The Physics of Faith: Seeing the Invisible
03.15.05
Pastor Mark Batterson
This evotional continues our Physics of Faith series. If you’d like to check out an old evotional, visit the evotional archive @ www.theaterchurch.com. And feel free to forward to a friend.
Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “A mind stretched by a new idea never returns to its original shape.” This series is about juxtaposing physics and faith. And my hope is this: that the physics will stretch your faith and faith will stretch your physics.
The God of Randomness
In his book, Can a Smart Person Believe in God, Michael Guillen says there are two kinds of people in the world: those who believe in God and those who believe in something else. He makes what I think is a valid point: everybody believes in something. We just have different objects of faith. Most people who don’t believe in the God of the Bible believe in what Michael Guillen calls the god of randomness.
It boils down to this. We only have two causalogical options: either we put our faith in the god of random chance or we put our faith in the God of intelligent design.
Hebrews 11:3 says, “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command.” It takes faith to believe in the existence of God. You can’t prove or disprove the existence of God.
It takes faith to believe in the God of Intelligent Design. But it also takes faith to believe in the god of random chance. In fact, I think it takes more faith.
I love the way astronomer, Sir Fred Hoyle, said it to the British Academy of Science years ago. He said, “Let’s be scientifically honest. The probability of life arising to greater and greater complexity by chance through evolution is the same probability as having a tornado tear through a junkyard and form a Boeing 747 jetliner.”
Hoyle calculated the chances of life being the result of random chance as being 1 in 1040,000.
I think sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that religion involves faith and science doesn’t. The truth is that everybody puts their faith in something they can’t prove.
Bertrand Russell, who was an outspoken opponent of Christian thought, once said that faith “a firm belief in something for which there is no evidence.” That’s a terrible definition of faith. I’ll be the first person to admit that faith isn’t logical or rational. But it’s not illogical or irrational either. Faith is super-logical and super-rational. In other words, it often appears illogical or irrational because it goes beyond human logic and rationale.
Constants
Albert Einstein said, “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as if nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is.”
Right now you have no sensation of motion, but you are sitting on a planet that is spinning at approximately 1,000 mph. Planet earth will make one full rotation in the next twenty-four hours. Not only that, you’re traveling through space at approximately 67,000 mph. Before the day is done, you will travel 1.3 million miles in your annual trek around the sun. And you didn’t have any big plans for today! The next time someone asks you, “What did you do today?” Tell them you’re a little tired because you just traveled 1.3 million miles in a single day!
Now let me ask you a question: when was the last time you thanked God for keeping us in orbit? Probably never! Why? Because we take constants for granted! None of us get to the end of the day and pray, “God, thanks for helping us make the full rotation today! I wasn’t sure we’d make it. You had me nervous, but you did it again.”
Here is the problem with God: He is so good at what he does that we tend to take Him for granted. He is so faithful. He is so powerful. He is so loving. He is so wise. God is the ultimate constant so we tend to take Him for granted.
I know people who would say that they’ve never experienced a miracle. I respectively beg to differ. I think we experience unbelievable miracles everyday. The irony is that we believe God for the big things like keeping us in orbit, but we have a tough time believing him for the small stuff!
John Donne said, “There is nothing that God hath established in the constant course of Nature, and which therefore is done everyday, but would seem a miracle, and exercise admiration, if it were done but once.”
Here’s a thought: our lives are utterly dependent upon things we can’t see and don’t understand.
This week, part of our team flew to Arizona. We’re one of ten multi-site churches from across the country that gets together twice a year to discuss and dream about doing church in more than one location. On our trip there we hit some turbulence. To be perfectly honest, it made me a little nervous! And I made the mistake of looking out the window at the wing! And I’ll tell you exactly what I thought. “I wonder how that thing stays attached.”
Here we are 30,000 feet in the air flying at about 400 mph. Our plane is being buffeted by pretty stiff headwinds. And I’m thinking about the screwdriver guy hoping he double checked the wing to make sure it was on there tight. You know what I’m saying? In a sense, my life depended on a bunch of people I’ve never seen who made a plane that I don’t understand. But, like millions of other people, I willingly put my life in their hands!
Here’s my point: everyday our lives depend on things we can’t see and don’t understand. We are surrounded by miracles. We just take them for granted. This evotional explores one of those miracles. I don’t think anything in the universe is more amazing. And I don’t think anything in the universe is more taken for granted. We depend on nothing more and appreciate nothing less.
