Majesty

He shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God… and he shall be the one of peace. (Micah 5.4-5)

Apocalypse Now

So the Mayan apocalypse of 12/21/12 has gone the way of all end-of-the-world predictions. The planet is still spinning. We’re still alive and kicking. It’s business as usual. For most of us, it’s no surprise. We knew not to put any credence into this latest far-fetched scenario. And we know, sooner or later, a new one will surface. Someone will forecast yet another space-time anomaly that portends global doom. We’ll chuckle at that, too, and when it turns out to be a bust, we’ll chuckle at the next one and the one after that.

Although we scoff at doomsday predictions, our laughter reveals something we should seriously consider. Poking fun at apocalyptic notions exorcises our anxieties about them. Something inside us—something we can’t quite reach and disarm—insists the whole thing could come crashing down around us at any moment. (It only took one meteor to wipe out the dinosaurs.) And somewhat perversely, I think we find a degree of comfort in the possibility that All Of This might suddenly end with a big bang. Keeping the planet alive and peaceful is hard work. The constant toil and conflicts of everyday life wear us out. And I suspect a few of us may have been disappointed that 12/21 came and went uneventfully. Apocalypse now is the weary soul’s way out.

Prophetic Vision

In Advent’s steady ascent to the manger, a very specific sort of weariness sets in. We can’t sing hopeful hymns and recite promises of salvation without registering how greatly we need hope and saving. Our world is in a sorry state that trickles down into our everyday lives. With so much of what affects us beyond our control—nearly all of it headed the wrong way—it’s no wonder that we greet apocalyptic panic with cordial ambivalence. But the prophets constantly remind us the antidote for weariness isn’t looking for a cosmic cataclysm that will sweep away all of our troubles. We combat weariness by placing our trust in God’s creative power to make something new. As the light of Christmas dawn breaks through Advent’s night, Scripture beckons us to embrace prophetic vision that looks beyond human deficiencies to see a God of limitless possibilities. War and violence are precursors to peace. Injustice and hatred set the stage for mercy and love. Despair delivers hope. Sorrow gives way to joy. Christ’s birth heralds the birth of all that is good and right in us. Lest weariness overtake us, the Nativity enables us to know that nothing is impossible for God.

This God of infinite possibilities can only be found in our darkness and chaos. It is from there that God speaks and works wonders. It is in the despair of night that prophetic vision sharpens its focus and sees what God is actually doing. Sunday’s prophetic text (Micah 5.2-5) calls to us from a world shrouded in hopelessness, discord, and looming defeat. Assyrian invaders have trampled the northern half of the Jewish kingdom. Pagan cults have infiltrated the nation’s faith life and the erosion of belief is evidenced in the corruption of civic and religious leaders. Apocalyptic doom is on the up-rise. But Micah sees light breaking through the chaos and darkness. “This is not the end,” he declares. “It’s the beginning.” He compares this season of violence and injustice to childbirth, urging the people to push ahead. There is no time for weariness. A Savior is coming. “He shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth, and he shall be the one of peace,” he promises. (Micah 5.4-5) A New Order will rise out of the nation’s wearying confusion, oppression, and self-destructiveness.

The Newborn King

In the coming days, we will sing, “Glory to the newborn King!” And in that song we should exercise prophetic vision that sees Christ for all that Christ is. The lowliness of Jesus’s birth is wreathed in majesty—not of the pompous, ceremonial kind, but of certain power and authority that makes all things possible. Our Savior, Who chose to live among us as one of us, is the One of Peace. God comes to us not as a tyrant placing undue demands on us, but as a gentle Shepherd, Who watches over us and feeds us. God reaches us in our darkness and chaos, because that’s where God’s infinite possibilities reside.

May this Christmas overflow with prophetic insight that illuminates the majestic hope, joy, love, and peace that is born to us and lives in us. May we exchange our weariness with the world for the invigorating glory of our newborn King.

God’s infinite possibilities reside in our darkness and chaos.

Postscript: “Come Darkness, Come Light”

A couple of years ago, I put together a little video to Mary Chapin Carpenter’s lovely ballad, “Come Darkness, Come Light.” I’ve posted it before. But I’m reprising it as my Christmas prayer for all of us. Have a joyous celebration!

