FRONT-PORCH GOSPEL: The man lost in a vast wilderness (but, perhaps – just perhaps – not for long)

Good week. Welcome to the “Front Porch.”

I was thinking this week, with the world’s recognition of Easter, of something we wrote and maybe we shared after our great adventure in Wyoming in 2021.

Read on.

After meeting with an agnostic deep in the midst of Yellowstone this past summer, I have carried with me thoughts of the tragedy of that philosophy.

It is not that the man I met – a Mr. Moffit – does not have my complete respect for the good turns he freely offered on a remote, dangerous trail. Nor can I fault him for his purpose of losing himself – figuratively, not literally, as in my case – out in that wilderness.

I am sure he was searching to find the answer to something that nagged him inside. His scientific education as an Alaskan biologist only allowed him to find God (so he thought) in the vast beauty of nature. Still, he faced the impossibility of finding clarity in the cloudy waters of a vast unknown.

Only faith, you see, can clear up the picture and bring a man face-to-face with the greatest truths and facts known to man.

You understand.

In my contemplations of the tragedy of agnosticism, I remembered a statesman from more than a century ago, the well-known Robert Ingersol, who espoused agnosticism with the vigor of a great orator with a gospel of hope in his hand.

That is what deepens the tragedy.

But even in Ingersol’s generation, men of faith found his position – one that was closer to the hollowness of atheism than the murky waters of agnosticism – to be less than inviting.

At Ingersol’s death in 1899, Governor Robert L. Taylor of Tennessee could not refrain but to bury the agnostic’s philosophy with him.

Looking back at a time he had listened to Ingersol in Washington, he lauded him for the perfection of grace in his gestures, his voice of music, and “his language more beautiful than any I had ever heard from mortal lips.”

But you could then almost hear him take a deep breath like the powerful dramatic pause in a Churchill speech, as he turned the tables, 

“Then I saw him dip his brush in the ink of mortal blackness,” he wrote. “I saw him blot out the stars and the sun and leave humanity and the earth in eternal darkness and death.”

Governor Taylor, however, does not take up his pen merely to rebut his fellow statesman's philosophy. He knew there would be little merit in that. He had his own gospel to share, one that would leave a listener with confidence and hope. In his grand conclusion, he wrote:

“Tell me not, O infidel, there is no God, no heaven, no hell! Tell me not O infidel, there is no risen Christ! What intelligence less than God’s could fashion the human body? What motive power is it, if not God, that drives those throbbing engines of the human heart, sending the crimson stream of life bounding through every vein and artery? Whence and what, if not God, is this mystery we call ‘mind’? What is it that thinks, and feels, and plans, and acts? O, who can deny the divinity that stirs within us?

“God is everywhere and is in everything. His mystery is in every bud and blossom, and leaf, and tree; in every rock, and hill, and mountain; in every spring, and rivulet, and river. The rustle of his wings is in every zephyr; his might is in every tempest. He dwells in the dark pavilion of every storm cloud. The lightning is his messenger, and the thunder is his voice. His awful tread is in every earthquake and on every angry ocean. The heavens above us teem with his myriads of shining witnesses – the universe of solar systems whose wheeling orbs course the crystal dread halls of eternity, the glory and dominion of the all-wise, omnipotent, and eternal God.”

You cannot help but smile at the conviction in Governor Taylor’s words and at the thought of how life leads him to such a firm and grounded faith.

He did not have to go to find his faith deep into a wilderness where you feel it is only you and God in that place.

Going into a Yellowstone doesn’t hurt, though. 

And on one of those clear Wyoming nights as our friend Mr. Moffit looks up at a sky scattered with a billion stars, perhaps something inside will nag him when he remembers our question from high above Snake River: “Sir, are you a man of faith?”

Could his answer be, “Maybe, just maybe my hiking friend might be right, after all?”

For such a kind man to find his way would make our getting lost in that vast wilderness worth it a thousand times over.

Coach Steven Bowen, a long-time Red Oak teacher and coach, now enjoys his time as a full-time writer and preacher of the gospel. In addition to his evangelistic travels, he works and writes for the Church of Christ of Red Oak at Uhl Road and Ovilla. Their worship times are 10 a.m. Sundays and 7:30 pm. Wednesdays. Email coachbowen1984@gmail.com or call or text (972) 824-5197.