Music Maker

Have you not read?

If there is any human on earth who has earned the right to have the last word on any matter it is Jesus of Nazareth, the son of God. What does he say about women?

As he was teaching a crowd someone asked Jesus a question about the lawfulness of divorce.

He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, Matthew 19:4

This was a reference to the first chapter of the first book in the Bible, Genesis, which recounts the beginning of life on earth. Jesus treated that account of the origin of man as a historic fact, an accurate description of how things came to be. He quoted those words pointing to the intention of the creator as the basis for how men and women were to relate to one another in marriage. The implication is that because there is a creator we are the result of someone's intention, we are not here by accident. Therefore things ought to be a certain way and we are not free to make them whatever we want.

Do Jesus’s words have a ring of truth to them? Is there anything about a human being that suggests that we might have been made? We don’t have to look too far for the answer to this question. You only have to look in a mirror everyday. What about you suggests that you were made?

Information

It is remarkable that something as mundane as information is responsible for all of a human being's characteristics including their gender. Every person has a complement of 23 pairs of chromosomes, half of the pair coming from each parent. Each of these is like a file cabinet. One of those pairs of chromosomes is called the sex chromosome because they contain the information that determines a person’s sex. Within these filing cabinets are genes, which function like files. Each gene contains information stored in the form of a code. This code is a fully fledged language that expresses a set of commands in an extremely complex program that determines what every cell in your body will become, when they will be formed, where they will be located, what they will do and how they will do what they do. Language is information that is used in a standardized and recognizable pattern to communicate thoughts and ideas and commands use language to communicate and compel a desired outcome. Just like in the game telephone, at the very least a command needs an origin at one end and at the other end it needs a receiver capable of understanding and carrying out the command. A command also needs three things to qualify as a command. First it needs to express an intent, a desired outcome. A good command leaves no doubt about the intent. Second it needs the desired outcome to be in the form of an imperative, something that must occur. The imperative usually is time limited. Finally it needs authority, a means to ensure the outcome is obtained. When, as a child I heard one of my parents say, "Stop that!" I understood immediately that something I was doing was undesirable and needed to be discontinued. I usually knew what "that" was. I knew that these words were not a suggestion or a wish for the future but a demand that needed to be complied with immediately. I also knew that regardless of my desire this is the outcome that would prevail because of the one who was giving the command. The imformation stored in your genes have all the properties of a set of very precise commands. These commands control every step of the irresistible, irreversible process that transforms a single fertilized egg into trillions of cells that eventually becomes a person like you. The process is tightly choreographed at a mind boggling level of detail and the commands continue to run in the background throughout a person's life, even often determine how long the individual will live.

Impossible wonders

The ancient Egyptian pyramids, built more that 2000 years BC, still remain an engineering marvel for both their sheer size and the ingenuity that must have gone into their construction. They are even more impressive considering that even with todays technology and resources replicating one of those pyramids would be a huge undertaking. What is more, we can still only speculate as to how they were built.

If a team of archeologists found markings engraved in stone in a cave dating back 10,000 years, if those markings were then determined by the world’s best language experts to be detailed instructions for building a pyramid including tools, materials and methods, and if a team of engineers and architects, by following those instructions, were able to build a pyramid like the ones the Egyptians built, how many engineers, architects, language experts, or archeologists would conclude that those markings in the stone were the product of random chance alone? None. Although there are many theories explaining how the pyramids came to be, even including the possibility of aliens, one thing no one is saying is that they are simply natural phenomena produced by the effect of millennia of wind and water. The simple reason is they have a certain look that suggests they were made. There is something intentional and purposeful about their existence, as impossible as they appear to be. The information that is responsible for bringing you into being would make the instructions for building a pyramid look like the scribbles of a toddler by comparison. A human being also has the same intentional and purposeful feel. It looks like we are made.

Making Music

To make things more interesting, even though the entire set of commands in all your genes, the blueprint for you, is available to every single one of the trillions of cells in a person, each cell will only process a tiny portion of the commands that is relevant to its form, location and function. Thus the different parts of the organism run thousands of different, highly specialized, well synchronized functions at once in perfect harmony.

It is like a giant orchestra with trillions of musicians all of them having the score to a great symphony. The musicians (cells) are arranged into sections (organs and organ systems) based on the instrument they play. Each section plays only certain parts of the music different from other sections and yet necessary and complementary to the whole. The music has a beginning, several climactic moments throughout and an end. The score tells each musician what instrument to play, how to play it, when to play it and when to stop playing. They play with perfect timing, rhythm and tempo. Even though there is no obvious conductor, every musician in every section, reading the same score, plays its role perfectly to produce the music that is you. Where did these commands come from? Whose intention do they express, where did the imperative, the authority and the coordination for the commands come from? How likely is it that without any intervention at all an entire language would form out of nothing, be arranged into a specific sequence of commands, and that these commands would be understandable by single primitive cell which would then have the means of carrying out these complex commands to produce another living cell like itself? It is highly unlikely!

If the commands contained in your genes are anything to go by then it is more likely than not that you are a creature, something made. As incredible as it may seem Jesus' words have a ring of truth to them. We can take the account of creation as fact not myth. You are a being whose existence is dependent on another’s will and pleasure. There is a specific intent preceding your being. The unique masterpiece of music that you are has an author. You are supposed to be here and you are supposed to be here in this specific form. Your maker delights in you.