LIVING IN TWO WORLDS

Every once in a while I ask myself, “Am I sane?  Am I just imagining this awesome God who exploded into my life with light and hope?”  I feel like Lucy in C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe.  One day in an old home in the English countryside she slipped into a wardrobe while playing hide and seek and found herself in Narnia, a complete and separate world from our own.  Understandably Lucy had trouble convincing her sister and two brothers that Narnia existed – that is until several days later they too found themselves in Narnia.

J. R. R. Tolkien communicated the same sense of experiencing two distinct and separate worlds in his Lord of the Rings trilogy.  After Frodo was wounded with a Morgul knife, an elf named Glorfindel found him in the wilds.  Frodo’s fellow travelers saw Glorfindel as just an ordinary elf – elves are ordinary in Middle Earth you know – but Frodo saw him clothed with light.  Later while Frodo was recovering from his deadly wound in Rivendel he told Gandalf, “I thought that I saw a white robed figure that shone and did not grow dim.”  Gandalf explained, “Yes, you saw him for a moment as he is upon the other side… for those who have dwelt in the Blessed Realm live at once in both worlds.”

The Blessed Realm is to elves what heaven is to us.  So, am I saying that I have spent time in heaven?  No, and yes.  No, in the sense that I have not had an out-of-the-body experience in heaven.  Yes, in the sense that I have experienced heaven, and continue to experience it, while living in this world.  What is heaven?  Simply put, heaven is God’s home, it is where He dwells fully and completely, and it is where all is ordered according to His will.  In my awakening I was introduced to God, and to this Blessed Realm.  The more I experience Him, the closer I grow to Him, the more fully I live in that Blessed Realm – all this while still living as a flesh and blood human being.  I simultaneously live in two worlds.

AN AFFAIR OF THE HEART

            This awakening, I have discovered, is something that I share with scores of people that I have come to know as friends.  But others have very different view about what God is like, are ambivalent about knowing God, or are openly antagonistic towards God.  Why doesn’t everyone find this same life and light in God – it is there for the taking?  Jesus said that he was the way, the truth and the life.  He also said, “Come to me everyone who is weary”.  God has gone on record as saying that anyone who wants to may come to him.  Does the fault lie with God or with us?  If God wants all to come to him, why doesn’t he make them come – but is that actually possible?  When it comes to matters of the heart, and I would propose that knowing God is a matter of the heart, no one can be made to do anything.

            If this coming to God is a matter of the heart, then maybe I should approach the question of “Why did I find God?”, or for that matter, “Why does anyone find God?” from a different angle.  Let me do this with a little bit of personal history.  My wife’s family came to our home town when I was in the first grade.  I knew who she was, because her family attended our church, but I doubt that I spoke two words to her in ten years.  Then one Sunday in June, my brother told me, “You know Barb Campbell is going to camp with us next week.”  I had just started to notice Barb.  Scared, shy, and lacking in self-confidence somehow I worked up the courage to walk over to her after church and say, “Hi, John told me you are coming to camp with us next week.”  She smiled - she actually looked at me and smiled!  That next week in the lodge at camp as well as in the cafeteria Barb would sit with her girl friends, but there would inevitably be a space open next to her.  When I took it, she would inevitably look at me and smile.  I was a goner, head over heels in love.

            Barb’s sister Nancy is nice and also pretty, so why didn’t I fall in love with her, or with any of a dozen or more girls in my circle of friends in high school?  And, who fell in love with whom?  Did I fall in love with Barb, did she fall in love with me, or was it mutual?

            Spiritual awakenings remain a mystery to me, but I think they can be best understood in this light - a mutual falling in love.  God approaches us, we respond, and our hearts are engaged with his.  Yes, we are talking about a different kind of love than my teenage love affair with Barb, but it is just as real, and just as deep, if not deeper. 

