Stephen
Terry, Director
Education in Arts and Sciences
Commentary
for the December 5, 2020 Sabbath School Lesson
"The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they
pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech,
they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes
out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world."
Psalm 19:1-4, NIV
I can remember that
many years ago, as a teenager working in a church camp near Seattle, I could
look up and see the Milky Way spread across the night sky and feel something
stir within me at the presence of such beauty and majesty. It drew praise from
my heart for a God who could adorn the darkness of space with such a wonder.
And the Milky Way is only one of many galaxies. As wonderous as it is, some two
trillion more are to be found in the part of the universe we can observe. When
I consider the vastness of that and what that says about my ability to understand
One capable of bringing all of that into being, I cannot wrap my mind around
it. I can only stand in awed silence at the spectacle. Praises come to my lips,
but they seem inadequate for what I am seeing.
Some point to the
stars as humanity's future, that we have a place up there. If so, I wonder if
what I feel upon looking up is like what explorers once felt when landing on
virgin shores with abundant verdure and teeming wildlife. I can appreciate that
feeling, but I can find cause for concern in that as well. We do not have a
good record of caring for those new lands or the indigenous people we have found
there. Greed has caused us to ravage, kill, and destroy whatever we can if
there is even a hint of profit to be made in doing so. We have even enslaved
our own species to that end, and some modern political factions still hold
strong desires to continue that trend. If God dwells somewhere beyond those
corridors of time and space, I can only hope he can somehow prevent the
desolation we have wrought on earth from spilling over into that vastness. Several
Old Testament prophets have tried to call humanity to account for such exploitation,
perhaps Habakkuk most of all.[i] Like him, we can see the devastation
pollution and exploitation of the earth's resources has caused, and it seems
nothing is happening to prevent such destruction. Yet, despite his apparent
inaction, God assured Habakkuk that he was indeed dealing with the problem.
However, as the prophet soon learned, the cure could be even worse than the disease.
It could certainly
seem that way to us, also, if the only way to achieve balance would be through
population collapse due to depleted resources, warfare for what remains and widespread
pandemics. We see such things in nature when too many deer forage on the land
and there is no longer enough forage to sustain the herd, leading to die offs
until the population and the resources come back into balance. Could such fail safes
be an integral, intentional part of creation? Some might feel that a God who
would make such a thing would be cruel, but we have a very human tendency to
play the victim even when our own choices could have saved us from harm, had we
been willing to turn loose of the desire for financial gain that keeps calling
us to ignore everything else. For most, obtaining those profits will remain a
fantasy their entire lives, but some still strive for them to their dying
breath. And for many of these, it is because they are unable to see God for the
luster of the gold that draws them. They do not, cannot acknowledge that
something beyond what they can see, touch and measure exists. Money is real.
They can touch it, hold it, do things with it. But God they cannot see, hold,
or even understand.
Some have tried to
rectify this. They try to package God as a marketable object. They define him in
such a way that he becomes visible, can be held, and understood. Some may feel
that if you can hold and read the Bible, then God himself is being held. But a
God that can be contained in the Bible is far too small. Some try to make God
visible by building magnificent structures for worship. But a God who can be contained
in such a building is again too small. Some feel that God can be defined and understood
by placing limits on our understanding. For instance, they say that God had to
create the world only six millennia ago and that he would never accept anyone
into his fold who dared to believe otherwise. But such a God is contained
within the limited mental capacity of mankind and is not the ineffable God of
creation. Even though Gobekli tepe and Jericho both go back much farther than
six thousand years ago, rather than admit that their God is too small to be the
God of creation, some deny the archeology that challenges that "God in a box."
They would deny the very evidence that God provided to
preserve their constructed image of a much smaller God.
When I behold the
Milky Way, I see a God who beckons to my understanding as well as my heart. I
read my Bible and get a glimmer of the character of God, but I behold nature
that speaks of God, and it says to me, "You have no idea!" When I ask myself
why that might be, I am awakened to the fact that I simply do not have the
tools to see beyond. We can construct aides that allow us to see beyond what we
can see with only the naked eye, but even with those aides we discover that
what is visible is only barely scratching the surface of what is. How then can
we limit the God who created it all to the finite understanding of mankind. We
cannot see the infinity of space; yet we claim to see and know the God capable
of creating infinity. We have yet to understand our planet well enough to properly
care for it. We are even surprised to discover life on earth existing in extreme
environments we thought incapable of life. Yet, we claim to understand God. We
measure our life spans in mere decades. Yet, we claim to know the age of all of
creation.
The scientist who
claims that things are thus and so based on theories extrapolated from empirical
evidence is using their world, their perspective to define their world. But
they can fall woefully short of reality in doing so, for their evidence is
limited by what their imagination says is possible, and once that imagination
settles on a particular perspective, it can be very hard to alter, even when
faced with contrary evidence. Science too often only advances with a lot of kicking
and screaming along the way as a particular world view congeals into a petrified
mass and the ability to continue to stir the theoretical soup becomes stifled.
But science is not alone in bowing before such immovable idols of their own
construction. Religion, too, has its shibboleths.
Rather than allow God
his limitless existence, religion claims he cannot or will not work outside of
parameters that only religion can determine. This
presumes that God is like a puppy on a leash that religion holds, and God only
performs tricks for them and not for the uninitiated. Despite the global,
inclusive nature of Christ's teachings, modern religion continues to be
denominationally tribal, flinging accusations back and forth that those outside
their tribe do not have the truth. They each want to educate the world in the truth,
while maintaining such tribalism. Perhaps the most effective service they
perform for society is when they point out the errors in one another's truths. Then
it becomes apparent that no one really owns the truth
for they have not perfected it themselves, outrageous claims notwithstanding.
Maybe, as the television program, "The X-files," proclaimed, the truth is still
out there, and it is still out there because, like space, it exceeds the capability
of the tools we possess to envelope it.
The problem with truth
is that even though it can be as ineffable as God, we can, like with the Bible,
get pieces and glimpses of it. Unfortunately, when we think we understand that
piece, we set up a standard in the marketplace for judging the world. What conforms
to the piece of truth we feel we have is accepted. What does not is rejected as
a lie. We see an example of this with the age of the earth. We may feel, based
on creating an age-of-the-earth construct from a few proof texts, that we have the
only truth. Then anyone who challenges that truth is judged to be lying. Copernicus
is an example of someone who challenged religion and its belief that the earth
was the center of the universe. Despite the correctness of his perspective, it
wasn't until Kepler got the orbits of the planets right and Galileo made his
telescopic observations that the tribal assumptions of religion began to falter
and allow heliocentrism to become the correct standard of truth. Those proof
texts being used to support the earlier model were misinterpreted. Their God-in-a-box
was too small to withstand reality. Sadly, there is always a new God-in-a-box
to replace the old. We are simply uncomfortable allowing God to operate outside the parameters we created.
Religionists and scientists
alike are too focused on the sacred cows they have crafted. We need to stop
worshipping graven images and allow God to reveal himself any way he chooses,
even if that way flies in the face of the popular understanding of truth. Far
too often, both science and religion have, in the past, been labeled blasphemy
when they departed from popular belief. Even Christ
succumbed to such narrowmindedness. But God is in control, as Habakkuk learned,
and he does not need zealous religious or scientific tribalists to enforce
things for him. Burning at the stake no longer has the appeal it once had.
Maybe it is time we also set aside the rhetoric that went with it.