On the one hand…how can there be an all-powerful and all-good God in light of wars and pandemics?
On the other hand… how can there be no God when I experience the beauty of a sunset or the warmth of a loving embrace?
Look around our world, does it make more sense that there is an omnipotent God in control or does it make more sense that our world is a result of natural processes?
In his book Why God Makes Sense in a World that Doesn't, Gavin Ortlund asks this pointed question: is naturalism or Christianity the more likely option to make sense of the world we live in? Ortlund begins with this question: "Suppose Hamlet is searching for Shakespeare. He cannot find him in the way he might find other characters in the play, like Ophelia or Claudius. So where should he look?" The rest of Ortlund's book tries to answer that question. He says, "if God is real, he will be both infinitely close and infinitely far."
Ortlund believes that our hearts—our hopes— are perhaps the most powerful aspect of making sense of the world theologically. "I hope in some way or another, wish it were true," Ortlund says. Hope is a wish coupled with an expectation. It is the innate desire of hope in our hearts that tell us life is about more. Ortlund believes that innate desire represents convincing proof pointing to the gospel as opposed to naturalism.
Ortlund navigates how we can best make sense of the world through four meaty chapters: "The Cause of the World," "The Meaning of the World," "The Conflict of the World," and "The Hope of the World." In the first chapter, he seeks to prove that it's more likely that a First Mover exists than not. In the second chapter, he uses math, music, and love to point toward transcendence. In the third chapter, he asserts that naturalism doesn't explain our intuition nor does it account for things that are wrong, even evil, in the world. In his final chapter, Ortlund gives us a taste of what it would mean if Jesus was the Son of God who came, lived, died, and was resurrected for us. Ortlund says, "Just imagine: What if there was a world in which your deepest pain was not simply ended or forgotten but transformed into glory, like the scars on Jesus's resurrected body?"
Ortlund's book does an effective job in pressing into the most meaningful questions of faith in our secular age. He is at his best when he asks simple questions like, "Why are numbers beautiful? It's like asking why Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is beautiful." Similarly, Ortlund notes that "the worst moment for the skeptic is when he feels truly grateful but has no one to thank." Later, Ortlund suggests that, "Morality is so deeply hardwired into our nature than an amoral world feels very close to a meaningless world."
Ortlund asks incisive questions and offers hope in a world with God welcomed into it. He says, "The Christian story is not only a more plausible story than its naturalistic counterpart but more interesting, more elegant, more signifying to humanity, and more hopeful." Ortlund recognizes that the bridge to faith isn't intellectual and no apologist is able to answer every question. But he has thoughtfully pushed us to consider that there are questions that might be even more challenging for the naturalist than for the Christian. He concludes by offering an invitation. "Are you almost convinced? Would you give anything, as would I, for it to be true? Then believe."
The book is weighty and intellectual enough to engage rigorous skeptics without being purely for the academic arena. That said, this foray isn't for the faint of heart. If you're looking for a light introduction to apologetics, this isn't the book for you. Additionally, if you are looking for a book that compares the hope offered in Christ to the religions of the world, this isn't the book for you either. No matter, what Ortlund has promised, he delivers on. I commend Why God Makes Sense in a World That Doesn't to you. Ortlund will help you have a more God-entranced view of the world while deepening your delight in the fingerprint of God’s beauty we see all around us.
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