A PRICELESS RECORD

            My last few blog entries beginning with An Awakening, speak of a very personal relationship with God.  I have found that God can be known, and it is a delight to know Him.  But is practicing the science of God confined to what I can learn by direct interaction with Him?  If others are practicing the science of God, then certainly I can learn from them, and I will be anxious to learn from them.  We are all getting to know the same God, and being the eternal, infinite God that He is, there is SO much to learn.

            As a scientist I do not work in a vacuum, alone and isolated in my lab.  This last week in a meeting with a few coworkers, someone made an observation about my experimental results that I had not thought of – it was a eureka moment.  In the last few days I have confirmed his observation, and it has led us to some new chemistry that is potentially very useful.  We work as a family, a team, a community of scientists, and that community is big.  There are hundreds of other chemists within our company that I interact with and learn from on a weekly basis, and there are thousands more in universities and other companies who also practice polymer chemistry.  I spend several hours each day learning from them by reading the scientific literature (articles, patents, and books), most of which is now available on the web.  And all of us are reading and building on the work of chemists who have practiced polymer chemistry in the past.  The scientific literature, current and historic, is a priceless record. 

            The science of chemistry as we know it has only been practiced for a few hundred years, but the science of God has been practiced for thousands of years.  As God revealed Himself to those who have come before us, they wrote down what they both heard and saw.  The literature of the science of God is compiled in the Bible.  It is a remarkable collection of works that include history, poetry, letters, and biographies.  More is being written about God every day, but the works contained in the Bible are unique in their authority.  God had something to say, and He made sure that it was said in a clear and complete form – for the sake of all of us who are practicing the science of God.  The Bible is a priceless record of the science of God.

HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT WE KNOW?

How do we know what we know?  I’ll try to avoid being too philosophical, but in order to know God, in order to practice the science of God, this is an important question, so here goes:  I know it is a clear day with sun and clouds as I look out the window of my office.  We have had a string of cloudy and cold late winter days in a row, so the clear weather is a refreshing change.  I’m sure none of you reading this statement doubt what I have said about the weather, but if you do it is easy to check a weather almanac (this observation was made in Strongsville, Ohio at 11:41 on Monday, February 25, 2013).  Easy enough when it comes to the weather, but how do we gain knowledge about God?  He, Himself, is of course the best source, but can we actually come to know the eternal God?  Yes.  I would contend that God is knowable, a personal being, much like us – the Bible states that we were made in His image,

I fell in love with my wife Barbara in July of 1964, but I really did not know her very well.  Now, more than forty years later I can say that I know her better than anyone else on this earth.  How did I gain that knowledge – by firsthand experience that came from constant observation, interaction, and conversation,  Through the birth and raising of four children, through all the trials and joys of life, through career changes, through financial ups and downs, through all that life brought our way over more than four decades together I have grown in my knowledge of Barb.  It is her person that it has taken a life time to come to know.  The color of her eyes and hair, her height and features can be known in a moment, but I didn't fall in love with them, I fell in love with her person, and it is the person of Barb that I have desired to know. 

The person of God can be known in much the same way.  I stated in an earlier entry entitled An Affair of the Heart that “Spiritual awakenings remain a mystery to me… God approaches us, we respond, and our hearts are engaged with his.”  It begins with an awareness that God exists, and His invitation that is extended to us to know Him.  He reveals Himself to us much like Barb over time revealed more of her inner person to me.  The knowledge of God begins with an awakening, and it grows as we pursue Him, and live our lives interactively with Him.  This is the science of God.  Books about God cannot give us this knowledge.  Practicing the science of God involves ongoing, up close, and personal interaction with Him.

THE SCIENCE OF GOD

            I have already stated that science is incapable of proving or disproving the existence of God,* so, it may appear that I am contradicting myself by writing an entry entitled, “The Science of God.”  Sorry – I just can’t resist, and I hope you will cut me a little slack with the title and read on.

            As I have stated, science is a tool for gaining knowledge.  The practice of science involves (1) gathering data in a systematic fashion, (2) formulating theories – mental constructs that fit the data, approximating reality to some degree, (3) designing and conducting more experiments to gather additional data, and (4) using this new data to perfect our theories or construct new theories.  Science is a powerful tool.  With it we have amassed enormous amounts of information about the universe, our earth, and life as we know it.  God, however, is not made of matter and energy as we know it.  He is transcendent, so science as we practice it – the natural sciences including astronomy, geology, biology, chemistry, and physics - are not capable of gathering data about God.  Simply put, He cannot be seen with a telescope or a microscope, He cannot be weighed or measured, and He certainly cannot be put into a test tube.

            But, if science is a tool for gathering information, then I do in a sense practice the science of God – and so do others.**  I have in fact made the science of God the most important field of study in my life.  No, I do not perform experiments on God.  It would be more correct to say that God performs experiments on me.  I stated in my previous entry, I live in two worlds.  I see God as truly as my eyes see this paper while I scribble out a draft of this blog entry.  As I seek a deeper knowledge of Him, He reveals Himself to me.  In practicing the science of God I do not gather data and formulate theories, I gain understanding about God as He reveals Himself to me.  My understanding about what He is like is constantly being refined.  He is what He is – calling Himself in the Old Testament “I am”.  I have not created a god to fit my needs or my expectations.  He is not what I want Him to be, and He is not what you want Him to be.  He is what He is, eternal and unchanging.  He can be known, and I am on a quest to know Him.  I am practicing the science of God.

*See my earlier entries entitled “The Artist”, “More on the Artist”, and “The Science of Biscuits”

**Karl Barth writes in his Evangelical Theology, “Theology is one among those human undertakings traditionally described as “sciences”.  Not only the natural sciences are sciences… The word “theology” seems to signify a special science, a very special science, whose task is to apprehend, understand, and speak of “God”.”

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.