I took a prayer hike this morning, and as I did, I noticed that this tree had fallen. I couldn’t help think of that philosophical question, “If a tree falls in the forest, and there is nobody to hear it, does it make a sound?� Many would say that if a person is not there to recognize the sound, not there to affirm that indeed a sound was made, then it is not a sound. One website I went to on this subject had this to say:

What this draws our attention to is of far more interest, I think, than the riddle about trees falling unobserved in forests: the amount that we contribute to our experiences of the world. We encounter vibrations of air in the world, but these are presented to us as sounds (in the mental sense). We encounter patterns of light in the world, but these are presented to us as colours. The world in itself is not as we perceive it to be. Our brains ‘make up’ a significant proportion of our experiences. In a sense, then, trees falling in forests never make sounds, whether they are heard or not; when tree-falls are heard, the sounds are always made by the people who hear the tree falling.

And I think this typifies the question really is asking, “What or who determines reality?� Is reality determined by the experience of people and what we perceive or is reality determined by something far more foundational? I know this sounds like nothing more than philosophical mumbo-jumbo, but there really are some real life implications here.

We are far too easily convinced that the human being is at the center of the universe. When a tree falls to the ground in the forest, what validates its reality is not the fact that the tree has fallen, but rather, the witness of it having fallen by some human. And so our experience is at the core of reality and truth. If we have not experienced something, it cannot be true, and therefore, it cannot be real and authentic.

For this reason then, the Church and Evangelicalism, with its anthropomorphic focus, has deemed truth relative to experience rather than the other way around. That is, when I feel something in my heart, I know it must be true. Therefore, I act on it as if it is truth, rather than determining whether that truth flows from the truth of God’s Word. Hence, a denial of truth is a denial of God’s Word as truth which is ultimately a denial of God.

And that is what sin ultimately is, from Adam and Eve to today. It is the denial that the Almighty God should be viewed as God, the sovereign, good, and perfect God. And to deny Him is to deny His provisions, His care, His leading, and His direct guidance. It is to say to God, “God, though you are God, I think starting right now, I know better than you. So I think today, I will be the arbiter of what is right or wrong for me and not You.� And therefore, sin is a rejection of God’s mercy and God’s grace by rejecting God’s presence in our lives, and ultimately God’s existence in our God. Or as Paul puts it in Romans 1:22-25:

22Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. 24Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

God is to be blessed because He is our Creator and our God. Everything sings of His glory, including the trees of the field. The trees sing praises to our God in a language we cannot hear as the Psalmist says in Psalm 96:11-13:

11Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;
let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
12let the field exult, and everything in it!
Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy
13before the LORD, for he comes,
for he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness,
and the peoples in his faithfulness.

And the trees also fall when there is no life left in them (I am not saying they have souls by any means, I am just saying they have an existence that God allows them to have), and our God hears them fall. So when a tree falls, it does make a sound, it thunders!