Seeing Creation

In recent days I’ve had occasion to do some photography of the night sky.  While visiting Michael Boone in Washington State I photographed the Milky Way from his driveway.  It had been a long time since I was able to see that many stars at one time.  A few days ago I saw the beautiful full moon rise as I was walking our dog and quickly ran home to get my camera and telephoto lens so that I could capture an image of it.  It was quite a sight sitting over the neighbor’s house.

Both opportunities remind me of something the Psalmist said long ago.  In Psalm 8 David declared, “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” (v. 3-4)  There can be no doubt that David felt what so many of us have when viewing the night sky–an incredible sense of smallness.  Had he known what we know today he might have felt even smaller.  There’s no way he could have known then that the moon was 238,900 miles above his Judean home.  Nor would he have have known that there are around 100,000 million stars in the Milky Way alone.  Some recent studies indicate that the total number of stars in the universe might exceed 300 sextillion (that’s 3 followed by 23 zeros).  Still, what David saw and knew was enough for him to feel humbled before the Creator and “the work of your fingers.”

David wondered how the One who put the moon and stars in their place could possibly be mindful of him or care for him.  As he expresses this wonder it is not that he is doubtful that God is mindful of him or lacks concern.  Quite the opposite!  David was very much aware of God’s concern for him; he just found it hard to believe as he gazed into the heavens.  He’s certainly not the only one to have had this problem.  I know that God loves me immensely but when I look up at the heavens at night, or across the Grand Canyon, or at the summit of Mount McKinley I find that knowledge all the more amazing.  I feel so small.  So insignificant.

In Psalm 147 it says God “determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name.” (v. 4)  That is unfathomable to me for it means God knows over 300 sextillion stars by name!  In the spirit of David, what blows my mind in light of this is that he knows my name too.  In John 10:3 Jesus talked about how the Good Shepherd “calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.”  The God who knows the stars by name also knows your name and mine.  Elsewhere Jesus added that he even knows the number of hairs upon our head. (Luke 12:7)  That’s pretty amazing, is it not?

I have no doubt that the moon and stars will continue to make me feel small and insignificant at times but they also serve as constant reminders that I am not insignificant at all.  The God who made them knows and loves me.  The God who made them knows and loves you too.  That knowledge is enough to drive a person to his or her knees.  It is at the same time enough to make one stand tall.

–Chuck

(I describe the top two images in the text.  I took the bottom image showing the Grand Canyon from Imperial Point several years ago.)

This past week there was a good bit of news coverage about Stephen Hawking’s new claim that “Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”  Hawking has apparently moved to the point where he sees no need to posit a Creator.

I certainly respect Hawking’s intelligence and contributions to science but when he makes such a claim I realize this is simply his opinion.  He can no more prove that God was not behind Creation any more than I, or anyone else, can prove that God was.  In the end, both conclusions are faith statements.  They are what we have come to believe based on our observations and experience.

Ironically, on the same day that news of Hawking’s statement broke I received in the mail a new book by William P. Brown called The Seven Pillars of Creation: The Bible, Science, and the Ecology of Wonder.   In this book Brown seeks to show how theology and science are not mutually exclusive and that both benefit from the other.  He recognizes that both disciplines “represent independent fields of inquiry” but that they also have “common points of interest.”  One common point of interest is wonder.

In the introduction to the book Brown writes: “Is science really hell-bent on eroding humanity’s nobility and eliminating all sense of mystery?  Not the science I know.  Is faith simply a lazy excuse to wallow in human pretension?  Not the faith I know.  What if invoking God was a way of acknowledging the remarkable intelligibility of creation?  What if science fostered a ‘radical openness to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be.’  The faith I know does not keep believers on a leash, preventing them from extending their knowledge of the world.  The science I know is not about eliminating mystery.  To the contrary, the experience of mystery ‘stands at the cradle of true art and true science,’ as Albert Einstein famously intoned.  ‘Whoever does not know it can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead.’”

I realize that many Christians today see science as the enemy but I concur with Brown that we need both theology and science.  I believe that he is on target when he says, “The God in whom ‘we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:28) has all to do with the world in which we do indeed live and move and have our being.  The world subsists in God even as God remains present in the world.  It is, admittedly, a mystery.  But through science we become more literate in the mysteries of creation and, in turn, more trustworthy ‘stewards’ of those mysteries.”

Even though I disagree with the conclusion Stephen Hawking has come to, I’m glad that it has gotten people thinking once again about the relationship between science and religion.  In my humble opinion, when it comes to “seeing Creation” fully it will take both.

–Chuck

( I took the image of Mount McKinley and Wonder Lake shown above at Denali National Park in early September a number of years ago.)