My wife, Shari, has specialized in teaching young children for 50 years. She has bags and bags of teaching tools to help them believe in God and better understand Him. One of the things in her special bag is a 6 piece plastic fish puzzle made of different colored pieces. It’s an excellent puzzle for young children and it fits her song, Oh, Do You See The Fish, perfectly.
Years ago I borrowed the puzzle to teach a teenage class on the Creator and Creation.
I selected 3 students for an visual experiment (Eric, Julie & Joseph) and had 2 of them leave the room. I asked Eric to take the fish puzzle apart and then shake the pieces up and throw them on a table like you would dice. When the puzzle didn’t assemble itself, I asked him why. He said, “That’s not how you put a puzzle together.”
Then while I spoke to the class for a few minutes about God and Creation, I asked Eric to continue throwing the pieces until the puzzle put itself together. Well, as you can guess, that didn’t happen. I thanked him for his help.
Then I went out into the hallway and blindfolded Julie and brought her back into the classroom, to the table with the puzzle pieces. I explained that in front of her were the pieces to a child’s puzzle and asked her to put the puzzle together. She tried over and over again, but was not successful. I was hoping the class of teens was getting the point. I thanked her for her help.
Then I asked Joseph, standing in the hallway, to come and sit at the table. I showed him the puzzle pieces, unassembled, and asked him that even though he had no idea what the puzzle was supposed to look like, did he think he could put the 6 piece puzzle together? He replied, “Well, of course, I’m not stupid.” And of course, he put it together in about 10-15 seconds. I thanked him for his help.
I then asked the class, “So what does all this with the fish puzzle have to do with God and Creation?” No one really knew. So I tried explaining it this way.
“There are only 2 explanations of how the universe and all life in it came to be:
1- Chance & Evolution and 2- God & Creation.
Eric tried to put the fish puzzle together by pure chance, throwing the pieces. That didn’t work. Do you think that it would have worked eventually?” Most in the class shook their heads. “Pure chance and evolution go together perfectly because both totally rely on chance; no design, no designer.”
“Julie tried to put the puzzle together, but couldn’t see and had no idea of what the puzzle was supposed to look like. Even though she tried her best, no fish puzzle. She had a better chance than when Eric was throwing the pieces, but still no fish puzzle.”
“Then Joseph got it done. Why? Because he is smarter than Eric and Julie? Probably not. He may be smarter, but that isn’t why he quickly put the puzzle together. He wasn’t relying on chance. Eric could clearly see the pieces, their shapes and markings. It was easy to see that one piece was the head of a fish and another was its tail, so the other 4 pieces quickly fit together. VIOLA!”
So is it chance & evolution or God & Creation that resemble Joseph’s success. With God & Creation the universe and all life in it are easily possible. With chance, we couldn’t even get a 6 piece child’s puzzle put together. FYI- everyone is betting their eternal soul on either chance and evolution or on God and Creation. Where will you gamble your soul? God bless.
Mike Sublett is a pastor at Hi-Land Christian Church, 1615 N. Banks St., Pampa, Texas 79065. Email him at pawdad@nts-online.net.