In Flux

The earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. (Genesis 1.2)

Stagecraft

No other Bible story matches Genesis’s first creation narrative for sheer theatricality. The curtains part on what appears to be a barren stage cloaked in impenetrable, silent night. As our eyes adjust, we detect something is there, yet we’re not quite sure what it is. We sit in the darkness for what seems like an eternity—actually, for what is an eternity—staring into the blackness, feeling the gravitational pull of a shapeless void at center stage.

Going in, we know that this is a one-Person performance piece. We’ve read the reviews, seen pictures based on the drama, and many of us can quote much of the script from memory. So suspense is high as we await God’s spectacular entrance on the scene. The theater buffs among us are pitched with excitement, speculating what sort of stagecraft will accompany God’s arrival. Will there be a blinding bolt of light at God’s command, after which the Creator comes into full view? Will a tremulous rumble swell beneath our feet, followed by the Maker’s revealed presence? Will God’s voice roar out of the night, setting off a rapid chain of events that summons everything that is into being?

In what will become God’s chief characteristic, this drama opens by subverting every expectation. Before the Creator arrives, a wind sweeps over the stage. We hear the ripple and slap of water rising and curling into waves. Still unable to see, we perceive the stage is engulfed in an endless sea. It’s the pregnant medium out of which the entirety of Creation will rise in obedience to God’s voice. Then we hear the Creator call for light. The inky vacuum splits in two and once our eyes adjust to the bright blaze of day, we surmise that we’re watching the dawn of time. Thereafter, the drama unfolds, as God aptly and adroitly assumes an off-stage role via the narrative device ancient dramatists called deus ex machina: the introduction of divine, supernatural power to shape and propel our story.

Movement

Regardless how we view Genesis’s creation accounts—as myth, metaphor, miracle, or all of the above—we should own them as the first act in our dramas, not only on the impersonal, epic scale of time and space, but also as the origin of our highly personal, individualized, and intimate relationships with God. As such, we’re compelled to note how God initiates the sacred communion we share. Before God speaks, appears, or commences creation, God moves. God exhales divine breath across the empty waters, brushing their surface with movement. From there on, God is constantly in flux—walking with us in mutual fellowship, seeking us out of our shame and disarray, going before us to light our way, meeting us at our point of need, and rising above us to lead us to higher summits of existence. Movement is how God maintains our equilibrium and that of the world we inhabit. As individuals and communities, we are in constant flux. The human condition is in flux. All of Nature is in flux. And God is in flux.

We often ask God to move on our behalf, as though God were a sedentary monarch who must be pried from his/her throne. Yet that image has no reality in Scripture. Psalm 46.1-3 tells us, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.” While we move through lives of perpetual change and upheaval, God is very present, moving with us. It is in God’s nature to keep moving; that’s the first thing we discover about God and, alas, it’s often the first thing we forget. Thus, when we’re tossed about, when the ground beneath us gives way, when life’s seas threaten to swallow us alive, we have no cause to fear. God is moving in the midst of our uncertainty and terror, because God moves with us. We remain in flux together.

An Altar in the World

Barbara Brown Taylor, one of America’s most highly esteemed preachers, speaks of making “an altar in the world,” i.e., heightening our sensitivity to God’s movement around us. Where do we see God move? The big answer, of course, is “everywhere.” But I don’t think that gets us very close to appreciating the extent of God’s movement. Sure, God moves in Nature—in seasonal transitions, in thunderheads gathering on the horizon, in the majestic eagle soaring overhead and the annoying housefly that lights on our table. Yet human ego and self-sufficiency habitually weaken our ability to see and feel God’s movement in others and ourselves.

God moves in the friendly smiles of strangers, in the surprising embraces of people we presume to hold us in low regard, in the sorrow that washes over us when witnessing another's suffering, in mundane touches and voices and exchanged glances that fill our days. God arrives on the scene in flux. God shapes Nature, our world, and us to be in flux. “God is not far from each one of us,” Paul declares to the Athenians, quoting one of their own poets to remind them, “For ‘In God we live and move and have our being.’” (Acts 17.27-28) We live and move in God because God lives and moves in, around, and through us. Next time, just before asking God to move for us, perhaps we should pause long enough to see God is already, constantly moving wherever we look.

God arrives on the scene in flux and remains in constant movement wherever we look.

