperity in the land flowing with milk and honey. Of deliverance in battles.
Of a king like David being the model for all future good kings in Israel. And finally, the promise and the hope of the Messiah. God gave many good things to Israel. But they failed pretty miserably to apprehend the perfect gifts that he was offering. And the prophets, as you can see up on the screen from Jeremiah, for example, but Isaiah as well, Ezekiel, the prophets really make that failure clear.
Do we do the same things? Do we fail to understand the gift behind the gift when we partake of the good thing that God gives us? Again, the material things, our homes, our food, our bodies, the spiritual things, the hymns that we sing, the supper that we partake of every first day of the week. Do we also fail to apprehend the good and perfect gift behind the thing itself?
Are you grateful for your suffering, for your trials? Are you grateful that God has led you into your own times of wilderness? Are you grateful that God allowed you, like the Israelites, to be humbled and hungry, that you may learn that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from God?
Are you grateful for the thorn in your side? Do you thank God for your suffering because you know that suffering leads to endurance, and endurance has a perfect result, that you're perfect and complete, lacking in nothing, like James chapter one says. Do we give good gifts in such a way that we achieve the perfect gift with other people?
When it comes to our rich-- uh, our riches, like First Timothy chapter six points out, to instruct those who are rich in this present world to learn to share and give to other people that they may store up for themselves a better treasure, the treasure Jesus alluded to in the Sermon on the Mountain, Matthew chapter six.
When we practice our charity, do we only practice it to be seen by men, or do we practice our charity to be seen by God, who is a secret God, who sees in secret and will reward us in Matthew chapter six? What about gifts that foster nourishing and cherishing in our families and in our relationships? We have in God modeled the great gift giver, who not only gives the good thing itself, but imbues the good thing with beautiful meaning and a perfect gift that goes beyond the material Now I could end the sermon right there, and I probably, I probably should do one of those this needs to be a two-parter because of time constraints thing.
But there's one more really big thing, and I'm not sure that it will have the same impact if I have to pick up the pieces next week and sum it up and come back to it. I want it to have its impact right now, right here. Bear with me.
Proof of God
Goodwin: I thank you so much always for your patience But I think that James 1 verse 17 is also a proof of God's existence.
What? Where are we going with that? I, I thought this was kind of like a, a way-too-early Christmas sermon we were going through, Ryan, and you're just out, out of nowhere saying that, like, this is an argument and a proof for God's existence? Yeah, it is. James 1 verse 17 is, I think, a powerful, convicting proof of God's existence.
Now, here's where I'm going with that. All of the good things given and the perfect gifts bestowed come from where? James 1:17 says they come from above. They come from above, from God, who is like a perfect light. There is no shifting shadow or variation with him. Gifts cannot be divorced from their meaning.
It's built in. It's automatic. When I pick up my Russian nesting dolls, hand-painted to look like me and my family, I don't have to sit here and go, "Well, what am I supposed to think about this? Well, what am I supposed to feel about this?" I, I, I don't pick up Grandpa's mitt and go like, "Wait, who did this belong to?
I mean, I never played ball, so..." Y- y- I don't pick this up a- and have to scratch my head and go, "Well, wait a minute. Why do I keep this on my desk at the office?" It is built in. It is automatic. When you look at the wedding band on your finger, you're not sitting there going, "Well, that's a strange thing, a bit of 24 karat gold on my hand.
I wonder how much that's worth." It's automatic. It's built in. You don't have to actively recall the memories and the feelings associated with the great perfect gifts because they are uncontrollably released by the thing given. All of the perfect gifts that even the hardest skeptic will experience at some point in his or her life militate against materialism and atheism.
Why? To the atheist I say, "Why do certain objects evoke feelings in you?" To the mere materialist, I say, why are you sentimental about things? Cold, heartless material. It's just a little piece of gold on your finger. It means nothing if in fact you really are a materialist. Why do we judge things as beautiful or virtuous or good?
The materialist, and what I mean by materialist is in the strict sense, a materialist is somebody who views physical matter, biological processes, and empirical evidence as the only reality. That is that if you cannot prove it in chemistry and you cannot prove it in math and you cannot show me the empirical evidence behind it, then I don't believe anything.
