The Physics of Faith: Believing the Impossible
03.24.05
Pastor Mark Batterson
This evotional continues The Physics of Faith series. To check out old evotionals, visit the evotional archive @ www.theaterchurch.com.
Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “A mind stretched by a new idea never returns to its original shape.” That is really what this series of evotionals is all about. We’re juxtaposing physics and faith. I’m hoping that the physics stretches your faith and faith stretches your physics!
Bell’s Theorem
One of the most revolutionary discoveries in the world of Quantum Physics was made by James Stewart Bell, a physicist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Switzerland. He essentially disproved the principle of local causes which states that the relationship between particles must be mediated by local forces. Bell’s research seemed to indicate that regardless of distance, everything in the universe is interconnected. Albert Einstein called it “spooky action at a distance.”
Let me try to explain it this way.
We generally communicate by talking, in which case, our voices produce sound waves that carry information at about 700 miles per hour. So the length of time it takes for you to hear me depends on the distance between us. The fastest communication signals are light waves like radio waves that carry information at approximately 186,000 miles per second. Now here is what you need to understand: almost all of classical physics rests upon the assumption that nothing in the universe can travel faster than the speed of light. The speed of light, in a sense, was considered the universal speed limit.
But recent experiments have shown that if two subatomic particles shoot into space as the result of a subatomic reaction, they always seem to influence each other no matter how far they travel. What happens to one particle happens to the other particle superluminally or faster than the speed of light. The technical term is instantaneous nonlocality. It simply means that there seems to be an invisible link between all particles. The link defies space—particles can be in opposite corners of the universe. And the link defies time—it is an instantaneous connection that defies the speed of light.
This discovery has revolutionary ramifications, but let me state the obvious: Bell’s Theorem redefined what is and what is not possible. Classical physics held that nothing could exceed the speed of light, but we live in a nonlocal universe with superluminal connections.
Two weeks ago I wrote about Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and said that nothing is absolutely certain. There is always a range of uncertainty in the world of quantum mechanics. This evotional is really a corollary. Nothing is certain. And nothing is impossible. There is always a range of possibility.
Impossible
Jesus redefined what is and what is not possible! He said, “All things are possible.” And because we sometimes need to hear the same thing in different ways, Jesus also said, “Nothing is impossible.” But He didn’t just talk the talk. Jesus walked the walk. He trafficked in the impossible.
Jesus interrupted weather patterns. He changed the molecular structure of water into wine. He hardwired a blind man’s brain installing synapses between the optical nerve and visual cortex. Jesus walked on water and walked through walls. He turned energy into matter. He made the blind see, the deaf hear, the mute talk, and the lame walk. He raised people from the dead and then He himself rose from the dead.
That’s a pretty impressive resume of miracles!
It’s easy to say, “Yah, but that’s Jesus. What does that have to do with me?” The answer is everything! John 14:12 says, “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these.”
Jesus redefined what is and what is not possible. That is what those miracles represent: a redefinition of possibility. Jesus said, “Everything is possible to him who believes.”
*Mustard Seed
Impossibilities are relative!
To a newborn, walking is impossible. Newborns have not developed the necessary motor skills or strength, but give them a year and walking becomes a cakewalk. Sometimes time is the only difference what is impossible and what is possible. In the words of Danny Hillis, “There are problems that are impossible if you think about them in two-year terms—which everyone does—but they’re easy if you think in fifty-year terms.”
To a five-year-old who hasn’t learned addition and subtraction, even the simplest of algebra problems is next to impossible. But give her a few math classes, and she’ll come up with a simple solution to that impossible problem. Sometimes knowledge is the only difference between what is impossible and what is possible.
Humans can’t walk through walls. I’ve tried a few sliding glass doors and that doesn’t work either! But what is impossible to me is easy for sub-atomic neutrinos. They whiz right through walls! To a neutrino, atoms in a wall aren’t close together. They are infinitely far apart. Sometimes size is the only difference between what is impossible and what is possible.
In the spiritual realm, faith is the only difference between what is impossible and what is possible. It is a developmental issue. Impossibilities disappear as we develop our faith.
Emily Dickinson said, “I dwell in possibility.” Every follower of Christ ought to dwell in possibility. It is our birthright as believers. I love the way Soren Kierkegaard said it: “If I were to wish for anything I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of what can be, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating as possibility?”