There All the Time

Today our thoughts turn to Psalm 139.15:

My frame was not hidden from You, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Not only does God see us as we are. God’s been there all the time, watching as the intricate threads that comprise our beings weave themselves into all that we are. The spirit that God breathes into us takes on a life of its own and God witnesses every change we undergo in the process of becoming our true selves. Thus, our creation is a state of constant making, shaping and reshaping, surrendering our fears and doubts to the loving touch of our Maker’s all-knowing hand. Here there are no secrets, nothing to hide. Here all is safe and honest and pure, because our faithful Creator is ever with us, watching as we grow into what God desires us to be.

Revolutionary Inclusion

We end our contemplation of Psalm 139.14 with a final thought.

I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are Your works; that I know very well.

It’s true. You and I are fearfully, wonderfully made. We are distinctively awesome, handcrafted reflections of a God Whose infinite reasons and creativity surpass all knowledge. Those we love and those who care for us are also fearfully, wonderfully made. But it’s no less true that people we struggle to love and people who care nothing for us—even those who hate us—are fearfully, wonderfully made. And we honor our Maker when we see God at work in them. By faith, we trust what God is doing in them, and we take constant care never to diminish God’s ability to change hearts and minds. This is why Jesus teaches us to love our enemies and pray for those who mistreat us. Acceptance of our making revolutionizes how we see everyone around us. We love our neighbors and enemies with the same tenacity with which we hope to be loved because they too are fearfully, wonderfully made.

Wonder Words

We continue to sit with Psalm 139.14:

I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are Your works.

“I’m wonderfully made,” the psalmist rejoices, using a word that singularizes him from everyone else. And we join him in our confidence and marvel that we are all distinctive creations. God shapes and guides each of us to live out God’s will in particular ways, to serve God and others as only we can. Thus we exult in our differences, rather than disparage them or doubt their worthiness. “Wonderful are Your works,” the psalmist declares, employing a second “wonder” word that denotes our inability to grasp the vastness of God’s creative power—as well as our reluctance to believe God’s ways and thoughts surpass our own. (“Such knowledge is too wonderful me; it is so high that I cannot attain it,” the poet admits in verse 6.) So we come to God without pretense, just as we are, willing to abstain from conformity to manmade patterns and expectations, knowing full well that God transcends pattern-based creation. Unyielding trust in our Maker instills two core truths in our hearts: not one of us is ever alone, and no two of us is ever alike.

Awestruck

I am fearfully and wonderfully made. (Psalm 139.14)

The psalmist ponders the care and thought God invested in creating him and he’s awestruck. “I am fearfully made!” he sings. The utter genius of his physiology and all of its functions flabbergast him. But it’s more than that. It’s how his body has been shaped to house the mind and spirit God placed in him. We are God’s finest creation—God’s ultimate masterpiece. And each of us is all of a piece. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?” Paul asks in 1 Corinthians 6.19. We must know that. And we must respect the truth of our making, accepting who we are and what we’ve been given. We are fearfully—perfectly—made so that we can witness our awesome God’s perfection in the world. We are made to love, to bless, to honor, to serve God and our neighbors. We are not broken, incomplete, or misshapen in any way. We are mirrors of our Maker: awesome, perfect, miraculous, and complete. Everything about us is fearfully made.

Cause for Praise

We’ll spend most of this week sitting with one verse, Psalm 139.14:

I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are Your works.

Our making is cause for praise. The intricate pride of detail with which God has shaped us is a wonder to behold. God’s work in each of us is specific to us. And that is cause for praise. While we share the same humanity, each of us is uniquely human. That is cause for praise. We have no reason to be ashamed of who we are, what we feel, or the path each of us follows. What makes us different is why we are precious and indispensible to God. God crafts each of us to reflect God in a certain ways as only we can. Each of us has meaning. Each of us has a place in God’s world. Each of us serves a purpose that no one else can fill. This is a truth we cannot deny. And we praise God for such love and care to afford us the privilege of a life unlike any other. 

We don't lament or reject our uniqueness—including the struggles that derive from honoring and protecting it. Our making is cause for praise.

Through and Through

Today’s meditation comes from Psalm 139.13:

For it was You Who formed my inward parts; You knit me together in my mother’s womb.

We are made in God’s image and likeness—crafted to be like our Maker through and through. Our godliness and beauty exists within and without, as God not only shapes our physical form, but our inward parts as well: the inner beings where our gifts and longings and hopes reside. God knits us together, so that each of us becomes an authentic reflection of the Creator. There is love in us. There is passion, too, along with the overpowering need to be who we are—whom God intends us to be. To deny or attempt to reshape what God placed in us during the knitting process is to question God’s sovereign will and wisdom. We honor God by accepting who we are. And only God and we know who that is.

