Today I'm a star. What will I be tomorrow? A black hole?
- Woody Allen
Psalms of Delight...
Most of the Bible's Psalms give thanks to God on one or more levels. Commanded to do so, Christians aught to make the time to praise God for His glorious nature, creative genius and many gifts to mankind.
Psalms of Delight are written in concert with Psalms in the Night. Both series contain Modern Psalms meant to comfort and inspire those seeking the Omni-God revealed in Scripture.
Black Holes Summary
The cosmos are awesome. Space elicits a variety of responses from each of us, who by comparison were born yesterday and die tomorrow. The Psalmist David tells us creation declares the glory of its Creator, yet paradoxically the more fantastic the design we discover the fewer there are willing to believe in a Designer. Such a reaction may have less to do with science than with the problem of the silence of a God who hides Himself. And what of modern believers? How does the immensity of space, up to an including supermassive black holes, make us feel about God and ourselves?
Black Holes
Modern Psalm of Delight 14
A relatively small percentage of modern Christians take a serious interest in the cosmos. Most can cite a few facts and a verse or two about creation but that's about it. For the most part today's believers are busy pursuing other things. With worldliness on the rise and serious prayer, Bible study and Christian service in decline, it's not surprising so few take the time to gaze at You through the wonder of physics and cosmology.
It's a shame that astronomical lessons, literally written in the sky, are largely lost on the first generation in human history to have the tools and understanding to grasp the complexity and enormity of our universe.
Me. I'm hooked. I don't even need an expensive telescope or a clear starry night. When not on a necessary TV fast, I get the Discover and the Science Channel. Thanks to the millions of hours of study and science along with billions of dollars of exploration and research, the Universe's wonder is displayed before me from the comfort of my couch. Downloaded to by DVR, with the click of a remote the cosmos comes alive on a giant screen HD TV with surround sound. Wow! What amazing images I've seen and layman physics I've picked up. The size and age of creation speaks volumes about You as Creator. The magnitude of matter and forces at work are breathtaking. From the distances and darkness of interstellar space to the spectrum of infrared to ultraviolet light blazing from stars, it's mind blowing.
Like You, space seems awesome and awful. A million Earths would fit nicely into the Sun and two hundred billion suns fill the Milky Way? Not awesome enough for Your plans, You added two hundred billion galaxies to round out just the first of the Three Heavens! And our "First Heaven" is awfully empty yet filled with awesome stuff beyond counting. We've got intergalactic phenomena like quasars and pulsars, white dwarfs and red giants, black holes and gaseous nebula in dazzling array and spectrums of color? And the building blocks You used! Molecules and atoms, protons and electrons are just the beginning. Fermions and bosons, quarks and leptons, muons and gluons fill the silent, frozen emptiness of space and our minds with awe. Then there's dark matter and energy. Some ninety percent or more of creation's filled with the mysterious macabre stuff. Given how the physical universe is a representation of spiritual and eternal realities are You trying to tell us something?
Unnerving Science and Scripture
Watching a show this week I was reminded the Universe itself is winding down. Eventually, our sun will become a Red Giant, heating and expanding to fill half the sky before engulfing Earth. The good news is we have a few billion years before our blue planet's reduced to an ember and then a wisp of smoke. The bad news is our Milky Way Galaxy will collide with Andromeda. While vast parsecs of empty space will lesson the impact, the vast gravitational force of each galaxy will rip both apart, rebuilding one new Super Galaxy. As the two become one, Super Massive Black Holes at the center of each averaging billions of years of age, degrees and solar masses will combine, growing even more massive. Continually enveloping stars, such behemoth's will devouring all matter and energy until nothing of the Universe is left.
While these events are scheduled for billion of years in the future we've also discovered that a single large asteroid strike could extinguish most, if not all, life on Earth. It's happened before and will certainly happen again. In this matter cosmology and prophecy agree, it's not a matter of if but when.
Then there's the even more immediate problem of hell. Turns out that far from simply religious mumbo jumbo, in reality flaming hells are everywhere! We're walking on the egg shell of Earth's crust, the only thing separating us from being engulfed in lava and magma. We take no notice because, for this exact cosmological moment, our egg shell's teaming with flora and fauna. Why? Because of miraculous fine tuning of our exact distance from the Sun, itself a flaming hell into which a million Earths could fit. In our galaxy alone there are one hundred to two hundred billion stars, billions of which are far larger and hotter flaming hells than our Sun. Additionally, there are as many or more whole galaxies with similar composition adding up to at least a quadrillion, quadrillion, quadrillion, quadrillion stellar flaming hells. And if that's not enough, just split the right atom and surprise!
Then there's Jude's fearsome warning regarding the fate of false teachers and worldly believer within the church:
- "These people are warts on your love feasts as you worship and eat together. They’re giving you a black eye—carousing shamelessly, grabbing anything that isn’t nailed down. They’re—Puffs of smoke pushed by gusts of wind; late autumn trees stripped clean of leaf and fruit, Doubly dead, pulled up by the roots; wild ocean waves leaving nothing on the beach but the foam of their shame; Lost stars in outer space on their way to the black hole." Jude 1:12-13 MSG
Black Holes of the Heart
It's touching to imagine such cosmic violence reduced to a beautiful canopy of twinkling stars for our sake. I disagree with the meta message of the otherwise outstanding movie "Contact." Even if mankind turns out to be the only intelligent life in Universe, I hardly think it "a waist of space." In fact, it may well turn out to all be necessary for the existence of human life as we know it. And if not, nothing's wrong with a Creator spending a little of His glory and extravagance on His creation.
Here's the problem. It's all terrifying! We're like scurrying ants in comparison to even the Earth, itself not even a dust bunny in the Milky Way Galaxy alone! You better than any understand we're here and gone in the blink of an cosmological eye! We need to know You're not as cold and distance as the far reaches of space You've created. We need to experience You in a way that surpasses our situation. We need to taste and see Your goodness and glory. We long to be filled with Your Spirit, finding out for ourselves that all You promise is true:
- "How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He's the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth's foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son... He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth... It's in Christ that you, once you heard the truth and believed it (this Message of your salvation), found yourselves home free—signed, sealed, and delivered by the Holy Spirit. This signet from God is the first installment on what's coming, a reminder that we'll get everything God has planned for us, a praising and glorious life." Ephesians 1:3-14 MSG
- ”So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.” For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children. And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering." Romans 8:15-17
- “This is what the scriptures mean when they say: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him." 1 Corinthians 2:9
So I'm with the brilliant scientist, inventor and Christian apologist Blaise Pascal who, when speaking of even the little they knew of the Universe in the 1700's said, "The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me." And what of these others:
- "It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small." — Neil Armstrong
- "I looked and looked and looked but I didn't see God." — Yuri Gagarin
- "I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking." — Carl Sagan
- "Through space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; through thought I grasp the cosmos." — Blaise Pascal
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