Hebrews writer said (4)
Sometimes non-believers say silly things that avoid the more obvious truth that faces us all. Of course they’re not alone—we believers know how to do that as well. We used to hear how culturally backward the ancients were (I don’t deny some were, especially since so many moderns are) and this was supposed to explain their belief in miracles or general providence. That’s why they spoke of something like floating axe-heads and virgins births—we were told. Poor things, they were so ignorant that they didn’t know that axe-heads sank or how babies were made. Had they really understood the laws of biology and physics they wouldn’t have spoken of miracles—so we were told. It seems, at least in Joseph’s case, that it was because he did understand the laws of biology that he thought of divorcing his espoused wife (see Matthew 1:18-19).
But it’s this ancient ignorance—we’re assured—that leads people like the Hebrew writer to say that the universe is carried and governed by the powerful will and wisdom of Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1:3). Paul is no smarter, we’re told, when he claims that it’s in Jesus Christ that the entire creation holds together (sunesteken in Colossians 1:17 is a perfect indicative and speaks of a permanent reality—all things remain standing together in him).
These people didn’t know about gravitation—how could they? Newton hadn’t yet been born or whacked with a falling apple. I suppose the difference between faith an unfaith has little to do with the very basic laws of life but the status we grant them. Non-believing scientists describe what they see (or theorise about what they don’t see) and leave it at that while believers go on and give the "laws" or what is seen a place under God.
Only a fool despises true science and only another kind of fool worships science. In light of Newton’s work "everybody knows" that what sustains our solar system or the entire universe is gravitation. But that requires matter, and what if you can’t find enough observable matter in the universe to keep it from flying apart? This question becomes even more urgent because you discover that even the hydrogen at the extremities of the observable universe is being manipulated by some gravitational pull and that the universal expansion is speeding up rather than slowing down. What do you do to explain why all things continue to hold together? You first you come up with a theoretical and undetectable particle (dark matter) and when that’s not enough you come up with something you call "dark energy". It doesn’t matter that dark matter can’t be detected and that there’s no known equipment that can detect it. It doesn’t matter that no one knows what "dark energy" is, though it accounts—we’re told—for 75% of what the universe is made of.
I don’t say there’s no such thing as dark matter or dark energy (though many scientists think they’re fictions required by needless theories). It doesn’t matter to believers that scientists some day might be able to show the physical realities that are involved in the coherence of the universe. If they did, the Hebrew writer (and Paul) would say, "My, my, now that’s really interesting." But it wouldn’t change their views on what sustains the "laws" of physics. They knew how a rain shower developed and they still said God sent the rain (see Jeremiah 5:24, 14:22 and Matthew 5:45).
It isn’t hard to show that the sun "rises" in the east because of the earth’s rotating. That’s the descriptive part of the story. But believers will agree with G.K Chesterton who said that the sun rises in the morning because God says, "Get up!"
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.