Universal Details

Physics covers the biggest and smallest things in the universe.  The last physics class I took, "Particle Physics and Cosmology" literally covers the smallest things in the unverse that we know of: particles; and the biggest thing: the cosmos or the universe itself.  The difference between the scales of these is ridiculously enormous, and we people are smack dab in the middle between the unimaginably large galaxies and the unbelievably small molecules.  Just a few meters tall in a world of femtometers and parsecs.  It's a crazy picture to wrap your brain around, and it makes you wonder just how good our perspective is on what's really going on around us.  

It's amusing how we sometimes attach significance to physical size and sometimes we don't.  A distant planet or nebula may make an awesome desktop background, but if I could choose between letting the planet melt or a 4 cm bolt in my car's engine, I'd keep the bolt.  The earth is hardly even mentionable on a cosmic scale.  From any unbiased point of view, it shouldn't even be noticed.  BUT as far as we know (except for a few brief vacations into orbit or to the moon) it has been the location where every story of human life has taken place.  The earth used to seem so massive and all-encompassing and stable, but we're really living in a thin shell of compacted carbon that suspends us between a ball of burning magma and an infinite sphere of vacuous space.  Frightened?  Well just think how easy some kind of cosmic accident would be that could destroy all of human life.  When Jonathan Edwards said you were sustained above the reach of the fires of hell by a thread and God's grace, he didn't even know that two miles below your feet would be a big boiling boulder of liquid fire.  

I think that everyone should learn a little cosmology.  We know about the sun, the moon, the solar system, but there's some really incredible information out there about stars and nebulae and space itself that isn't hard to understand, but it's really amazing.  I might actually post on it again, just because it's so incredible and thought provoking.  If people did start learning more about the universe, I think it would have two effects (among other things).

First, I think it would increase the awe that we have in the world around us.  Christians should attribute that awe directly to God.  I think basking in the glory of God's creation is a first rate form of worship.  It's beautifully biblical.  Check out the 8th and 19th Psalms.  When I think about how big the universe is, it's so humbling (honestly I don't know why people always say they feel humbled when they get big awards, those are the kinds of times I feel least humble.  Knowing that you're smaller in the galaxy than a bacterium in a rhinoceros, that's humbling.  The great thing about science is that it makes the doctrine of creation an increasingly big deal.  We believe God made everything that exists.  That hasn't changed, but our definition of "everything" has changed enormously.  The more we know about what and how much God created, the more credit we can attribute to Him.

Second, I think cosmology undermines the humanist ideas that we have.  This isn't the normal definition of humanism, but I think of humanism as the belief that the universe exists solely for the purpose of humanity.  Even though humanity is important, I think the fact that God created an enormous universe and only gave us a teeny tiny corner for our playground should hint to us that God had other plans for the universe even beyond his incredible plans for the earth.  Maybe there are aliens, or maybe he just likes staring at nebulae and supernovae in his spare time, I don't know, but if anything stirs my imagination, it's wondering what in the cosmos God is doing with the rest of the universe.

White Shoes

    I know I posted about my jacket a couple months ago, and now I’m talking about my shoes.  Clothing is not an intentional theme, but I guess I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.  Anyway, I hope you’ll bear with me.  Some people told me the jacket story was interesting, so hopefully you won’t mind a few paragraphs about a pair of white fabric Polo shoes.  Meanwhile, I’m struggling with the suspicion that if I keep talking about what I wear I will be suspected of committing vanity.  But then I realized it would be even more vain to avoid talking about clothes in order to keep you from noticing my vanity.

    When I was home over break, mom bought me a pair of shoes.  They fit well at the store, they look pretty nice, but the first thing I said was, “these might get dirty pretty quickly.”  Of course, I didn’t mean they will accumulate dirt or mud more quickly, I meant that any speck of dirt that they did pick up would be really noticeable immediately.  That’s the thing about white shoes, they’re spiffy and they stand out, but they also lose their pristine status pretty easily.  It doesn’t take much for white shoes to look like they’ve seen better days.  It’s like snow, when it’s freshly fallen, it looks clean, pure, undefiled.  It makes sense that it’s sometimes referred to as virgin.  After a few days, the snow looks like it got run through a blender with a mud-pie.  It doesn’t take much, just the decision of a few unholy feet trampling above it.

    Isaiah 1:18 says that crimson colored sins can be bleached, as white as snow.  As white as fresh snow, I hope.  Of course the problem that accompanies virgin, snow-like, whiteness is the tendency to expose impurities.  It’s the same problem that white shoes have.  I was at a men’s conference with my church in Wheaton last weekend and D.A. Carson spoke about a person he knew who was a Christian.  A student who was curious about Christianity said he didn’t get what was different about Christianity.  The man said, “watch me.”  He told him to observe his actions and decisions to see if anything was different.  That bold idea of living life on such a pedestal scares me, but that’s what Paul did in 1 Corinthians 11:1, and he wasn’t perfect either. 

    I’m afraid to wear white shoes.  I’ve noticed that I actually watch out for mud now.  I pay attention to dirty snow and walk carefully through or around it instead of sloughing carelessly through like I do in my black tennis shoes.  I like to hang with the cool crowd and pick up on the jokes and the innuendo.  I’ve never really wanted to have people think of me as the one who is always nice and polite and clean, because I worried it would seem arrogant or fake.  Maybe that’s okay though.  Maybe I should try to be an example by displaying purity and unashamedly claiming it.  We get to pick our shoe color.  We get to pick the background to display our lives on.  We can pick a dark, textured color that’s easy to hide in,  but if we’re following Jesus, we only have one option: white as snow.