From a human perspective, there are degrees of difficulty. We have small problems and big problems. There are small miracles and big miracles. From God’s perspective, there are no degrees of difficulty! The Lord asks a question in Jeremiah 32:27: “Is anything too hard for me?” We tend to think of prayer requests as having degrees of difficulty, but there is one problem with that: to the infinite, all finites are equal. There is no big or small, easy or difficult, possible or impossible!
Iron Axheads
II Kings 6 records one of the most improbable miracles in Scripture:
One day the group of prophets came to Elisha and told him, “As you can see, this place where we meet with you is too small. Let’s go down to the Jordan river, where there are plenty of logs. There we can build a new place for us to meet.” When the arrived at the Jordan, they began cutting down trees. But as one of them was chopping, his ax head fell into the river. He said, “Alas, master! For it was borrowed.”
Notice the verb tense. This apprentice uses the past-tense. As far as he’s concerned, this axhead is as good as gone. It reminds me of one of Jack Handey’s deep thoughts: “If you drop your keys in a river of molten lava, let ‘em go man, ‘cause they’re gone!” If you drop your iron axhead in the river, let it go because it’s gone!
This apprentice regarded his loss as final. He had no expectation whatsoever that it would retrieved. I think he wanted a little mercy or a little sympathy, but he wasn’t expecting a miracle! He didn’t have a category for what was about to happen. And there is good reason. Any mineral with a density greater than one gram per cubic centimeter doesn’t float. The density of cast iron is approximately 7.2 grams per cubic centimeter. Translation: iron axheads don’t float. Or do they?
Now here is what I love about this story. If I’m Elisha, I feel bad for the guy who lost the borrowed axhead. Maybe I let him borrow mine. Maybe I help him get a new one. But it wouldn’t even cross my mind to pray that it would float. Do you know what I’m saying? But you can tell the wheels are turning in Elisha’s mind because he asks, “Where did it fall?” What difference does it make? It’s at the bottom of the river! But that doesn’t stop Elisha!
“Where did it fall?” the man of God asked. When he showed him the place, Elisha cut a stick and threw it into the water. Then the ax head rose to the surface and floated. “Grab it” Elisha said to him. And the man reached out and grabbed it.
I think his apprentice was so surprised to see what he was seeing that he just stood there. He was in shock. And finally, Elisha has to say, “Don’t just stand there. I’ve prayed this thing to the surface. You might want to GRAB IT.”
I love the King James Version of this verse: “And the iron did swim.”
Can I make a couple observations?
Miracles can’t be taught. They can only be believed. Miracles can’t be planned. They can only be experienced.
Here is the irony of this story. These apprentice prophets were building a bigger school so more prophets could take classes from Elisha. And while they are building a place to learn, God gives them a course in miracles. It’s almost like God says, “While you’re busy building your school, why don’t I teach you something that can’t be learned in a classroom!” So the greatest class taken and greatest lesson learned happens while they are building a school for prophets. I don’t know, but that is sort of funny to me.
The greatest lessons are rarely learned in a classroom because they can’t even be taught. They can only be experienced. And it usually starts with an impossible situation like a borrowed axhead falling into a river! It’s not how we’d write the script. It’s not how we’d write Scripture. But we’re not the Author of Faith either!
Here’s another observation.
This isn’t a life-and-death situation. Yes, it’s a borrowed axhead. Yes, he lost it. But if that is the worst thing that’s ever happened to you, you’ve led a pretty sheltered life. You know what I’m saying? It’s an axhead. It’s not like it was his yacht that sunk! I know lots of worse stuff that has happened to lots of people! This may sound crazy, but doesn’t it seem like maybe you ought to save such an amazing miracle like this for a little bigger tragedy?
But I would put this in the category of Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding party. Why “waste” your first miracle on helping a bride and groom save face because they didn’t stock enough wine for the reception? I think it says something about God. It tells me that God cares about the little things—the wedding parties and borrowed axheads! Nothing is too small for God.
The slave-trader turned song-writer, John Newton, once penned these words:
Not one concern of ours is small
If we belong to Him
To teach us this, the Lord of all
Once made iron to swim
One more observation: if an iron axhead floats all bets are off!
This story ranks as one of my favorite stories in Scripture because it’s absolutely ridiculous! Can you hear Elisha praying: “Dear God, I know that iron axheads have a density of 7.2 grams per cubit centimeter. I know that at body temperature, no liquid has a viscosity as low as water. But please defy the laws of physics and do what has never been done before. Make this iron axhead swim.”
Have you ever had someone say something and you aren’t sure if they are joking or serious? They sound half-serious so you don’t know what facial expression is appropriate. So you give them one of those half-smiles. It’s one of those smiles that could go in either direction—either a pained smile or a happy smile—depending on additional information.