Regression Lesson

When Jesus saw this, He was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to Me; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.” (Mark 10.14)

Alive and Aware

Alison Gopnik is an Oxford-trained psychologist, philosopher, and self-avowed materialist—meaning she subscribes to “the theory that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena” (American Heritage Dictionary). Although we risk over-simplifying both her psychological research and philosophy of life, it’s not inaccurate to say Dr. Gopnik views the more ephemeral aspects of faith—its transcendence, the sense of God’s presence in our lives, the need to reconcile one’s being with divine will, and so on—with a healthy dose of skepticism. Yet her findings nonetheless open to us a profoundly moving window that can illuminate how we approach faith.

Dr. Gopnik’s primary field of study focuses on child learning and development. And what she’s discovered is riveting. Immediately upon entering the world, infants and youngsters exist in a perpetual state of newness and wonder. Every moment is like “first love in Paris,” she says. “Every step is sky-diving; every game of peek-a-boo is like discovering Einstein’s theory.” Brain scans of babies and toddlers reveal constant incandescence, as their neurons blaze with curiosity and eagerness to apprehend the world around them. In contrast, adult scans evidence long stretches during which thought and perception register nothing new. As we age, it appears we increasingly lapse into autopilot, leading Dr. Gopnik to suggest grown-ups spend large portions of their waking lives in a state of relative unconsciousness. It turns out our assumption that little ones are oblivious to life’s joys and challenges couldn’t be more wrong. Our children are supremely alive and aware.

Such as These

In Mark 10, people bring their children to Jesus, asking Him to bless them. The disciples reproach them, just as we would expect, since youngsters in ancient times are discounted as society’s least. They have nothing to contribute—no wisdom or experience, no means of productivity, and no way to help ensure a family’s stability. Indeed, they’re seen as liabilities. They may be loved. They may not. Either way, they're not worth much to anyone until they reach adolescence. And in the hardscrabble daily existence of first-century Palestine, survival is hardly a given. So while we bristle at the disciples’ dismissal, they neither mean no harm nor are they out of line. If anything, they’re showing Jesus respect as an eminent Rabbi. Which is why He surprises them by welcoming the very young.

And we should be highly cognizant of what’s going here; because there’s more to it than the “Jesus-loves-the-little-children-of-the-world” photo op that many paint it to be. This is not a campaign stop, with Jesus kissing babies and patting tykes on the head. It’s not a polite gesture meant to flatter their parents. Jesus turns the situation into a teaching moment to say something vital about us. Read His response carefully: “Let the little children come to Me; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.” (v14) The kingdom of God belongs to childlike believers. Jesus is so emphatic about the required state of mind of “such as these” that He spells it out in the next verse: “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” Now we can settle for the broad strokes of His message to us, saying, “Yeah, yeah, we get it: we should be humble, innocent, trusting, etc.” But Dr. Gopnik might encourage us to reconsider. In light of her research, when Jesus instructs us to approach faith in a childlike fashion, He’s telling us to become alive to everything around us—to remove the scales from our eyes, unstop our ears, unblock our emotions, and enter God’s kingdom as if we’re discovering the world God has given us for the first time. In essence, Jesus turns a socially unpleasant situation into a regression lesson.

Natives of God’s Kingdom

The power of newness is not news. It resounds throughout Scripture, starting with the Creation and continuing throughout Jesus and the Apostles’ linkage of faith with re-Creation. Numerous times we hear God speak through psalmists and prophets, saying, “I’m doing something new!” Jesus defines a faith-led life as new birth. In 2 Corinthians 5.17 we find Paul’s famous proclamation, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” And since these words are spoken to us, we’re apt to apply them only to us. But I think we miss a huge part of the message by not expanding its principle to the world at large. Re-Creation invites us to respond anew to the world and people around us—to allow the film of old ideas and perceptions to dissolve so that we may reenter our lives with fresh insights and curiosities. Foregone conclusions are gone. Prejudices and presumptions are preempted. Jaded attitudes and reactions lose their luster.

