Monday Morning Music Ministry

8-29-22

Many physicists and indeed many average folk are agog over the first images from the James Webb Telescope. I personally have almost exhausted my supply of agogs, and I am not even sure what an agog is.

In fact, the more that the newest of humankind’s massive, far-flung telescopic cameras shows us… the more it does not show us. Quickly I explain: the pictures reveal more stars – indeed more galaxies and nebulae – than we knew existed. (“We,” meaning everyone from early humans Ug and Glug looking up at the night skies and scratching their heads, to egghead professors only months ago.)

But at the same time, scientists mix their astonishment and excited discoveries with questions. There are not only new pin-points on charts of the heavens, but anomalies, contradictions, challenges. More questions than answers? Maybe.

It is all galvanic, of course. I find it satisfying to see Americans revive a little bit of the amazement that spread across the land during those early space shots. What I do not see is what I am experiencing: the translation of these staggering mysteries – their scope, their extent, their significance – to increased confirmations of belief in God. Further proof, we might say.

The Creator God. In ancient tongues, among many names ascribed to God, Elohim.

The statistics and explanations, inadequate as they are, rekindle thoughts from the Ug-and-Glug stage of my own sentience.

• We have a new, seemingly tangible, awareness of how big the Universe is. But do we? What is beyond the farthest we can see? Where does it end? Can it end? What is on the “other side” of the end?
• We are told that the old estimate of the Universe having a sextillion planets might be a modest estimate (one sextillion is even larger than the latest inflation numbers). How, really, did the planets all form?
• We have measurements of the “farthest” galaxies – the newest discovery estimated at 13.5-billion light-years from earth. A light-year is the distance that light travels in one year; that is 186,000 miles per second or 5.88-trillion miles a year. If correct, that’s 13.5-billion x 5.88-trillion. Years. You do the arithmetic; my brain hurts. These are scientists’ numbers. How old is old?

You might see where I am sidling. It amuses me to hear scientists talk about the Big Bang (often omitting that is the Big Bang Theory) and I wonder why their brains don’t get cramps, as they invent and rely on elaborate denials of a Creator God. Certainly it is the case that the increasingly erudite explanations of the Big Bang increasingly resemble the first chapters of the Book of Genesis. Hmmm… The Webb’s snapshots incite in me, too, more questions. At random:

• If there was a “moment” of the Big Bang, Who or what caused it… and what was “there” previously? And for how long back in time?
• In every other aspect of life, something that has been created had a creator. Why does the scientific mafia think that life, itself, is the exception?
• Every one of the sextillion (give or take a skillion) planets in the perceived Universe is spherical (or generally so: oblate spheroids, given isostatic adjustments). Why? Friction? No, there nearly is no matter in empty space that would wear them down. “Gravity” is the agreed-upon culprit.

We have “theories” of Relativity and Evolution; and “laws” of Gravity… but I do not need the “what” of Gravity explained as much as the “why.” With virtual shrugs of shoulders, scientists call Gravity an “invisible force.” As a former Editor at Marvel Comics, I confess that this sounds more like the Silver Surfer than Albert Einstein.

Yes, Einstein postulated that Gravity pulls on light as well as mass. That’s the “meta” explanation; the “micro” evidence is the moon pulling on mighty oceans. Gravity pulls “downward,” essentially inward, which explains planets being spheres (but not why we have never observed an evolving “new” planet still in the shape of, say, SpongeBob SquarePants); but my brain hurts again. We still don’t know the How of all this. Or Why.

And that’s Okay.

The Big Bang Theory initially sounded silly to me; now it is discussed with gravity (sorry) by professors. The latest quest – to formulate a “Theory of Everything,” I kid you not – sounds sillier.

And yet the skeptics challenge us: “Because you can’t explain something you just say, ‘Oh, it’s God’.” (My friend Gary Adams has reminded me that Dr Frank Turek calls this the “God in the Gaps” argument.)

My response: Yes, pretty often. Now that we understand that, let’s move on.

My further response: “You folks, when you can’t explain something that generations of people have trusted, but challenges your ways of thinking… when your “accepted facts” of science are disproven, overturned, or superseded in the face of factors like architectural and anatomical discoveries… when things you dismissed as legends are revealed as actual history… you just say, ‘Oh, those are anything but God’.”