Let There Be Light
Genesis 1:3 says, “And God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light.”
Let me give you the Batterson translation: “And God said, ‘Let there be electromagnetic radiation with varying wavelengths traveling at a speed of 186, 281.7 miles per second. Let there be ultraviolet and infrared light. Let there be x-rays and radio waves and micro waves. Let there be life and health and color and communication. Let there be photosynthesis and fiber optics. Let there be time and space.’ And there was light.”
I think Genesis 1:3 is the most understated verse in Scripture.
God can say so much by saying so little can’t he? Four words! And God speaks the entire universe into existence!
That is tough for us to relate to because our words seem so impotent sometimes. Parents, you know exactly what I’m talking about. I’m not sure what you’re batting average is, but there are certain words and phrases like “just wait” or “come here” or “don’t do that” that just don’t seem to work. I’m lucky if I’m batting .250.
One of the most frustrating things about parenting is having to repeat yourself over and over and over again. It can drive you crazy can’t it? Whisper “candy” from 100 yards away, and the kids will come running! But sometimes it’s like pulling teeth to get kids to do something they don’t want to do. Call it selective hearing. So we find ourselves repeating ourselves. “Don’t make me tell you again.” “If I have to tell you one more time.” “I just told you.” “What did I just say.” “I’m not telling you again.”
Our words seem so weak and so empty and so hollow so much of the time. And then there’s God: “Let there be light.” And billions of stars and galaxies come into existence.
A couple years ago we went to see David Copperfield when he was at the Warner Theater. All night long, Summer kept leaning over and saying, “Dad, how did he do that?” And that’s exactly what I thinking! So all night I kept leaning over and saying, “Summer, I have no idea.” His final act was making ten randomly selected people from the audience disappear without any rehearsing. It was a-mazing! It was one of those eye-popping, jaw-dropping, head-scratching experiences!
That is my reaction to this verse! How’d he do that? I’m left scratching my head!
And here is the amazing thing. We tend to think of this verse in past tense terms. But a series of discoveries by the likes of Christian Doppler and Richard Tolman and Edwin Hubble has produced evidence that would indicate that the universe is still expanding. The scientific term is the Doppler Effect. The significance of that is this: those words that God spoke so long ago are still creating galaxies at the outer edges of the universe! God hasn’t stopped creating!
Pure Light
Physics is primarily a study of what we can’t see. It is a science of the invisible: quarks and magnetic fields and gravitational forces. And right at the top of the list is light.
In his book, Catching the Light, Arthur Zajonc writes about a fascinating experiment called Project Eureka. Zajonc and a friend carefully fabricated a box and positioned a powerful projector to shine light into the box. They designed the box so that it wouldn’t illuminate any objects in the box or the surfaces of the box. So within the box was pure light. Guess what they saw when they looked inside. Absolute darkness! Here’s why: light is invisible! Isn’t ironic that the thing that gives us sight can’t be seen?
Deep space is exhibit A. When Apollo astronaut, Rusty Schweickart, was asked about what he saw when he looked into the sunlit emptiness of space, he said that all he saw was the darkness of deep space. Why? The sun’s light was everywhere, but it wasn’t illuminating anything so nothing was seen.
What we see isn’t light. We see reflected light. When white light hits your red couch, all the colors except red are absorbed. The red is leftover light that is reflected to your eyes. White objects reflect all of the light. Black objects absorb all of the light.
Job 38:19 says, “Where is the way where light dwelleth?”
That verse hints at the pervasiveness and elusiveness of light. Light is everywhere, but you can’t catch it. Turn on a light and it is 186,000 miles away one second later! Imagine a race where you fall behind by 186,000 miles every second. That’s what it’s like catching light. It’s almost like light is always 186,000 miles out of reach. Yet it’s all around us all the time! It’s tough to imagine and tough to explain, but light is ever-present and ever-illusive! It is invisible, yet it illuminates everything. We can’t see it, but without it we couldn’t see anything!
Spiritual Albedo
1 John 1:5 says, “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.” That may be the most voluminous statement in Scripture: God is light. It is so kaleidoscopic!
Hold that thought.
Phil 2:14 says, “Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe.”
The word “shine” means “to reflect.” The scientific term is albedo.
Albedo is a measurement of how much light a celestial body reflects. Let me give you a few examples. The planet Neptune has an albedo of .84. In other words, 84 percent of the light that hits Neptune is reflected. Our nightlight, the moon, has an albedo of .07. Only 7% of the light that hits the moon is reflected.