THE AWAKENING

“I came that they might have life, and might have it abundantly.” (Jesus, John 10:10b NAS)

A love for science, or at least a love to experiment, came early.  My family can attest to the strange and often smelly concoctions that I brewed up in the basement of my childhood home or out back in the shed.  I almost burned our house down one day when I “proved” that a dust cloud of flour is explosive – I wouldn’t recommend you try this experiment unless you don’t mind singed eye brows.  And of course I had a chemistry set.  Back when I was a child they made real chemistry sets with real chemicals like sulfur and hydrochloric acid.  I hated following the directions, running “canned experiments”, it was more fun to just see what would happen if… and it still is!

We went to church as a family every Sunday.  Some of my earliest memories are of being dressed up by my mother in uncomfortable clothes that included a stiff collar complete with bow tie.  Why don’t little children have to wear starched shirts and bow ties anymore?  Actually church itself wasn’t that bad, because boring sermons were balanced by chicken barbeques, family camp out in the country, Christmas carols, and candle light services.

Then everything changed.  I had an awakening.  A guest speaker came to our church one Sunday night, and as he spoke it was as if the curtains were pulled back and a whole new dazzling world of light and color was revealed to me.  I realized with crystal clarity that God was real.  I realized that there was a heaven and a hell (and I was going either up to one or down to the other).  I realized that sin was a problem – my own sin in particular – and I needed to do something about it.  I needed to make a decision, and I needed to make it quick.  I was too shocked and scared to do anything that night, but the following week I went to a youth meeting down town with a group from our church.  There again I felt the tugging at my heart, an invitation to enter this whole new realm and to know God personally.  Again I realized that life was so much more than what we see and experience in this world.  There is hope for life beyond the grave, and more than hope, a certainty that we will live forever.  How could all this be possible?  But it wasn’t a time for analysis, it was a time for decision, so I said “yes”.  Best decision I ever made (except maybe marrying my wife Barb).  Joy flooded in, and a peace came into my life that I simply cannot describe.  I didn’t adopt a religion.  I didn’t stumble on a philosophy that suited me.  I met the living God, and He awakened me to life.

THEORETICALLY SPEAKING

Good data is a good place to start, but the practice of science is about more than gathering data.  As a scientist I am always asking myself – and those I work with – what is the data telling us?  Can we paint a mental picture of what we are studying that will help us in our ongoing work.  Scientific experimentation in every field of study is a work in progress, there is always more to learn.  With a good mental picture that fits the data we have in hand, a theory, we can go about our work more effectively.  We assemble data, formulate a theory, and then test the theory with more experimentation.  Theories are not reality, they are mental constructs that approximate reality based on the data we have in hand.  We use them as long as they fit the data, then modify them, or throw them out entirely and formulate a new theory that more accurately accounts for what we are learning.

Up to about 500 years ago people thought that the sun and the stars revolved around the earth.  At the time this was a good and useful theory – it served mankind well for thousands of years.  Then, in 1514 Copernicus put forth the heliocentric theory.  His revolutionary theory (excuse the pun) was that the sun was the center of the universe, not the earth.  The sun did not revolve around the earth, but the earth revolved around the sun.  New data that he collected about the movements of the planets and the stars simply did not fit existing theory, so he formulated a new theory.  Over the last 500 years the heliocentric theory has been refined and changed as new and better data became available.  It was discovered that the sun is not the center of the universe.  It is just one of millions of stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way, and there are millions of galaxies.  Just recently new data has proven that planets form solar systems around stars besides our sun.  Astronomers expected to find them.  This data fits our mental construct of what we think the universe looks like. We now have solid data proving that other solar systems do exist.  Astronomers, however, did not expect to find water – ice that is – on Mercury.  Sketchy data a few years back indicated that it might be there, but good data now proves that significant quantities of ice are packed in craters shaded from the sun’s heat.  Wow!  That scorched little planet so close to the sun has water – time to rethink our theories about the formation of the solar system.

I love the process of science.  I love gathering data, and I really love data that challenges our theories and forces us to think differently.  Most scientists feel the same way.  So, watch out, your pet theory that seems so iron clad today may be severely amended or even tossed out tomorrow.