We are, first and foremost, natives of God’s kingdom, born with a glorious aptitude for grace that enables us to wonder at all we encounter, never pausing to get hung up about where it comes from. For children, beauty is beautiful. Joy is joyous. Meanness is mean. Sadness is sad. They don’t linger to attribute their wonder to others’ largesse or cruelty. They don’t shape their world to meet expectations. And they most certainly don’t take the burden of its hardships upon themselves. That’s why children are so extraordinarily resilient. Their incandescence happens within, as they light up by viewing every experience as something altogether new. Dr. Gopnik says while we work our way through life, children create their lives with play and openness to what they’re given. The kingdom of God belongs to such as these, Jesus says. Regressing is an act of faith that releases new, re-creative faith.

As children of God’s kingdom, we view the world through wide-eyed wonder.


Podcast link: http://straightfriendly.podbean.com/2012/04/27/regression-lesson/. 

A God Who Believes

God is faithful; by God you were called into the fellowship of God’s Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. (1 Corinthians 1.9)

A Deep Breath

Movies bring out my cynical side. I take a jaundiced view of how 99/100 of them boil human emotion down to cheap glue that holds their slapdash stories together. So a morning like this one, following Hollywood’s “biggest night,” saddles me with a cynicism hangover. (Watching a coddled class congratulate itself and act like regular folk can be intoxicating—toxic being the operative word.) Like millions, I mist up when winners acknowledge parents, mentors, and colleagues who believed in them. But the cynic perched on my shoulder is also quick to remind me these are the same people who manufacture mist for a living. They’re the ones behind the violins that saw away while the coach tells the underdog to get in the game and the understudy to step into the spotlight—the ones who exploit our insecurities by stacking the odds against the hero and then raising someone who assures her/him, “I believe in you. You can do it!”

From our earliest endeavors until our dying day, we crave belief in our potential and abilities. How many times do we turn to those we trust and ask, “Do really think I can do this?” How often do we pray someone will come along to bolster our self-confidence? How quick are we to tell ourselves, “That only happens in the movies.” So when I opened today’s readings, 1 Corinthians 1.9 kicked me in the head. God is faithful, it said. God called you into the fellowship of Christ. I took a deep breath. Could it really mean what I think it means? Does God have faith in me? Can I say with confidence that my Creator honestly, truly, wholeheartedly believes in me? I pulled up the Greek translation, half-expecting to learn my hunch was off. Guess what? That’s exactly what it means.

In Black and White

The word Paul uses to describe how God regards us (pistós) is one we’d normally use for how we view God. “Faithful” is a broad translation to emit a number of nuances—loyalty, trustworthiness, constancy, etc.—that grow out of unshakable belief. The term’s etymology is rooted in the Greek word for “persuasion,” meaning God sees something in us that convinces God we’re worth believing in. Processing this idea requires us to stretch a bit, as our relationship with God is preponderantly focused on our belief. We’re so easily consumed by faith’s demands that we stay loyal, trusting, and true, of being fully persuaded God is worth believing in, that it never occurs to us: God believes in me. But we have it in black and white: God not only can and will, God does believe in us. And lest our cynical side press us to dismiss Paul’s statement as a linguistic anomaly, we see pistós repeatedly attributed to God in the apostles’ writings.

Without the slightest disruption to the writers’ thought, we can substitute “believes in you” for “faithful” in text after text. First Corinthians 10.13: “God believes in you, and will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing God will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” First Thessalonians 5.24: “The One Who calls you believes in you.” Second Timothy 2.13: “[Even] if we are faithless, Christ believes in us.” Hebrews 2.17: Jesus “had to become like His brothers and sisters in every respect, so that He might be a merciful and believing high priest in the service of God.” First Peter 4.19: “Let those suffering in accordance with God’s will entrust themselves to a believing Creator, while continuing to do good.” By now, you get the idea. But I beg your indulgence to do one more, since it’s a personal favorite: “If we confess our sins, God Who is just and believes in us will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1.9)

Seeing God’s belief in us plastered across the New Testament in bold letters, how is it we’ve turned faith into a one-sided love affair, where we do all the believing and God only gets to reward our loyalty and trust? Reducing God to a Being Who’s eternally grateful for our belief turns faith into a farce about our arrogance and God’s insecurities. Faith in a God Who believes in us dignifies the relationship. It intensifies our awareness of how loyal, trusting, and constant our God is.

