What I believe is really stunning is that there is widespread belief that there are spiritual laws as well. Though not everyone agrees as to the specifics of these laws, there is little disagreement that ignorance of these laws does not disprove their existence. You don’t have to understand gravity to know that you need to be careful to watch your step. And you don’t have to know the Golden Rule to realize that how you treat others really matters.
Go see August Rush and let me know what you think.
Have you ever looked at all the patterns we see around us? I have previously written about the Fibonacci patterns we see in the universe that you find not only in living organisms, but in croissants and anything that is coiled upon itself. When you think about it, God is a God of numbers—He loves numbers. Think of the numbers in the Bible. We are always running into numbers when we read His Word. Numbers like three, seven, 40 days, 40 nights, 50 years of jubilee. He tells us that the hairs on our head are numbered. He said that we can count the number of our days.
Numbers are indeed are important. Numbers like your LDL, your waistline and your blood pressure. These are numbers that we live by that measure the quality of our health. I didn’t know until recently that some really smart mathematicians can quantify the shape of a butterfly as parabolic curves. Imagine that! One of God’s most beautiful creations boils down to a mathematic formula. I think that the astounding amount of order, geometry and diversity in the universe speaks to a God of vast and unfathomable richness. I would encourage you to find the numbers and encourage us all to look at the numbers that He is using in our lives today.
I had a somewhat sad conversation with a patient the other day. A gentleman came into the office, a highly educated theologian. He was reading a book on faith. I asked him why he thought that God required faith. Why was it so important to God that we have faith? He could show Himself to us all today and make His essence undeniably known and yet, He is hidden in the universe—His purposes are often hidden to our minds—we don’t always understand Him. In fact, we often don’t. His ways are higher than ours.
To my question, my patient sadly responded that the more he learns (he has his doctorate in theology) the less sure he is of what he believes. He told me that even though he used to be a chaplain, he no longer feels qualified to teach Sunday school because he is not really sure what he believes. The more he learns, the more questions he has and the more questions he has the less faith he has. I thought it was one of the saddest and somewhat disturbing conversations I have ever had.
So I went home and asked one of the greatest saints of faith that I know, my wife, her opinion. Why is it that God is hidden from us? Why does He connect us to us in faith? Paul says that we must have faith to please God because without faith we cannot even know that He exists. Why is that? Why does God want us to have faith?
She told me very wisely that if God were to show Himself in the fullness of His glory, we would have no choice but to fall down and worship at His feet. That suddenly our lives would be no longer our lives, that we would be complete and holy subjects to an awesome God. And when that happens, free will is gone. When we see God for who He is, really, we have no choice but to fall on our knees and worship. In fact, Revelation says that this will happen one day (Revelation 13:8, 15:4). The reason it has not happened yet is because God chooses to be loved freely than to be worshipped automatically. Amazing as it is, God prefers our freely given love to our coerced worship. Worship that He could demand at any moment is not desirable to Him as the love of His children given freely in faith.
I thought about this and the new comet that is racing through our solar system. I believe that just as this comet has burst on the scene (and one that is even larger than our own sun), one day, God Himself will burst into our lives and become the brightest object to be seen.
I am noticing waves these days. They can be peaceful, violent, calming or frightening. What got me thinking was listening to breathing, especially sleep breathing. As we fall asleep, our breathing becomes more rhythmic, and sounds just like ocean waves. Illustrating this is not such an easy thing, but as I searched for illustrations of waves, I realized that there are all sorts of invisible waves around us all the time. Sound travels in waves, as illustrated above. Light, liquids, radio frequencies—all various waves. If you are using a wireless Internet connection, there you go—more waves. Physicists and mathematicians can go on endlessly about the properties and behavior of these waves.
While I don’t pretend to understand their complex behavior, I can sit back in wonder. This is an incredible place. Just as a ripple can spread across a pond, so too our actions affect others far beyond our circle. Events in our past still affect us today. It is not too far a stretch to believe that our beliefs today can have eternal significance.
