It All Makes Sense

Wayland ponders the universe from a Christian perspective in this spiritual debut.

Who are we? Why are we here? Where did all of this come from? Such questions have befuddled humanity throughout history and have launched innumerable books attempting to suss out some answers. Wayland adds a new submission to the pile with this volume, which attempts to take readers from a place of broad ambivalence and lead them to an acceptance of Christian theology. The author begins by dividing the answers to philosophical questions into yeses and noes, where the noes represent a random or nihilistic view of the universe and the yeses offer a more positive, purpose-driven cosmology. “Each of us chooses ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in many different ways as we grow and mature,” writes Wayland. “But the ‘no’ answer gives no life or hope. It is dead. Only in the ‘yes’ answer is there power to sustain and nourish a life.” Quickly determining that yeses make more sense, the author discusses the difficulty of the search for God, then marvels at the luck of having available to humanity the revealed word of God in the form of the Holy Bible. He guides the reader through his interpretation of the Bible’s portrayal of the nature of God, evil, love, and Jesus, as well as his own faith and mission work. Wayland is a practiced writer and details his concepts and arguments in a personable, almost professorial way. Self-deprecating and learned—his career was in chemical and nuclear engineering—he presents his beliefs as the products of a reasonable and thoughtful mind. His questioning tone aside, Wayland’s views fall well within mainstream Christian dogma. He takes his time getting to his ultimate goal, which is to convert souls to Jesus, and the way his focus narrows from a general curiosity to Christianity by means of a faux-deductive reasoning may strike certain readers as disingenuous. Christian readers—or those curious about the religion’s teachings—should find his message comforting. Those looking for a flexible view of the universe, however, will likely be disappointed.

A brief and rather boilerplate work of Christian apology.