Self-Doubt Contradicts God’s Belief

Faith in a God Who believes changes everything. It assures that God comes to us and wants us to come to God. Our mutual belief in one another cements our bond. It extinguishes any doubts that God remains faithful—that God wants access to our lives, that God is always there, looking beyond our failures, seeing what we can’t, or refuse to, see in us, placing confidence in us that we can’t muster on our own. And when we ponder this idea, it makes a whole lot of sense. Why would a God Who creates and loves us as we are not believe in us? To doubt us would require God to question God’s own judgment and handiwork. And who wants to believe in a god who’s unsure of his/her wisdom, power, and abilities? Thus, for our God to be all we say God is, we must accept and rejoice in the fact that God believes in us. What’s more, if we are to trust God’s judgment and power fully, we must believe in us, too, because self-doubt contradicts God’s belief. (Take a moment and let that sink in.)

One of the most magnificent aspects of Lent’s wilderness comes to fore in the enormous room it provides to break away from narrow perspectives of God and self. In the desert we find solitude to commune with faith’s realities, free from inner doubts and silly fears spawned by religious dogma and coercion. God’s love supersedes pity for our flawed condition. It’s driven by the persuasion we’re worth believing in—that our making speaks for itself and needs no alteration to merit God’s attention or acceptance. The desert puts much-needed space between us and those who are unconvinced we’re worth believing in. We know better—and we know God knows better. Because God believes in us, Paul says, God calls us into fellowship with Christ. When we enter Lent’s desert with our faith secure in a God Who believes in us, that’s what happens: we find fellowship with Christ.

Faith in a God Who doesn’t believe in us makes no sense.

Podcast link: http://straightfriendly.podbean.com/2012/02/27/a-god-who-believes/.

Postscript: Question 5

How does faith in a God Who believes in us change what we believe?

Architect and Engineer

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and without Him not one thing came into being. (John 1.1-3)

Dead Horse

“Curiosity,” Stephen Hawking's new TV series, would appear ready-made for believers who regard faith and science as two halves of a greater whole. The same can be said of devout atheists, whose faith is science. Odds favor both groups comprising the bulk of the audience for its first episode, “Did God Create the Universe?”—with the remnant split between casually interested, non-religious viewers and Biblical literalists tuning in to be outraged by Hawking's stridently anti-Creationist stance. (Why Big Bang and Darwinian opponents flock where their beliefs are ridiculed is a mystery worthy of its own series.) In his latest book, The Grand Design—which Creationists pummeled soundly—Hawking makes no bones about dismissing belief in God as a medieval superstition. Citing immutable natural laws like gravity and inertia, he concludes there’s no need for a Creator. Ergo, the universe is a cosmic machine naturally endowed with self-perpetuating forces that explain its origins and existence.

Hawking, who naïvely supposes the faith-science relationship hasn’t advanced since Galileo’s discovery of Earth’s orbit brought down the Vatican’s wrath, flogs a dead horse. Parlaying the universe’s origins into a pretense for presuming God isn’t real, he ignores a premise enlightened believers of all creeds intuitively grasp: God and Nature, science’s Big Bang and Scripture’s Dawn of Time, Genesis and Darwin are “yes/and,” not “either/or,” propositions. An enlightened mind can’t dispute Hawking's opinion it’s medieval to reject scientific evidence that the corrects Creation narratives’ factual inaccuracies. Yet putting all one’s eggs in the science basket to disprove faith (which, by definition, can’t be empirically proved), is no less literal and, hence, every bit as medieval.

It’s scientifically reckless of Hawking to negate God’s existence as a self-evident corollary of natural law without first investigating the possibility invisible faith and apparent fact can, and do, coexist. While he needles his moribund is-God-real question, the postmodern world—believers and non-believers alike—wrestles with a much bigger, far more relevant mystery: What is God’s role in our world and lives? For regardless if one perceives God is real, the global population’s overwhelming faith in divine power indubitably plays a supremely significant role in daily life. Simply contemplating God as a phenomenon of faith—an unquantifiable Force of Nature unto Itself—puts just-the-facts-ma’am types like Hawking out of their depth. Yet what is curiosity if not jumping in over one’s head to see what’s there? The most curious aspect of “Curiosity” is Hawking's obvious discomfort with it.