THIS OLDE EARTH

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)

This, the first verse of the Bible, answers some questions for me, but leaves others unaddressed.  It states that the universe is not eternal, that it did have a beginning, and that that beginning occurred when God created it.  It implies that God existed before the universe came into being (how else could he create it?).  It also implies that He is not made out of the same “stuff” that the universe is made of.  God can be said to be transcendent, that is separate from and outside of this universe, just like my artist daughter-in-law is separate from and outside of her print art*.

This verse does not tell me, however, how he made the universe or how He made living things.  Let’s start with living things.  As a polymer chemist I do not feel qualified to speak in depth about the “how He made living things” question.  There is, however, mounting evidence from the fields of biology and geology that God used a process that occurred over some period of time.  Evolution used to be a four letter word for me, but why should it be?  Later in Genesis chapter one God commands the earth to bring forth plant life, and then to bring forth living creatures.  Interesting!  He commanded the earth itself to bring forth life.  He spoke life-giving power into nature.  Does it matter how long in days as I count them – or He counts them - that it took for this to be accomplished?  If I were God I would have taken my time at it, and I would have enjoyed the creating process.  Why call forth just a few animal species?  Variety is the spice of creation.  Why not make some really interesting ones like the platypus, the hammer head shark, the ant eater, the wood pecker, and thousands of other beautiful, strange and unique creatures?  I think of God as being happy and full of life – as having really enjoyed the whole process of creating life.

Genesis also does not tell us how or when God created the universe.  The “when” question can be determined with some certainty.  Astronomers have observed that the universe is expanding, and they have measured how fast it is expanding.  Calculations based on the speed with which galaxies are moving and the present size of the universe indicate that there was a big bang over ten billion years ago - when this expansion started.  We have some “atomic clocks” here on earth that can help us to calculate the age of certain specific rock formations.  This data then helps us estimate the age of our earth.  Uranium has a half life of about 4.5 billion years.  Deposits of uranium minerals in the earth’s crust decay in a predictable way, with half of the uranium decaying to form lead and other daughter elements each 4.5 billion years.  So, by measuring the relative amounts of uranium, lead, and other elements remaining in the deposits, we can calculate the age of the deposits.  Uranium ore deposits in South Africa have been determined to be 1.7 billion years old.  Atomic clocks don’t lie.  They are not affected by heat or their environment.  Assumptions do have to be made in doing this kind of dating.  We assume that what are taken to be decay elements like lead, have not moved into or out of the deposit, but the assumptions are reasonable, and the data is compelling.

We have nothing to fear from data – all data that good science provides.  It is what it is.  Sound data provides accurate information about our world.  If reliable dating of uranium deposits indicates that the earth is about five billion years old, then God made the earth five billion years ago.  I am comfortable with good data. 

*See my previous entries, “The Artist” and “More on the Artist”.

THE SCIENCE OF BISCUITS

“And God blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it;’” (Genesis 1:28a, NAS). 

Science has proven to be a very useful tool, enabling mankind to fulfill God’s commands to fill and subdue the earth.  Simply put, science uses a systematic method of gathering information to help us understand how God has made everything from atoms to galaxies.  Industry then capitalizes on the information that science provides to make new and better medicines, to genetically engineer seeds that produce more abundant crops, and to build faster computers.  But practically speaking, how does science work? What do scientists do?

