The perfection of nature indicates how much more perfect He himself must be
by Josie Boder
One can argue for the existence of God, of goodness, of forgiveness for days on end with arbitrary purpose and forgotten necessity. Too often, life enslaves our minds and tethers us too close to the earth; too often, we forget the endless unanswered question that drums at the back of our minds as some pertinacious woodpecker, endlessly poking its beak through the tree’s most dense protection.
“Does life have meaning?” the woodpecker asks. Few know the answer. Cluelessness seems a trope in human nature; we rarely see what is not in front of us, and even that which is directly before our eyes too often goes unnoticed out of fear or ignorance. Unfortunately for those cowards and those ignorers, if they would simply open their eyes, the ever- drumming question would desist.
Trees are green in the sun and plum in the moon; they shift more often with the wind in strife, more gently when it plays. Their leaves speak, and sing, and dance in the rays of a gentle, glowing sun to whose grace they give praise to its compassion, its mercy, and its life-giving days. Sometimes leaves weep as they drip on away, their life bleeding crimson and gold; sometimes they quiver as skeleton molds, as some rook within them shelters from the cold.
All being said, leaves living, leaves dying, they hide such a secret away; for inside their veins so new and so tiny lies the knowledge of God’s holy face. So if any idiots were to look at a leaf in its new, sudden grace, they might see that which is utterly divine. In seeing such a spark, they may yet mark that in multitudes one tiny leaf might become that which is greater than any great tree, great branch, great heart can behold.
As you may have guessed, the principle that I have laid out in so many wonderfully meaningless philosophical words is that of a proof of a god as they are necessarily most perfect beings from grades of perfection. All romantic poeticism aside, the ability of creation to show an aspect of God’s divinity is truly astounding. Nature itself being so complex and so ordered in its relative chaos, the smallest parts of us working so perfectly and so randomly together to create something so ordered and so beautiful as life—if this is true perfection of God’s product, then how much more perfect must He himself be?
I must admit much of my fascination with life and my desire to understand it originates from the beauty that I see around me. In my study of the science of life, I seek not only to learn what I need to have a successful career, but also to discover more aspects of God, so many of which are present in the material world.
Josie Boder is a 2018 graduate of Knoxville Catholic High School who is now a student at Fordham University majoring in biological sciences