The goal of spiritual growth is a spiritual albedo of 1—100% reflectivity of the glory of God. II Corinthians 3:18 says it this way: “We, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord.”
That takes the pressure off doesn’t it? Spirituality isn’t about anything we can produce. It isn’t man-u-factured. It is about reflecting the glory of God—His creativity, his love, his faithfulness, his gentleness, his power, his love, his joy, his holiness!
Infrared Rainbows
God has created us with five senses and those senses have limits or ranges. For example, we can only hear sounds that vibrate between 20 and 20,000 hertz. Sounds below 20 hertz are infrasonic. Sounds above 20,000 hertz are ultrasonic. Anything outside that range is inaudible. In some ways, that is a blessing. If we could hear as well as a dog we’d all need earplugs. Living in the city would drive you crazy! If your sense of touch was super-sensitive, you’d feel neutrinos smacking into you all the time. It’d be a little annoying wouldn’t it? And if your sense of smell was more acute, it’d be even more difficult to change diapers! You get the point.
In the same sense, we have a visual range. There is a limit to how far we can see. Under optimum conditions, the human eye can see a candle at fifteen miles. Anything beyond that is imperceptible.
And in terms of light, the human eye is only able to respond to light waves that are between .00007 and .00004 centimeters long. We can’t see x-rays or gamma rays or ultraviolet rays. We can’t see radio waves or micro waves (not the kind you cook in).
Let me put that in perspective. Our visual range, in terms of light waves, is the equivalent of one playing card in that stack of cards stretching halfway across the universe! That is the thin slice of reality we see!
For what it’s worth, scientists have discovered infrared rainbows using infrared detectors. If we could see infrared light, the sky would become a spectrum of rainbow light all the time! All of that is to say this: there is more to life than meets the eye.
Faith is seeing the invisible. The Holy Spirit gives us extra-sensory perception. I like the way I Corinthians 2:9 says it: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived of what God has prepared for those who love him.” Paul is talking about those things that are beyond our sensory limits. They can’t be conceived or perceived. Then he says, “But God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.”
In other words, God bypasses our brain and does an end run around our five senses and reveals things to us Spirit-to-spirit. There are some things that can’t be learned with the mind or perceived with the senses. They can only be revealed by the Spirit of God. I Corinthians 2:14 says, “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are spiritually discerned.”
The Miracle of Light
We only see a thin slice of reality between .4 and .7 microns. It’s like we look at life through a small peephole or porthole. But if we could see outside that range we’d see light for what it really is: an inconceivable miracle of God.
Light has the power to vaporize, drill holes through diamonds, transfer digital information, carry television signals, drill teeth, repair retinas, turn leaves into a plethora of colors, detect motion, and guide ballistic missiles with pinpoint accuracy.
This invisible thing we call light is the basis of everything. We are utterly dependent upon something we can’t touch or taste or smell. We can see the beauty of reflected light and feel the warmth of absorbed light, but otherwise it is imperceptible.
Light is the basis of all life. Without sunlight you don’t have photosynthesis. And without photosynthesis you don’t have life. Next time you eat an apple think about the fact that, in a sense, you’re eating condensed light. An apple absorbs sunlight and it allows the apple to ripen and become edible. Without light we’d be missing Red Delicious, Granny Smith, and McIntosh.
Light is the basis of communication. Maybe I’m a simpleton, but I’m amazed by cell phone technology. I’m old enough to remember the old cell phones that weighed fifty pounds and required two hands to hold up to your ear! I still remember the pre-cell phone days when you had to drive all over tarnation looking for a public pay phone. But I digress!
I can be talking with someone halfway across the country and they’ll hear what I’m saying before the person sitting halfway across the room because the speed of light is that much faster than the speed of sound. Imagine life without light waves! For starters, you’d have to figure out what to do besides watch TV and listen to the radio because they wouldn’t exist.
Light is the basis of health. Absence of light can cause everything from depression and vitamin D deficiency. The presence of light is the cure for everything from rickets to Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). In fact, people who suffer from SAD sit under a broad-spectrum lamp. Light has a healing effect.
Light is the basis of time and space. In Einstein’s equation, E=MC2, the speed of light is the constant. If you bombard cadmium with light it emits a redline which is the basic unit of measurement for time. Before 1983, light was measured in meters. Now meters are measured by the speed of light. A meter is defined as the distance traveled by light in a vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458ths of a second. So light is the basic unit of measurement for space or distance.