Instead of describing what I do in the lab as a polymer chemist, it might be easier if I describe how the tool of science could be used in the kitchen.  Last week I made a batch of biscuits (yes, I enjoy cooking almost as much as chemistry).  Making good biscuits is easy.  Just use a pastry cutter to blend flour, baking powder, and a dash of salt with butter.  The blend should be light and crumbly, not heavy and pasty, or dry and dusty.  Then add milk all at once and quickly stir just enough to get a uniform mixture.  Spoon out dabs about the size of a walnut on a cookie sheet, and bake for 10 minutes in a pre-heated 425 F degree oven.  Mmm!  I like them best hot out of the oven with honey, and I don’t mind the sticky fingers. J

Now for the science.  Why does the recipe call for three teaspoons of baking powder, and what will happen if I use two or four teaspoons?  Easy enough, I just whip up a few batches with different amounts of baking powder and see what happens.  You guessed it, with less baking powder the biscuits do not rise as much, and with more they rise more.  But how much more?  I measure the exact size of my biscuits and make a mathematical correlation between the size (volume) of my biscuits and the amount of baking powder used.  I might end up with an equation like this: 

Volume of biscuits in cubic centimeters = (rise factor) x (teaspoons of baking powder)

Once I run several more experiments to make sure that I have correctly determined the value of the rise factor, I’ll begin to feel like I’m gaining an understanding of the science of biscuit making.  However, being the inquisitive scientist that I am, I will then go on to study how biscuit quality changes with the amount of butter, flour, milk, and salt used, as well as with baking time and temperature.  It is simply a matter of systematically changing each of my variables (cups of flour, oven temperature, baking time), and then observing/ measuring results (biscuit size, color, taste).

There is so much that we can learn when science done well, like how to make the perfect biscuit, but I have found that science can be un-safe for us scientists.  The practice of science tends to produce in us a peculiar arrogance.  If I study biscuit making in great detail, I will want to publish my results in a prestigious scientific culinary journal (please bear with just a bit of tongue-in-cheek here).  I will likely then be invited to speak about my work in symposiums on food chemistry.  Within a few years I will aspire becoming known as the world’s leading expert in the field of biscuit science.  Over time I may come to identify myself so strongly with the fine science of making biscuits that I will conveniently forget that good biscuits have been made by little known cooks for hundreds of years.  It is so easy as a scientist to lose sight of the fact that I did not create the biscuit, I merely study it.

Science also has limitations.  Though it can be used to systematically study and gain knowledge about everything from atoms to biscuits to galaxies, it has marginal value as a tool to help us gain knowledge about anything that cannot be directly observed, measured, and studied in a systematic way.   How can I use the tool of science to unfold the mystery of love, beauty, joy, or truth*?  Science is powerless to probe the spiritual realm, to prove or disprove the existence of spirits, gods, or God.  Science has made great strides understanding the workings of God’s creation, even how He might have gone about making it, but science cannot tell us why He created the universe.  More importantly science cannot tell us why we were created.

*Neuroscience is capable of monitoring the chemical and electrical changes in our brains that occur as we observe a beautiful sunset, read a love poem, or grapple with moral issues, but I would contend that beauty, love, and truth are more than the measured responses of our brains to these intangibles.

MORE ON THE ARTIST

                              God    -------------->     Universe

                                                                     Matter, time energy

                                                                     Life

  

 I find that the artist analogy is helpful in understanding God’s relationship to the universe and the world.  Artists design and create original pieces of art that are a unique expression of themselves, and yet the art pieces are separate from them.  The artist is not made of the same stuff as the art.

A second analogy that can help us understand God’s relationship to what He has created is that of the architect/ builder.  For over a year my son and his wife lived in a house that was designed and built by an architect who was his mentor and friend.  During this year the architect lived in a smaller house on the same property.  My daughter-in-law likes to cook, so many nights she would cook for three, and the architect would join them for dinner.  It was his house, designed and built by him, so by all rights he could have visited it any time he pleased – but of course he respected their rights in doing so. 

This architect/ builder relationship between God and all He has created can be represented by the drawing above.  God is transcendent, that is separate from, and made of different stuff than what He has created: the universe, matter, time, energy, and life.  And yet, God is also immanent.  The Architect/ Builder of all creation is near, and He is free to enter his creation as He sees fit.  However, being free to be present only when He pleases, and being made of different stuff than His creation, He cannot be studied by science.  His existence or non-existence cannot be proven by science.  God can, however be known.