The pure materialist views the material of the universe as it. That is reality. There's nothing more to it than that. There is nothing spiritual. There is nothing ethereal. There is nothing eternal. It is just the raw material and that's it. You can dismiss with your words the divine origin of perfect gifts much easier than you can dismiss it in fact and especially in practice.
I just don't believe it. I just don't believe it. When an atheist says that there is nothing meaningful, when an atheist says that this universe is just the material and that's it, I don't believe you. Now, you can say it with a lot of confidence a- and, and you, you can be Richard Dawkins and write a long book about it.
I don't believe you. I don't believe you. Because the very same atheist who says, "There's nothing spiritual, there's nothing ethereal, there's nothing eternal. It is just the matter. It is just the universe. We're all just living on a rock. A bunch of molecules clumped together for a little while until they decide to stop being clumped together.
We deteriorate, we're gone, and then someday the sun is gonna burn itself out, or we're gonna be destroyed by a giant meteor that comes and wipes out life on planet Earth. It is meaningless. There's nothing here except just the stuff that we're looking at." Like, no, I don't believe you Why do you go to an art museum then?
What a waste of time. I, I, I, I believe when an atheist says that, I believe them about as much as when a widow says, "Oh, oh, this ring? Oh, it doesn't really mean anything to me Why do you feel things? Why are you provoked? Why do we listen to music? Why do we practice charity? Why do we feel compassion for a homeless person Why did we pick up a stray dog?
Why do gifts mean anything to you? In a room of a thousand people, why does your spouse stand out more than the others? Because even the most diehard atheist or materialist or biological pessimist would agree with exactly what Song of Solomon said, that my beloved is one among ten thousand, outstanding and dazzling But why?
Because in the end, you look at things like charity and compassion and virtue and self-sacrifice and beauty and discipline and contemplation and family and love, the perfect gifts that God gives us, and I ask, what makes more sense? If we're gonna be logical about this, let's be logical. You tell me what makes more sense, that all of these things come from above as rays of light from our creator.
They're aspirational, they're metaphysical, they're spiritual imprints that point to our spiritual origin and our spiritual destiny, or they're just the result of mindless, random, purely material processes in a cold, ultimately meaningless universe. Tell me what actually makes more sense. Now, I get it. The atheist will say, "Well, I'm sticking to my guns.
I'm st- I do believe it's just biological processes. Family is just something that came along because of an evolutionary process where we realized we survive better with family. Marriage is the same way. Beauty and aesthetics, preferring one food over another, it's just markers to help us know what's poisonous and what's not poisonous, clearly."
Okay. I think in the end, the argument is self-defeating. I'm an atheist, and I still find joy, virtue, and beauty is self-defeating because it betrays an awareness of metaphysical things. Many, if not all, of the perfect gifts actually undermine evolutionary progress. Why would you give up some of your food to feed a stray dog on the side of the road?
Why in the world would you prefer one mate over another mate in spite of that mate's physical imperfections? Many of the perfect gifts undermine evolutionary progress. They undermine stark material pessimism. They undermine biological determinism. Because the moment that we step outside of biological determinism and evolutionary progress and we start to care and love and give I think the whole argument just falls apart like a Jenga tower.
One cannot espouse atheism and still enjoy the gifts behind the gift, and to be consistent at least. And that is because in spite of what an unbeliever says, their own experiences, an entire lifetime of their own personal experiences present a weight of undeniable evidence that the perfect gifts come from above.
Final Invitation
Goodwin: As Paul points out in Philippians chapter four, "And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension," as in empirical evidentialism, pure materialism, biological determinism, "The peace of God which surpasses all comprehension will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." So finally, brothers and sisters, "Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable," as in the perfect gifts from God that go beyond the mere material, "if there's any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
As for the things you've learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you." And so I encourage you at this time that if you're not a Christian, please give some consideration to your own life's experiences and question yourself. In the midst of all of this materialism, do I not still feel and experience and see for myself the ray of light from God who gives all good things and bestows perfect gifts, who has no variation or shifting shadow for he is all good, all pure, all love, light from above?
Bryan: All right.
Podcast Farewell
Bryan: Well, thanks so much for tuning in to this episode for Ryan Surman and our conversation here in the Seven Surman Summer Surfing Spectacular. Really appreciate you, uh, taking some time, whether you're on the beach or whether you're hanging out with your family somewhere.
We'll be back here soon in short order, but until then, may the Lord bless you and keep you
Ryan: Shalom