Color TVs
A few years ago we were driving out Route 50 toward the Bay Bridge headed on vacation. On the side of the road I spotted a billboard next to a roadside motel. The motel was pretty rough. It was the kind of place you’d want to pack your own sleeping bag rather than sleep in their sheets. It looked like it was brand new about a hundred years ago and they hadn’t done any maintenance since. But I love their billboard. In fact, it’s my all-time favorite. It said, “Color TV.” I jokingly said to Lora, “Look honey, they have color TVs. Let’s stay there!” Maybe fifty years ago that was enough to get someone to stay at your hotel, but you might want to think about changing your marketing strategy! You know what I’m saying?
Every time we pass that billboard I chuckle internally, but have you ever tried to watch an old black-and-white TV? If you haven’t, you don’t fully appreciate color TV let alone HDTV with its two million pixels. All of that is to say this: we take color for granted. But it is an amazing gift from God.
When I was in Arizona last week, I got up early because I love watching the sun rise in new places. As the sun hit the mountains it turned them into a panalopy of purple and pink hues! And the midday sky! I used the word “azure” more during my three days in Arizona than the rest of my life combined. The word “blue” just didn’t cut it.
I have a little book, Children’s Letters to God. I love one of them written by a boy named Eugene. “Dear God, I didn’t think orange went with purple until I saw the sunset you made on Tuesday. That was cool.”
The poet, John Ruskin said, “The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love color the most.”
Maybe you ought to stop reading for a second and thank God for the seven million cones in your retina that enable you to see approximately seven million different colors. While you’re at it, on behalf of your shins, go ahead and thank him for the one hundred and twenty million rods in your retina that give you night vision.
More Light
In 1917, Albert Einstein said, “For the rest of my life I will reflect on what light is!”
The German poet and scientist, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, wrote a treatise called The Theory of Color. He was fascinated by light. He said, “I have known light in its purity and truth, and I consider it my duty to strive after it.” His last words were said to have been: “More Light!”
For a follower of Christ, that is pretty apropos. More light means more God. And that’s exactly what we’ll get when we cross the spacetime threshold. The Bible says that when we get to heaven we’ll receive glorified bodies. I think glorified minds and glorified senses will be part of the package. I think we’ll taste new flavors and smell new fragrances and see new colors. I Corinthians 13:12 hints at what I’m talking about. “Now we see through a glass, darkly; then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know fully even as I am fully known.”
We’ll smell things that will make the smell of a pot roast in a crock pot or brownies in the oven or fresh baked bread smell putrid. I know that comes awfully close to food blasphemy! We’ll hear angel’s voices in octaves we’ve never imagined. And we’ll see colors that will heal and inspire and envelope us in the beauty of God.
Revelation 21 gives us a sneak preview of how colorful heaven will be:
And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel.
The wall was made of jasper, and the city of pure gold, as pure as glass. The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald, the fifth sardonyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst. The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl. The great street of the city was of pure gold, like transparent glass.
I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
When I read that passage this thought comes to mind: “I can’t imagine anything worse that missing out on this.” Here’s the deal. The God who created you wants to spend eternity with you. But you’ve got to make reservations. Your name has to be written in the Lamb’s book of Life.
My brother-in-law, Robb, celebrated his birthday last week and he and Carrie went to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse but they hadn’t made a reservation. The hostess told them it was a two-and-a-half hour wait so they had to go someplace else. I almost cried. My favorite meal is a filet mignon at Ruth’s Chris with extra butter sauce! I can’t imagine going there and then having to go someplace else. I felt my brother-in-law’s pain!
Revelation 19:9 says, “Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb.”
I can’t imagine anything sadder than missing out on the marriage supper of the Lamb. By the way, I think Ruth’s Chris will be on the menu. Call it a hunch! I can’t imagine anything sadder than failing to make a reservation to spend eternity with God.
So how do we make reservations? To be honest, it’s simpler than making reservations at a restaurant. Romans 10:9 says, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Making reservations is as simple as saying to God, “I want to spend eternity with you. I confess my sin. I profess my faith in Christ. I believe that He died on the cross to pay the penalty for my sin and he was raised from the dead on the third day! I thank you for forgiving me and saving me. And I accept your invitation.”
If you prayed that prayer let me give you a promise found in Matthew 16:19: “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.” If you prayed that prayer your reservation is made and your name is written in the Lamb’s book of life. It is a binding contract. You are giving yourself back to God.
Journey into the Light!
