Rabbi Schneider - Who Am I?
Deep inside, almost everybody is searching to better understand who they are. In recent times we've seen the phenomenon of so many companies that are helping people understand their roots take off. In other words, people are sending in their saliva samples to get tested, so that companies that test these types of samples can determine where the individual came from. In other words, the saliva sample test is coming back, well you're partially Jewish, or you have roots from Russia, or you have roots from Asia, or you have roots that are Slavic. People are longing to understand who they are and they believe that if they know where they came from, they believe if they know who their ancestors are, they'll better be able to understand and appreciate who they are. People are looking for identity.
But you know, at the end of the day, that information doesn't go a long way, or doesn't have great depth in really helping us understand our identity or who we are. But the question and looking to understand our roots are valid. I want to suggest this, that a company that is selling us information about our ancestory, can never give us the identity that we're looking for. To understand who we are we need to go back farther, farther than our ancestors, farther than understanding what parts of the world our ancestors came from. We need to go back to the very beginning, which brings us to this basic question: Did you and I come simply because there was an explosion in space that happened according to some scientists, 13 billion years ago and for no divine cause other than the fact that it just happened, or does our beginning start with a cause that was initiated by a Creator?
And I want to suggest that when you and I answer that question, it's gonna give us a big key that is very important in helping us answer the question, who am I? So I want to focus on this and then we're gonna keep going deeper and we're gonna answer the other questions as well. Why am I here? Is there more to life than this? But I want you to consider this with me, does it make sense that there was an explosion that happened 13 billion years ago in some type of outer space that didn't even exist yet, does it make sense that that happened without a cause? If we say that there was an explosion that happened 13 billion years ago, we have to ask our self the question, what caused the explosion? And if we can answer what caused the explosion, then we have to ask the same question again, well what caused that thing that caused the explosion?
In other words, we ask the question forever, well what caused that? What caused that? What caused the explosion? Then well what caused that thing that caused the explosion? You see our mind is designed, we function in the law of cause and effect. But to answer the mystery of creation we have to come to a conclusion that if we don't have something that existed without cause, if we don't have a being that was self existent, then we're gonna keep asking the question, "what caused that" forever. It had to start somewhere. It's the only logical explanation. I want to take this a different angle with you.
Consider this, when you look in creation, although we do see chaos at times, if we're honest I think we'll also admit that we see intelligent design in creation. For example, birds automatically know when to fly south for the winter. We see for example when our body gets an infection, it automatically creates antibodies and the antibodies combat foreign invaders to our system. How does our body know to create antibodies to combat infections and viruses and foreign invaders? There's built in intelligence in our body. There's built in intelligence in creation. How do even primitive animals know how to take care of their young? How does a chimpanzee know how to feed her young? There's intelligence built in creation and the reason that there's intelligence built in creation, it's because there's an intelligent designer behind creation.
Let's look at an illustration. You have a garage and on this picnic table you've got three different cans of pant, because you're doing some painting. And you're walking in the garage during this project and by accident, you're not paying attention and you hit the picnic table. You walk into it. You slam into it by accident. The three cans of paint spill on the ground, on th cement floor of the garage. And low and behold when you look on the floor and see the way the paint spilled, it's a perfect picture. You look on your cement floor in the garage now and you've got a beautiful house that the paint created when it spilled. You've got a mom a dad and a little child standing on the front porch. There's a big fence around the yard. There's a little dog running in the yard and there's a sun in the sky.
Now does that make any sense that three cans of paint that randomly spilled, because you knocked the table would fall on the ground in such way that it created a beautiful picture? Absolutely not, because that picture took intelligent design. Intelligence is built in to creation. Consider this with me, you and I deep down inside, we can agree that certain things are right and certain things are wrong. For example, deep down inside we all know that it's right to help somebody that's suffering. In fact we have outrage in us when we see people that are being abused or mistreated and no one is doing anything to stop it. For example, the horrendous situation that too often occurs when a child is being abused. All of us know that this is wrong, it has to be stopped. How would we know there's such a thing as right and wrong if we didn't have an internal compass? If somehow inside, deep down, we didn't know the difference between right and wrong.
You see, inside us there's a sense of justice. When we discover for example, that someone has been behind bars because he was falsely convicted of a crime, there's a sense of outrage or justice that cries forth from our heart. "That's wrong. He should not be in prison for something that he didn't do". Why do we have that sense of justice? Because there's a sense of morality that is built inside human beings. But how could we have a sense of morality, unless we were created by a moral God, a God Himself that has within Himself as one of His internal principles, justice. We have consciousness. Can we explain the fact that you and I as human beings are self aware? Can we explain self consciousness and self awareness by an explosion that took place billions of years ago, that was nothing more than some type of scientific explosion without any spirituality behind it that had no cause? No.
Consider this, you and I have the capacity to love. Where does love come from? We truly have the ability to love, to take care of people. I just was watching about a man that was at a concert and during this country concert there was a serial killer, someone who came and just started shooting at people. Like 50 people were killed, but there was one soul there, he had saw a woman who had been shot and as this man started running from the bullets and he saw that woman lying on the ground that was shot; He turned around, he went back to rescue that woman.How do you explain that, this love he felt, this desire to connect and to protect? It's only explained, because there's a God who is love, that put within humanity the capacity to love. We have consciousness, we have the ability to love. Beloved, this cannot be explained by a random explosion that happened for no reason. It can only be explained, by the fact that you and I were created by a self existing God, who's a moral being and has a purpose and a destiny for you and I.