My final response: The Creator God, Elohim, has revealed Himself in uncountable ways. His fingerprints are on all of animate and inanimate creation. He has redeemed you through the Blood of His Son Jesus Christ, telling you that you are the most precious of His creations – including bright stars and colorful planets. With those photos from an outer-space telescope, He chooses to remind us of His sovereignty and majesty. I know these things because I see them; because He told us; and because I personally have been blessed by that Creator God. His Son, you see, is my best friend. And He reassured us: “If it were not so, I would have told you.”

We don’t need a “Theory of Everything” when the Bible already provides us the Answer to Everything.

I close with a quatrain I memorized as a kid, from the Rubaiyat, but that expresses my message here:

All the saints and sages who have discussed

Of the two worlds so learnedly are thrust

Like foolish prophets forth;

Their words to scorn are scattered; their mouths are stopped with dust.

It’s a big universe, after all. But there’s no place like Home.

+ + +

An old Gospel song with a spoken reference to God flinging the stars across Creation:

Video Click: When All God’s Singers Get Home

12-7-20

I watched a documentary on TV this morning. It was about Black Holes, and Worm Holes, and the Age of the Universe, and the Big Bang. I chuckled often, and I learned a lot. It was not, however, a comedy show; and despite what I learned I would probably fail the exam prepared by the three experts.

For an hour the experts on Zoom guessed as often as they asserted, and confessed to the ifs and what ifs. There were many shrugged shoulders, and a lot of confused giggles. So I giggled too. They spoke of “changed hypotheses,” even some of Einstein’s. Of course, black holes and the Big bang theory were not even in textbooks a century ago… and might not be, a century from now. These things, I learned.

What interested me, but did not surprise me, was that during an entire hour without commercials not one of the three scientists / experts / metaphysicians (whose domains are reputedly first things and origins) once mentioned God. Or Creation, Or the Bible. Not even as “one of those crazy beliefs,” or even “what people used to think.”

Such lovers of self – that is, reliant on their own wisdom – are the ultimate Deniers in this age when “denial” of any form is a virtual criminal offense. To ignore even a passing nod to the belief system of swaths of humanity over millennia is not an upward step toward enlightenment, but a descent toward baser ignorance. (By the way, this Big Bang idea sounds suspiciously like the first chapter of Genesis, sanitized of the Creator’s Name, doesn’t it?)

The natural questions were not asked, and I think never answered: What was there the moment before the Big Bang? If there is an End or an Outer Limit to the Universe… what is one foot beyond it? If there is creation, there ought to be a creator; so who or what made the Big Bang go bang?

If I don’t have metaphysical answers to these questions, they would claim that citing “God” is crutch of convenience.

OK. I plead guilty. Supporting my belief – my faith in such things – is the Word of God. I believe in Jesus as God Incarnate, and He stated His firm belief in Genesis and all such biblical accounts. Good enough for me; better than good, in fact.

And so forth. In such discussions as on TV, God is not a last resort of the ignorant. He is the source of knowledge and wisdom about First Things.

If I knew the answer to such matters as discussed – and way before my head starts to hurt – I would be God. He is; He knows; and He disposes.

In the meantime, if pinheads who chatter about Black Holes and Worm Holes and Big Bangs can accuse us People of the Book of being superstitious and ignorant seekers of fairy tales… I invite them, every time they say, “my best guess is…” or “current theories suggest…” or “scientists now believe…” to put on dunce caps and sit in the corner until the next round of guessing games.

As I said, I am extremely and honestly interested in scientific discussions and speculation, and even archaeological discoveries. It is, for instance, astonishing to see how many figures and cities and events in biblical history so recently dismissed as “legends” have been confirmed by artifacts and even entire buried cities!

Another “first thing” should be an attitude of humility when it comes to… well, when it comes to the things of God. We might get though life a little better if we trust Him in all ways and in all things, from everyday setbacks to election defeats, to choose two matters at random.

Even if doing so can make our heads hurt a little, we must remember that God does not require of us that we understand everything, but that we trust Him and obey everything.