I wonder if Elisha’s apprentice wonders if Elisha is even serious. I can hear Elisha saying to him, “Let’s pray that God would make it float.” And the apprentice gives him one of those nervous laughs!
Let me come right out and say it: I like people who pray for iron axheads to float. I love being around people who ask God to do absolutely ridiculous things because they have that much faith in Him. I have a litmus test: if you pray for iron axheads to float you can be my friend. I want to be around people who stretch my faith. I want to be around people whose faith defies the laws of physics! That’s precisely why they were building a bigger school. Elisha’s faith was magnetic!
Believe It or Not
I had a nickname when I played basketball in college. They called me the “black hole.” Here’s why: when someone passed me the ball they knew they weren’t getting it back because I was going to shoot it. I had a pretty simple modus operandi: you miss all the shots you don’t take.
Here is the conclusion I’ve come to: God doesn’t answer all the prayers we don’t pray! Jesus said, “You have not because you ask not.”
Most of us have never seen an iron axhead float because we’ve never prayed for it. Most of us live way below the level of our God-given potential because we’re thinking small and living small and dreaming small. And God is too big to fit in our tiny little boxes!
In the 1930’s, a graduate student at UC Berkeley named George Danzig was late to class one day. The mathematics professor had written two problems on the blackboard. Danzig thought they were the homework assignment. It was the most difficult homework assignment he’d ever encountered. Night after night he tried solving the two problems. It took him nearly a week to finally figure them out. He finally turned in his assignment and thought he’d get a bad grade because it took so long.
A few weeks later, George heard a pounding on his door early in the morning. He was surprised to see his mathematics professor standing there. His professor said, “George, you solved the problems.” George said, “Of course I did, they were our homework assignment.” The professor said, “That wasn’t your homework assignment. Those were two of the most famous insolvable problems in mathematics. The world’s leading mathematicians have been trying for years to solve the two problems you solved in a few days.”
George Danzig, who later became a professor at Stanford University, said, “If someone had told me that they were two famous unsolved problems, I probably wouldn’t have even tried to solve them.”
Bingo.
In other words, if you don’t think it can be done you won’t even try. You’ve got to believe it to achieve it.
George Danzig solved two unsolvable problems because he didn’t know it couldn’t be done. Elisha prayed for the axhead to float because he didn’t know it couldn’t’ be done. Peter walked on water because he didn’t know it couldn’t be done. The little boy with 2 loaves of bread and five fish gave them to Jesus because he didn’t know that they couldn’t feed five thousand people!
Mark Nepo said, “Birds don’t need ornithologists to fly.” That ranks as one of my all-time favorite quotes. Birds don’t need ornithologists to fly and God doesn’t need theologians to do miracles! I think sometimes we analyze and categorize and theorize and formulize instead of just letting God be God.
God isn’t looking for people who tell him what he can’t do! He is looking for people who believe there is nothing He can’t do!
Too often, our theology results in intellectual pride. We hunker down and point out where everybody else is wrong. Our doctrine becomes our security blanket. We dissect Scripture instead of allowing Scripture to dissect us. Here is the fundamental mistake we make in approaching Scripture. We mistakenly think that the purpose of Scripture is to give us knowledge. That is a byproduct, but it isn’t the ultimate goal. The purpose of Scripture is to give us faith. And here is the sad truth. The Christian world tends to be divided into two camps—the knowledge camp and the faith camp. We need knowledge. But the end goal ought to be faith. And faith takes us further than knowledge. It allows us to believe the impossible.
*7 Levels
Madeleine L’Engle said, “I need questions that do not have answers. We try to be too reasonable about what we believe. What I believe is not reasonable at all. In fact, it’s hilariously impossible. Possible things aren’t worth much. These crazy impossible things keep us going.”
Assumptions
Albert Einstein said, “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by the age of eighteen.” Over time all of us develop assumptions about life—what is and what is not possible. I think faith is suspending judgments long enough to believe God to do something that is impossible. It is becoming like little children. Kids are the masters of suspending judgments. They live in a sea of possibilities!
David Bohm says that suspending judgment is hanging our assumptions in front of us so that we can see them.
For hundreds of years, sane people believe that the earth was flat. Lactantius, tutor to Emperor Constantine’s son, said, “Can any one be so foolish as to believe that there are men who feet are higher than their heads, or places where things may be hanging downwards, tree growing backwards, or rain falling upwards?”