Not One Thing

In a recent Walking in the Shadows post (“Is That Hubris or What?”), Sherry Peyton compares Bible literalists and atheists and finds, “Both agree, that both evolution and God cannot be [compatibly] true. Both, in utter arrogance, choose one side or the other because they, in their superior believing minds, believe that their constructs of God are unquestionably right.” Her frank appraisal leads to a sage reminder that balancing both sides requires humility to confess we can’t possibly nail down answers to all the questions. Conclusive proof of the universe and humanity’s origins ultimately would dispense with any need for faith or science. Believers who mistake Scriptural truth for empirical fact make trusting God’s Word pointless. If it’s all there in black-and-white, why is faith such a big deal? One doesn’t need faith to read newspapers and textbooks; they record objectively verifiable facts. But the Bible purposefully provokes questions and triggers doubts to engender faith; it’s packed with truth we can’t understand without accepting its invitation to believe.

In a similar way, science subscribes to data and observation as a means of constructing theories that provide logical insights into what we can’t comprehend. To borrow from “Curiosity”, while science can define an eclipse’s mechanics, it can’t explain why one occurs because no one knows why or how orbital gravity and inertia exist. That’s my gripe with Hawking's hubris to propose our capacity to quantify and observe Nature’s mechanics obviates the need for a Creator. Knowing with a reliable degree of certainty that immutable natural forces generated our vast universe, planet, and its astonishing diversity of life forms begs the same question the Creation narratives address. All Hawking does is transpose the question from “Where did we come from?” to “Where did the forces of Nature that got us here come from?” He implies they preexist the cosmos and because they’re immutable, they will outlast it.

Hawking and those who agree with him believe this, which fundamentally places them alongside we who believe God preexists and will outlast Creation. Either way, trying to unravel the mystery of existence mandates faith in a Creative Source, which John 1.1-3 majestically declares: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through the Word, and without the Word not one thing came into being.” Not one thing came into being without God—not a star, an organism, not one force of Nature. A Creator isn’t needed for the universe to exist? Such logic falls apart by not dismantling God’s role in creating the forces it credits with constructing the cosmos. Why don’t Hawking and his confrères do that? It can’t be done.

Before the Facts

Entitling his refutation of God’s existence and creative role in the universe The Grand Design is Hawking's backhanded slap at proponents of “intelligent design,” the crafty, PC moniker adopted by science-hostile Creationists. It’s a petty gesture befitting both sides of this spat. Creationists and atheists alike expose their folly by reducing God to a day laborer, arguing for and against Genesis’ framing the Creation as a six-day task. Given all we’ve learned since its writing, we know Genesis doesn’t jibe with the facts. But even the ancients realized before the facts that Genesis uses the workweek as an organizing metaphor to depict the sequence in which the universe and life on Earth came to be. Throughout Scripture, Creation’s timeframe isn’t a sticking point; indeed, as we see in John, it’s seldom mentioned, because it’s unimportant.

What matters is exactly what John stresses: God is present at the beginning because God precedes the beginning. The laws of Nature Hawking vests with so much importance are visibly apparent in Genesis. God speaks the Word and they go to work. At God’s command, heavenly bodies reel through space and settle in fixed orbit. The Earth heaves and pitches and solid ground rises from the sea. Life begins in the water, takes to the air, and infests dry land. And, finally, we take shape in God’s own time by God’s own hand, in which the Laws of Nature reside.

Talk about hubris! It takes a lot of gall to confine the immortal God to a mortal timeline. Whether six days or millions of years, they’re a blink of an eye to God. Getting wrapped up in how long Creation took—let alone suggesting that proves or disproves God’s existence—is ridiculous. We don’t measure the Creator’s role by the hour, as if God were a cosmic worker punching a timecard. Because God preexists everything that is, including the forces that caused everything to be, God remains the universe’s Architect and Engineer. What’s more, God is still on the job, because Creation is an ongoing process. God is still speaking and forces are still coming into play and marvelously inexplicable new wonders are still appearing in the skies, on the earth, and in us. Surely we can all agree about that.

Most holy Creator, entice us to discover the gifts of faith and science. Help us to get over our craving to know it all, so we can truly believe You are our Source. Amen.

It makes a whole lot of sense to presume the universe exploded into existence. But it still doesn’t explain whence the forces of Nature that caused the explosion.

