To gain a short-term view of “how we got here”, we only need to zoom in on science. Most of us don’t care what goes on in the subculture of laboratory researchers, but they have been spinning a web of revolution—accidentally. By gaining through new technologies the ability to look at smaller and smaller bits of matter, scientists can literally now see the invisible. Physicists can trace the behavior of sub-atomic particles, the smallest pieces of reality. And what they have found has rocked their world—and ours indirectly.
Scientists expected subatomic particles to obey the laws of Newtonian (or classical) physics. Just as we can predict where a moving car will end up at a certain time if we know its speed, we should be able to predict where an electron or smaller particle should be, the logic goes. It is not so. It seems that by asking the question, we have disturbed the system and our very effort to measure the behavior of the small particle changes what it does! On the macro level of the car, it would be as if the car responded to our wanting to know where it would be and capriciously changed directions because we asked! It turns out that the world of small highest energy particles is completely responsive to small changes in the system—including the presence of the observer. This information—the fact that small things act nothing like years and years of research tells us large things act—was so upsetting that, according to John Wheeler of Princeton, the famous physicist Neils Bohr used to say if you aren’t confused by quantum physics, then you haven’t really understood it! Small things act more like energy than matter and we know a lot less about energy than we do matter (although they are not unrelated).
Long books have been written now about the philosophical implications of quantum physics—many worth reading. For now, a few brief thoughts will bring into view how quantum physics leads us into spiritual planes. First of all, a lot of the hubbub surrounds the nature of light. Light is sometimes particle and sometimes energy (wave), and seems to ricochet between these two manifestations capriciously. When it is expected to be particle (treated like a particle), it often acts like a wave, and visa versa. Light seems to stand on the line between energy and matter and dance back and forth at will. The implications for Christians, who serve a God that constantly compares himself to light, are many. God’s words, the Bible, have a “wave nature”—a spiritual energy that is intangible, and a “particle” nature—they are words read, heard, mass produced in material manifestations. The whole idea of converting between energy and particle (material) should make every Christian think of why we pray. When we pray, we bring to bear the spiritual energy of heaven, but we are looking for material results. Now physics is basically saying, “you go!” Answered prayer makes quantum sense.
The new physics has also taught us we live in a related world. This is another “reality” that has now been confirmed in the lab with accompanying shock. It seems that subatomic particles that are separated from one another seem to somehow “know” what the other is doing, as if there were an invisible bond between them—a communication of some sort. Reality does not exist in discrete and separate events, but rather in open dynamic systems. Changes in one corner affect the whole of the participants. (This is indeed a Kingdom concept.) Business has now picked up on the implications of relatedness and a whole “systems” school of thought has developed in management. In modernism, the person with the most facts should be the one in charge. But now in the very postmodern systems thinking, the person who sees the most connections between things should be in charge. Wisdom has been redefined. No longer is a large mainframe computer mind the goal in a leader, but rather open eyes of vision to see the systems in operation—again a Kingdom concept.
Science now tells us that literally, all things are possible. And in fact, all things spring into “being” as we interact with the system. If ever there were an agreement between science and faith, it is here. Casting this in Biblical terms, we would say that God through Christ has made all manner of redemption possible for our lives and mess-ups, but it is our faith that connects with those redemptive possibilities and somehow pulls them into our experience! Thank you, new physics! Sadly, as the title of Zukav’s book mentioned above indicates, the Buddhists and Hindus and other Eastern thinkers have been much quicker to jump on the new physics as a support for their traditions! Our western skepticism has kept us, first of all, holding “faith preachers” at arm’s length (sometimes for good reason), and secondly, holding science at arm’s length! All the while, the physics labs are preaching for us!
Do we realize what has happened? The Western scientific mind has dismantled itself! While the church argued over evolution, God worked on a totally different plane, giving science what it wanted, a glimpse at the nature of reality. We reached the edge of the western landscape and there lay the east! We actually found the heart of matter and there was spirit! Now we have molecular biologists turning into philosophers and studying the soul (Frances Crick) and physicists using words that sound more like a druid ritual than a scientific paper (“strange quarks”, live and dead cats, etc.). The all-knowing objective scientist devoid of emotion, passion and sentiment is now looking more like a dreamer posing questions that the universe may or may not answer.
This change was so drastic that even Einstein, one of its main contributors, had trouble with the implications of his own ideas. Einstein was perhaps the first broad–scale systems thinker in modern physics (perhaps his Hebrew worldview helped), but he struggled to accept the explanations of changing reality. “God does not play dice with the universe,” he said. One theorist summed it up, “Einstein said that if quantum mechanics is right, then the world is crazy. Well, Einstein was right. The world is crazy.” (Daniel Greenberger, quoted in Scientific American, July 1992) But with all due respect to the forward-thinking Einstein, he hung up on a common snag. God may not play dice with the universe, but he puts does put the game in our hands to a great degree! The message of the new physics is not, as Einstein tended to see it, that there is no fixed reality. It is instead, that we play a much larger role in determining what manifestations of reality will occur than we had dreamed. The church inherently believes this, else why are we singing, “I want to be a history-maker…” The new physics need not challenge the sovereignty of a God who set the whole thing up and ultimately knows its end. Those things need not be in question. The only question is what happens between origin and completion. What role will we play? (If your mind bends at this, let it, but let your spirit be empowered.)
I find this close up view of how we landed in POMO-world inspiring. I imagine the gleam in God’s eye as he watched the surprise of the physicists being forced to admit we are not just living in a material world! I even imagine the joy in his heart as he envisions a church armed with a message whose time has come! Faith and reason have shook hands and made up—the church should be rejoicing. But, it is equally inspiring to zoom back to a picture even larger than that of western civilization. God, in his huge redemptive purposes, has a lot to say about how we got here.