So a thousand years ago, someone who believed the earth was round would have been considered certifiably insane! A thousand years later, anybody who believes the earth is flat is certifiably insane! What happened? Our vantage point changed.
I think one of the greatest turning points in the history of humankind was the first photograph of planet earth taken from space. We take it for granted because we saw pictures in textbooks growing up in school. But what a paradigm shift! It helped us put ourselves in perspective!
By the way, I love what Lieutenant Colonel, William Rankin, once said: “Someday I would like to stand on the moon, look down through a quarter of a million miles of space and say, ‘There certainly is a beautiful earth out tonight’.”
Manmade Ceilings
In a couple months a team of NCCers is headed to Addis Abba, Ethiopia to help a church plant. The pastor, Zeb Mengistu, emailed our team recently and shared something that has gotten into my spirit. He said that God has been speaking this word to his spirit: “Take your limitations off what I can do.”
There is an amazing picture of this in Genesis 15. As you read the rest of this evotional, let this story get into your spirit. In Genesis 15, Abram is having a crisis of faith. It’s easy for us to read this story because we know the final outcome. We know that Abram and Sarah eventually have a child named Isaac. We know their family becomes a nation. But we didn’t have to wait fourteen years for God to fulfill the promise!
In Genesis 15:1, the Lord speaks to Abram in a vision. “Do not be afraid, Abram, for I will protect you, and your reward will be great.” And Abram says, “O Sovereign Lord, what good are all your blessings when I don’t even have a son?” Then God reasserts His promise in verse 4, “No, your servant will not be your heir, for you will have a son of your own to inherit everything I am giving you.”
Then God does something interesting. He takes Abram on a little fieldtrip. Verse 5 says, “Then the Lord brought Abram outside beneath the night sky and told him, ‘Look up into the heavens and count the stars if you can. Your descendants will be like that—too many to count’!” Verse 6 says, “Abraham believed the Lord.” And the rest is history!
You’ve got to put yourself in this story. Abram is indoors. And God takes him outdoors. When Abram was in his pup tent, all he saw was a manmade ceiling. God takes him outside and tells him to look into the expanse of space that stretches billions of light-years in every direction.
There are two vantage points in this story. Abram was inside the tent. He was focused on his own inability. He was focused on his circumstances. So God gives him a different vantage point by taking him outside. God helps Abram see beyond his manmade ceiling. The manmade ceiling obscured his vision. The farthest he could see was his eight-foot ceiling. Abram’s faith had been reduced to the size of a large pup tent. Abram did what so many of us do: we put a ceiling on what God can do. We put an eight-foot ceiling on his love and power and wisdom.
God helps Abram refocus on His supernatural ability by making Him look up into the night sky. God gets Abram’s eyes off of his circumstances and helps him refocus on the promise of God. That is where all of us live our lives—between our human circumstances and the promises of God. What we decide to focus on will make all the difference in the world and the next. F.B. Meyer may have said it best: “Unbelief puts our circumstances between us and God. Faith puts God between us and our circumstances.”
One more thought. Abraham looked up and saw hundreds of stars and must have been amazed. All he wanted was one son! What Abram didn’t know as he looked up into the night sky was the fact that there were millions and billions of stars invisible to the naked eye.
God delivered on his promise. And he didn’t do it based on the limits of Abram’s vision or knowledge. He didn’t just give Abram a family of hundreds. He didn’t just give him a nation of millions. He gave him billions of spiritual descendants—descendants of faith. According to the book of Romans, everybody who is in relationship with Christ is a child of Abraham. At last count we numbered two billion! Abram could barely believe God for the hundreds of stars he could see with the naked eye, but God had much bigger plans for Abram. And He has much bigger plans for you! God doesn’t fulfill His promises to the limits of human knowledge or power. God does what He does so well: He does superabundantly more than we can even ask or imagine!
One footnote.
It didn’t happen overnight! There were fourteen years of second-guessing between when the promise was given and fulfilled. That’s 168 months. That’s 728 weeks. That’s 5110 days! But God’s promises have no expiration dates because His power has no limits.
So here’s my question: what eight-foot ceilings are you placing on God? What manmade ceilings have you placed on Him? What is keeping you from believing the impossible?
Here’s your homework assignment this week.
Read Genesis 15:1-6.
Go outside and look up into the night sky.
And take the manmade ceiling off what God can do in your life! That is what faith is. It’s getting outside the pup tent, removing the eight-foot ceiling, looking up into the expanse of space, and believing the promises of God are more real than your circumstances!
Do a little star gazing this week!