Father Knows Best

As a father has compassion for his children, so the LORD has compassion for those who fear Him. For He knows how we were made; He remembers that we are dust. (Psalm 103.13-14)

Creative Surrogates

If there were an ancient equivalent of the Time-Life greatest-hits CDs, Psalm 103 (Sunday’s morning psalm, attributed to David) would be a shoo-in for “Favorite Psalms of All Time.” Even those who’ve never read it probably know big chunks of it, as Psalm 103 regularly turns up in hymns, liturgies, devotions, and sermons, much like golden oldies are sampled in freshly minted pop tunes. The opening stanza easily stands alone as a timeless classic:

Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name. Bless the LORD, O my soul, and do not forget all His benefits—Who forgives all your iniquity, Who heals all your diseases, Who redeems your life from the Pit, Who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, Who satisfies you with good as long as you live so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

Forgiveness, healing, redemption, love, mercy, goodness, renewal: these are unforgettable benefits the Creator bestows on us so our creativity will flow and thrive. We’re created to serve God’s will as creative surrogates. And it’s essential we embrace our creativity as a defining trait common to all children of God.

What we receive from God definitely benefits us. Yet God also gives us these wondrous gifts to benefit others. Knowing God’s forgiveness teaches us to forgive. Experiencing God’s healing enables us to transmit wholeness to others. And so on. We learn to accept all of God’s benefits by faith. We're redeemed by faith—believing love and mercy revealed in Christ’s sacrifice empower us to reclaim virtues lost to harmful influences and wasted in disobedience. Faith in God’s goodness restores life’s meaning and our power of renewal. At the same time, faith that claims God’s benefits without replicating them is faith half-spent. Ephesians 2.8-10 tells us, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Faith is creativity’s catalyst. Part and parcel with internalizing God’s benefits by faith is exercising faith to impart them to others. This is the creative drive that mimics our Creator’s compulsion to fashion magnificence out of mundane materials and beginnings. Just as we originated from dust, good works we create start with very little. So when David says, “all that is within me,” he insists we hold nothing back. Unfortunately, too often we focus on hurdles to receptive faith, i.e., doubts and fears disabling our ability to claim God’s benefits, when the same hurdles also thwart creative faith that drives us to good works God prepared for us in advance.

Our Work Endures

In verses 10-12, David stresses God’s benefits are gifts we don’t deserve, not rewards we earn:

He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His steadfast love toward those who fear Him; as far as the east is from the west, so far He removes our transgressions from us.

Coming across statements like this in the Psalms, we generalize them as ebullient poetry extolling God’s lavish grace despite our poor behavior. But, like any great artist, David carefully selects imagery to embellish his meaning. Comparing God’s love to the cosmos galvanizes Psalm 103 with wonder at its awesome singularity. Removing our sins “as far as the east is from the west” evokes time. As surely as eastern sunrise delivers each new day and western sunset seals it in the past, grace brings forgiveness and leaves failure behind. The planetary metaphors frame love and grace as divine forces that inspire wonder at our awesome singularity as God’s creative surrogates.

While we’re ever mindful that mortality subjects us to transience and limits us to human scale, good works we create ultimately reflect our Creator’s constant love and immeasurable grace. In verses 15-17, David urges us to remember God’s time is eternal and ours is fleeting: “As for mortals, their days are like grass; they flourish like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. But the steadfast love of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him and His righteousness to children’s children.” Though we eventually fade from the scene, our work endures.

Continuity

Opportunity to express God’s love and grace lasts only so long. The time we have obtains eternal value by sustaining God’s reflection on a human, rather than cosmic, scale. This explains David’s parallel “family” metaphor. We ensure continuity of God’s love and grace by transmitting them to current and future generations—“children’s children”—instilling confidence in their awesome singularity, teaching them by example to employ God-given talents that reflect their Maker. Verses 13-14 establish the continuity theme: “As a father has compassion for his children, so the LORD has compassion for those who fear Him. For He knows how we were made; He remembers that we are dust.”

We inherit God’s drive to create good works that start with little and acquire lasting value. Humbly offering forgiveness, healing, love, etc., by faith is our family business. Like a compassionate father knows best how to love and nurture his children, God knows best how to love and nurture us, refining our gifts to ensure continuity for generations to come. The purpose for our making, shape of our existence, talents we’re given, and creativity to convey them require no justification or apology. Each of us is made as we are, to become who we are, because God, our Creator and Parent, knows best what we should be and how best we can serve God's plan. Since God knows best, we give our best, blessing the Lord with all that is within us, remembering all of God’s benefits. By relying on creativity we inherit to express every gift God wills to us, good works we create on a human scale make God’s magnificence known.

Just as our creation in God’s image began in dust, good works we create start with mundane material and beginnings that lead to magnificence.