And as Matthew Harrison Brady said, “I might not know about the ages of rocks, but I do know the Rock of Ages!”

+ + +
Double click the video to make full screen after your start it!

8-14-17

The Eclipse will come. And go. A magnificent coincidence of nature, it is virtually a mathematical impossibility that our earth, sun, and moon are of such sizes. The moon, occasionally in its orbit, can precisely blot out the sun, like two stacked quarters. Or that, between the sun and moon, the earth’s shadow occasionally covers, neatly and precisely, the entire moon, without even a crater rim peeking out.

Well, you know those facts, and many more, because of the Eclipse-mania that has filled the news lately. This excitement about science has itself eclipsed the concerns about possible nuclear war, government scandals, and protesters killing each other. For a moment, anyway.

I have noticed that, more and more, people marvel at scientific wonders AS scientific wonders; mathematical improbabilities; freaks of nature. Less and less do we hear average folk discern the Hand of God… or even His marvelous Fingerprints. So to speak.

That three large and ancient celestial objects can align so precisely is… chance?

Maybe so, maybe so. But skeptics would also have to believe (and they do) in other pseudo-scientific fairy tales like the Big Bang. I’ll stop there. Apart from the fact that the Big Bang Theory sounds suspiciously like a counterfeit Genesis Creation description, what – without God – was there the moment before the Big Bang? Who created matter, whether size of a proton or of a huge volume? Where does the universe end? – and what, then, is beyond it?

Secularists say that questions difficult to answer do not, in themselves, prove the existence of God. This is true. But neither does their ignorance prove the non-existence of God. Myself, I am more concerned with the Rock of Ages than the age of rocks. I know God exists because He lives in my heart; I have met the Savior.

To return to the Eclipse for a moment, I have a friend who read all the dust-up about one of the last Great Eclipses (they seem to come every 12 years ago or so, always advertised as the last of its kind we shall see for 320 years…). Anyway, she read all the warnings against looking directly at the sun; about the dangers to the eye; advice about making pinholes in cardboard, and what kind of smoked glass to look through; and so forth.

During that Eclipse, I was in California and I can still remember the sudden and very strange purplish semi-darkness that overtook, and then vanished, from San Diego. My friend in New Jersey, on the other hand, burned holes in her retina.

She read the advice about making pinholes in cardboard. She got the cardboard, she made the pinhole. Then (obviously missing the rest of the directions) she thought the pinhole was to use in order the look at the Eclipse. She held it next to her nose, squinted toward the sun in the sky. Brrr-zap.

I kid you not, as Jack Paar used to say.

“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” This is not a Bible verse, but was written by Alexander Pope, who also wrote “To err is human, to forgive divine,” which also is somewhat applicable here.

In ancient barbaric cultures, eclipses caused people to panic. Wise men and priests reacted in mad ways, even ordering child sacrifices. Today, we know more about science… and, contrary to the secularists, this has drawn us closer to God, not further from Him.

The Eclipse specifically reminds us that behind the darkness is light. That truth can be hidden, but only for a while. That, whether from nighttimes or eclipses, the sun is always there. Just like rain clouds – even in the worst of storms, the sun still shines, above those dark clouds.

Yes, I mean the storms of life, not only rainstorms or strange Eclipses. We poor creatures might panic or fret or fall prey to confusion, even burning holes in our eyes. But the sun still shines; God remains steady, immovable; and He is in control.

+ + +

Click: From the Rising Of the Sun

5-4-15

Let us toss a pinch of cosmic pixie dust this week to the Hubble Telescope, the latest toy – a term I use with deep, proper, appropriate reverence – that allows us to view the universe more clearly. To appreciate creation better. To renew our sense of awe. To understand God more fully?

