O God, thou art terrible out of thy holy places. -Psalm 68:35
I glean most of my knowledge of science in waiting rooms. At a doctor's office last week I picked up a copy of the Smithsonian and tried to work my way through a description of post-Einstein physics, which I can summarize hazily in purely layman's terms. Like Charlie Brown, I can only see a chickie and a duckie. According to this article, Einstein's discovery that gravity bends light opened the door to the fact that gravity also bends space itself, and (this is very simplistic) "waves" of space are created by the gravitational influence of objects light years away, which we have the capacity to measure. I also read somewhere that space not only "bends," it is expanding. Let me say that again. Material objects are not just moving out from a central point in space; the universe, space itself, is expanding. My mind, which dwells in time and space, asks, though I try to prevent it, "into what?" Whoa.
In a National Geographic that I picked up in the barber shop I found an article about the opposite: inner or atomic space. This article reported that if the nucleus of an average atom were the size of a beach ball perched in New York City, the nearest electron would be in Philadelphia. That's a lot of empty space. What keeps my posterior from sinking into my chair is not matter at all; it is energy. This has something to do with E=MC squared. Again, whoa.
Now I believe these discoveries are manifestations of the work of God. I know the materialist will argue the opposite, and I do not have the skill for that debate. Creationist Ken Ham once pointed out that every time we push the majesty of God out to its limits in our minds, God ups the ante. That is certainly happening rapidly in our shifting understanding of the universe. As a Christian, I take the existence of such a God on faith (Hebrews 11:3), defining faith here not as mindless credulity, but as the power of truth that breaks through my sinful desire to have a meaningless universe so I can be God. Sorry that is pejorative to the materialist. But sin is a darkness that pervades everything. Faith is a gift that turns on the light.
I said my purpose here is not to enter into the creation debate. My purpose is to remind the Christian with just Whom he is in relationship. CS Lewis commented once that we should not be intimidated with mere immensity. I agree to a point, but sometimes contemplating God's immensity helps. I find it comforting, when I awaken early in the morning wondering if Social Security is about to mess up my Medicare D billing, to remember that the God who finds great joy in the Horsehead Nebula can most likely deliver me from my fear of bureaucracy. We give Him too little credit for His ability to carry out His preordained and loving purpose in our lives.
So far I have been speaking of what theologians call the economic nature of God--that which we know of Him based on nature and on revelation. But there is a deeper reality in God ( the "essential" nature), the reality that God only knows within Himself, and which we will begin to taste when death has purified us. We do not touch that reality well with our reason. We come closer to sensing His essence when we experience Love or Joy. There we sense an Immensity beyond comprehension.
I said earlier that my purpose is to remind Christians with Whom they are in relationship. For those of us who are believers, a reminder of the immensity and power of God is a comfort. But that is not all the story. That same God is as morally perfect as He is omnipotent. That means that flippancy and presumption have no place in our approach to Him. When, in His incarnation, He said "Repent and believe the gospel," that is what He meant. We are called upon to do both repeatedly. Repentance means to change one's mind, and is related to confession, which means to agree with God. It is the end of resistance and subterfuge, and is a great relief because it brings us into the stream of what God knows about us already. To believe the gospel means that everything necessary to our salvation and well being rests upon Christ and Christ alone.
Repentance and belief rely upon on each other. Repentance forces us to Christ, and the grace of Christ working through the gospel reveals the depravity that leads to repentance. Both are great and Immense works within us, comparable to death and resurrection. Repentance without the gospel produces melancholy and legalism; the gospel without deep repentance produces easy believism and a Jesus who is more like a cosmic Dr. Phil who exists to get us good parking places.
We never outgrow the cycle of repentance and belief. All our attempts to find other "lifes" beyond that cycle (deeper life, higher life, union life, the Spirit filled life, etc.) lead at least to disappointment and at most to idolatry. The all powerful God of Immensity uses repentance and belief to work Immense change in us. "For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."