Recently my family I returned from a trip to London, England. We had a great time, found the British people to be wonderful hosts and managed to get our ten bags to and from United States without any serious mishaps. One of our site trips was a day spent in Oxford, one of my favorite towns. One of the things I noticed about Oxford that was a little bit disturbing was the popularity of Richard Dawkins book “The God Delusion.” Dawkins is one of the primary professors at the Oxford School of Biology and is a secular humanist and atheist. This book was, of course, featured throughout the stores in Oxford. From a Christian point-of-view, “The God Delusion” is a disturbing book and, I believe, also has some serious logical flaws. Although I do not claim to be nearly as smart as Dr. Dawkins, I do believe that he subscribes more to scientism (a worship of science) rather than strict logical thinking. The book’s premise draws upon evolution to disprove intelligent design. This philosophy is present throughout the book; but the most disconcerting aspect from a Christian standpoint is the popularity of a good number of academic books that are extremely antagonistic to Christian beliefs. A recent book by Sam Harris, “The End of Faith, Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason,” is a letter to a Christian nation and has seen significant sales in the free world. I have noticed that a fundamental theme throughout these books is a backlash against what is termed “fundamental Christianity.” It seems as if these books are particularly upset with the view of a small number of the Christian right who sincerely threatened these authors and what they believe is their right to free expression. The problem that none of these book answers is the question given to us in Isaiah 40:26:
Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.
The Bible answers questions what the atheist cannot, mainly who created all of these things. Think for a minute with me about that very simple question: “who created all of these?” The fact that something has been created presupposes the Creator. There is nothing known in the universe that does not exist without a creator and we know the Creator Himself.
Green is my daughter’s favorite. She loves everything green: grass, trees, even little green bugs. It occurred to me the other day that if a child was born colorblind and saw the whole world in black and white and never seen a color in her life, and she asks you to describe the color green, you may say, that green is the color of grass. If you look at grass and leaves and the new Wal-Mart sign eco‑friendly that is the thing, the thing that they all have in common is the color green, but probably this person would say, “I do not get it.” That person would not understand what these things have in common because they cannot relate at all to the experience of seeing green. Then you can say well it is light that comes in at 480 nanometers. That still does not really describe the experience of seeing the color green.
As I was thinking about this analogy, I realized that we are all color blind. The Lord says “my ways are higher than your ways, my thoughts are not your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9). I believe this explains the basic problem that people use when they do not understand Christianity. If God is good then why did He allow certain things to happen? We all have some problem that occurred to us or to those that we love that is unfair, unexplainable, and just find wrong and we rail against these injustices. Many people have come to the conclusion that God either does not exist or if He does exist He does not care and this is a result of what I believe is our colorblindness. We do not understand. We cannot understand the scope of the universe, the link to infinity, the existence of heaven, the spiritual world. The things that God inhibits include not only the world we see, but other dimensions. Time does not exist for Him like it does for you and me. He sees time from the beginning to the end. He made time, He is the author of time. He is in all things. I have come to believe that there is an element to the universe and to our existence. A spiritual dimension that defies materialistic definition and understanding and yes, while God has left us clues in his creation, ultimately we will never see color.
We are fully spirit. That is why Paul says that one day we will fully know. He makes the analogy of seeing a reflection in the mirror and seeing things dimly that will one day be completely visible (I Corinthians 13:12). I believe it is a useful way to think about the difficulties that we have when we experience trials and tribulations that we cannot understand.Remember my friend, we are colorblind, but one day we will see.
“No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him”
-1 Corinthians 2.9
When I was a kid, we used to flee the hot summers of Texas and drive twelve hours to Colorado. Now that is a long time to be in a car with your parents, two sisters, and a German Shepherd named King. And I remember on these seemingly interminable trips how you could begin to see the mountains in the distance. You can see Pike’s Peak sometimes almost one hundred miles before you get to it. So we’d spot the mountain, and then drive for what seemed like forever to get to it.
Now when I look at images of the universe, I get that same feeling of “are we there yet?” that I used to get as a kid in the backseat. The amazing views of Eagle Nebula M16 dubbed Pillars of Creation is an example. They remind many of stalagmites in a cave but remind me of natural monuments in the desert, shaped by eons of wind and rain.
Here is the amazing part: the longest cloud in the pillars of creation is one light year long. And they are 7000 light years away. The images we see are not what these clouds look like now, but how they were when Noah was building his ark. And if we were to build the fastest rocket ship we could, and started at one end of the cloud, using the best technology available it would take us 20,000 years to travel the distance of that cloud. So, if you started to travel the length of the cloud when Jesus was a kid, you’d now be just over 2000 years old and be one-tenth of the way to your destination.