Not really, no. The stunning images of the universe we have received for 25 years allow us to see God’s handiwork in ways that scientists throughout history could never dream, and dreamers could never explain. At best – which is very good – the images we are graced to receive from Hubble’s penetrating gaze remind us of a God who is all-powerful, bigger than our biggest thoughts, and audacious to a degree we cannot comprehend. But… we don’t automatically understand Him better. I “understand” Him less, in fact, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

In sixth grade, the father of my friend Eric Wells took a group of neighborhood kids to New York’s City’s Hayden Planetarium for Eric’s birthday. We beheld, there, that era’s best representation of the infinite heavens, the projection of an enhanced night sky on the planetarium’s interior dome. Under thousands and thousands of virtual stars and planets, I leaned over to Mr Wells and said, “It makes one feel rather insignificant, doesn’t it?” I later heard that the remark impressed him, but I was either swiping a Peanuts gag, or simulating one. (I was destined for a life in comics. More than a life in astrophysics. Believe me.)

These images do, however, make us feel insignificant. Even if we are on the “inside track,” knowing God, satisfied with the mystery of creation and God’s ways – that is, not having to know every detail of matters that are wholly God’s domain – and grateful to be part of His plan. Even then, as King’s kids and co-heirs with Christ, we are still awestruck by the majesty and mystery of Creation.

Are we Luddites, living in happy ignorance and distrustful of knowledge? Of course not. It is an exciting time in history, to look heavenward, as did Adam and Eve, or the Neanderthals Ug and Glug did, or as the impressionable wise men in Egypt and Greece and Phoenicia, or as did uncountable poets and philosophers and lovers, and ask “What is there? What more is there? Do we see what we think we see?” For the first time in history, humans nudge a little closer to seeing, almost feeling, the reality of unknown worlds.

Like the first Enlightenment thinkers, we appreciate science for opening paths to God. (This is contrary to what our schools teach about the Age of Reason, ostensibly when science “liberated” itself from superstitious religion.) Science should not make us greater skeptics: it should bring us closer to an appreciation of God’s greatness; better to behold His handiwork; to advance civilization by rational incorporation of spiritual inspirations. Newton saw things that way. As did Bach. Their main goals were to explain and glorify God by the scientific tools they employed.

Other questions, like How did the universe start, and When did it begin, almost seem like setting off stink bombs at a debutante’s ball. The questions are real… but ultimately more silly than profound. The “Big Bang,” only recently a rock-solid explanation of creation, is now undergoing a sort of scientific recall. Second thoughts. New facts. Matter and anti-matter, once the property of science-fiction writers, has now been appropriated by PhDs and professors. Good for them. Carbon-dating, for instance on the Shroud of Turin, is now being reassessed too.

I have always thought that the more detailed the explanations were of the Big Bang, the more they simply sounded like mumbo-jumbo restatements of the Book of Genesis anyway. All the saints and sages who have discussed of the universe’s origins inevitably are stymied. The universe started… when? And what was it the moment beforehand? Creation started as an atomic particle exploding? What surrounded it before the explosion; who caused the explosion? The universe is expanding? Into what? How far? What is beyond that? Who started all this? If “nobody,” then…

When your head stops hurting, you will affirm that unanswerable questions do not prove the existence of God by themselves, but abstract skepticism – ultimately, rebellion – surely does not disprove God’s existence. I’ll take Awe. I don’t often quote Matthew Harrison Brady, who inherited the wind, but I am persuaded to be more concerned with the Rock of Ages than the Ages of Rocks.

“Have you not known? have you not heard? has it not been told you from the beginning? have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is He that sits upon the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are as grasshoppers; Who stretches out the heavens as a curtain, and spreads them out as a tent to dwell in: Who brings the princes to nothing; He makes the judges of the earth as nothing. Yea, they shall not be planted; yea, they shall not be sown: yea, their stock shall not take root in the earth: and He shall also blow upon them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble. To whom then will you liken me, or shall I be equal? says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high, and behold Who has created these things, that brings out their host by number: He calls them all by names by the greatness of His might, for He is strong in power; not one is missing” (Isaiah 40: 21-26).

It pleased the Creator God to fill this mysterious void with billions of galaxies, colorful, ever-changing, intriguing. It pleased Him to create a species of beings in His image, and fill our world with wondrous animals and plants and mountains and seas. It pleased Him to embrace us with love, and provide a means of salvation so that, wherever and however, we will spend eternity with Him. And it pleases us that He ordained science, which confirms His greatness and omnipotence, more and more frequently. Thank you, Hubble. Happy birthday!

+ + +

Click: Adagio by Tomaso Albinoni