And it doesn’t stop there. This is just one cloud in our galaxy. Our galaxy is about 100,000 light years across. Our galaxy is one of millions in the known universe. And the farthest stars we can see are 13 billion light years away. And that’s just the known universe. We are beginning to see evidence of other dimensions beyond space and time.
So it looks like Paul was right. There is truly no way we can really conceive what God has created. Our job is to ask questions. . .and to be amazed.
It’s that season again. We just had to stop and buy some girls scout cookies. We’re supporting a good cause, right? But darn it, those thin mints are so addictive, I’d believe you if you told me they had drugs in them!
I have been thinking about seasons lately. Girl scout cookie season. Valentine’s Day. We measure time in revolutions of the earth; trees mark the seasons in their rings; and, if you leave your camera lens open all night and stare at the night sky, you’ll see that the stars above move in the same kind of circles. It is we who are moving, of course, but the concentric rotation makes the circles seem to travel in perfects arcs. They are called star trails.
But it takes the long exposure to see the rings in the sky. The similarity with tree rings is amazing, but is only there for those who see it. It is not obvious to the casual observer. Of course there is no connection between the two, or is there? Both measure time. Both are natural phenomena. And there is no escaping their almost eerie resemblance. “For him who has eyes to see, let him see.”
Ever stop to look at slime? You know the stuff that gooks up a run down lake and makes a sticky film on stagnant water? It’s also found in streams and in the ocean. It’s really not all that pretty on the surface, but if you look closer…you can find God’s stained glass window. I was astonished when I found that simple diatom cells sometimes arrange themselves in beautiful colonies, such as the one shown in the center image above. These simple cells can form the most wondrous complex designs, all invisible without a microscope.
The famed Rose Window at Notre Dame is a famous surviving example of stained glass designed to inspire Christians. What seems beyond coincidence is how similar these patterns are to those present in nature, though the medieval artisans were oblivious to them. What if you told these artisans that they were copying pond scum? And how did the Maker communicate with them?
This algae (pond scum) has been around for millennia, and is the basic food for the smallest creatures that feed- well just about everything. And here’s something else I learned about slime: it “breathes” carbon dioxide. That’s the stuff they think may be causing global warming. So next time you see the film on a pond, or in the ocean, look closer: God is winking!
II Corinthians 4:18 says, “Since we consider and look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen, for the things that are visible are temporal, brief, and fleeting, but the things that are invisible are deathless and everlasting.” (Amplified Bible)
I’ve been thinking on this scripture lately, oddly enough as a result of watching sporting events. The high school that my kids attend had a basketball game that was thrilling and went into double overtime. Unfortunately, the Grace Cougars, though they fought a valiant effort, wound up losing by two points. But, I noticed as I sat in the stadium that there were people on both sides obviously deeply in prayer that their side would win. Then, I watched a thrilling football game between the Patriots and the Colts, and I noticed Peyton Manning on the sidelines obviously in prayer as his team went on to win the game. I realized at that moment that God could not answer the prayers of both teams. There were opposing and competing prayers and both teams simply could not win—even God could not answer conflicting prayers (at least not in the manner both sides desired). One team would win and one team would lose.
I thought then of more difficult prayers that were seemingly not answered, and I thought about my friend, Reich whom I have written about earlier on Designed on Purpose. There were hundreds and thousands of prayers that were lifted up on his behalf that seemingly were not answered.
One of the central tenets of Christianity that there is more to this universe than what meets the eye. This world, these dimensions, and time are just a part of God’s creation. There are other spiritual realms that are just as real yet unseen without the eyes of faith. One of the physical properties that tantilizes us with the notion of other realms is the existence of antimatter. Comets are thought to display antimatter as they absorb energy from the sun. And they look strangely like a flame, but are not really burning! Sound familiar? Yes, there is evidence of more to this universe than we can simply see, touch, feel, taste, or hear. This is one of the central tenets of the Bible and I think the basis for the perplexing problem of unanswered prayer. Let me know your thoughts.
Click here to listen to this post:
THE BEAUTY OF NUMBERS
FAITH AND COMETS
THE SOUND OF WAVES
WHO CREATED ALL OF THESE?
COLORBLIND
ARE WE THERE YET? TRAVELS AND AMAZEMENT
MEASURING TIME: GIRLS SCOUT COOKIES, TREE RINGS, AND STAR TRAILS
POND SCUM: GOD’S STAINED GLASS
SEEN AND UNSEEN–SPORTS, COMETS, AND ANTIMATTER