More Than Meets the Eye

by Richard Swenson

  When we see Him more clearly, we have more faith in His power and less anxiety about our circumstances. Our own frailty and finiteness seem less bothersome when we realize that we were designed by a God who can count to infinity backwards and recite the Encyclopaedia Britannica in every known human language in a trillionth of a second. If we have trouble understanding such things, perhaps we should reflect more on the meaning of the words infinite and sovereign.

  A Temple, Incarnation, and Bride

  This is the beginning of the story—but it is not the end. It turns out that God is not yet done with “the body.” Before we leave human physiology to tour the cosmos, God has yet a few more things to teach us about His intentions for the body: as a temple, as an incarnation, and as a bride.

  A temple— Our body, says the apostle Paul, is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps that is why God took such pains in design.

  The definition of a temple is “a place where God dwells.” In calling our body a temple, God is signaling that He desires to take up residence there. And why not? He created it; He sustains it; and He paid a great price to buy it back. Why can’t He also inhabit it if He wishes? “Do you not know,” wrote the apostle Paul, “that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.”3

  This presence of the Holy Spirit is not like that of an unwelcome houseguest, to be regarded with suspicion. He is not peering over our shoulders like a nagging relative ready to criticize the slightest flaw. Instead, this presence is a gift. Quite priceless, actually. If we had to pay the Holy Spirit a retainer for hanging around the temple, the wealthiest person on earth would not be able to afford the first minute’s fee.

  What is appropriate demeanor in a temple? If God is going to move in with us, how should we behave? Reverence and purity make a good start. A temple is to be kept holy and sacred. Because we personally have become a temple, we must now also become its spiritual custodian. We are therefore instructed to “honor God” with our bodies. Our bodies are to become a sacrifice. Not the dead-on-the-altar kind, but a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.4

  An incarnation— One of the most amazing mysteries of the universe is the incarnation—Christ becoming a human baby. How did the infinite God inhabit a finite physical body? It is perhaps an unsolvable question for mere mortals. Conceptually, it would be easier to fit the Pacific Ocean into a thimble than for the Infinite to become Mary’s baby. It would be easier to reverse a full-blown atomic explosion than for the Immortal to put on mortality.

  When Mary first discovered a child growing in her innocent womb, undoubtedly her first thought was less than blissful. Understanding her natural anxiety, the angel comes to her in Luke 1, announcing God’s intention and comforting her: “Do not be afraid. … He shall be great.”5 Indeed! But in Philippians 2, we read, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God … made himself nothing.”6

  So—both describing the same event—the angel says He shall be great, and Paul says that He made Himself nothing. Which was He … great or nothing? In usual parlance, there is a difference. When we meet someone great, we hire a band, have a parade, and throw a reception in a great hall. But we don’t do that for a “nothing.” Yet truly Jesus made Himself nothing. It was the only way infinity could become finite—through the nothingness gate. So, He emptied Himself. He was born with nothing, lived with nothing, and died with less than nothing. And God, who has the privilege of defining reality, proclaims that in this instance “nothing” and “great” are one and the same.

  It seems to me that if we want to be great with God, the way to greatness is Christ’s way: emptying ourselves, yielding ourselves up to Him, humbling ourselves and taking the nature of a servant, dying to self that He might live in us, making ourselves nothing so that He can give us worth. In this self-abandonment, God gives us greatness.

  Yes, the Almighty became a baby. God, who created the body with such miraculous and even mystical flair, stooped to put on flesh and live within its frame. And when at last that body was broken, His brokenness accomplished our wholeness. His nothing was revealed as … everything.

  A bride— God also regards the church universal as a body. It is called the body of Christ, and also the bride of Christ. This can seem unusual language, but God surely has His reasons.

  Paul, again and again, reminds us that even though the church is made up of many people with various gifts, nevertheless we are to regard ourselves as one body. “Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”7

  One reason God chose to call the church a body is because it is such a perfect metaphor. But it goes beyond that. Is it possible that somehow, in a spiritually organic way, we indeed are all connected, networked together by a Spirit who has no trouble with such complexity? Is it possible that when one prays, everyone in the body benefits? That when one loves, everyone in the body is mysteriously lifted? That when one sins, everyone in the body takes the hit and feels the wound? I rather suspect so.

  Mysterious, Miraculous

  God always creates with several levels of meaning. He uses words precisely, with profound intentionality. Why did He put each of us in a body, and then put that body within a Body? There is something here for us, and it has to do with connectedness, dependence, order, and the common goal of life within Life.

  The body. Never presume to fully understand it—physically, spiritually, or ecclesiastically. Instead, stand in awe at the kind of God who can package atoms in such a mystical, glorious form.

  ENERGY, FORCE,

  MATTER, and GOD

  PHYSICS, I have noticed, tends to intimidate people. Chemistry less so—but still daunting. Yet it is good to conquer this fear, for it is a fascinating time to be involved in these disciplines. Much is happening on these scientific fronts, all of it “theologically suggestive.” It is hard to remain spiritually disinterested when God Himself is now teaching the class. One noted physicist commented: “If we need an atheist for a debate, I go to the philosophy department. The physics department isn’t much use.”1 Einstein maintained that a “cosmic religious feeling” was the strongest motivation for scientific research.

  Physics is the science of energy, force, matter, and their interactions. Chemistry is the science of the composition, structure, and properties of substances. Both point to God, causing British astronomer Fred Hoyle to complain that the universe looked like a “put up” job. Hoyle, no friend to theistic faith, continued by saying that “a common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as chemistry.”2

  Let’s investigate together and see what we can discover. If we can bring these daunting disciplines into the realm of comprehensibility, perhaps we can catch a glimpse of just what these new findings teach us about the genius and power of the Almighty Creator.

  BEYOND OUR ABILITIES

  Toward the beginning of the twentieth century, scientists thought there wasn’t much left to learn about physics. The Newtonian world looked relatively simple, and the equations had all been discovered. Physicists perhaps thought of looking for other lines of work. That, however, was before relativity, quantum mechanics, the uncertainly principle, and superstrings.

  Today, instead of feeling we know it all, we are afraid that we know nothing for sure. Instead of being certain of our facts, we suspect that almost nothing is as it seems. When a musical King of Siam sang: “There are times I almost think I am not sure of what I absolutely know,” he could just as easily have been talking about modern science. Science is, after all, only “an orderly arrangement of what seem at the time to be facts.” One M.I.T. physicist-turned-physician admitted to me: “There is not one thing in physics I am absolutely sure of.” It is telling that mode
rn physicists spend so much of their time pondering the uncertainty principle, chaos theory, indeterminism, and vacuum fluctuations. They can’t even say for sure if Schrödinger’s famous cat is dead or alive.3

  In addition, scientists openly worry that we will never possess enough intelligence or technological sophistication to probe the final secrets of the atom or the universe. Observes Stanford’s Roger Shepard: “We may be headed toward a situation where knowledge is too complicated to understand.”4 Some have called this point the ultimate scientific plateau—that point where not only our intellectual capacities are exceeded, but also our technological and financial resources.

  Those scientists who wish to stay the course also discover they must first become metaphysical mystics. Why is there such symmetry and design? How is it that the mathematics of the universe is so precise? Why is the subatomic world bizarre? How can a particle be a wave? Is there a “theory of everything”? Where did it all come from in the first place? Again, Hoyle complains: “I have always thought it curious that, while most scientists claim to eschew religion, it actually dominates their thoughts more than it does the clergy.”5

  THE ELEMENTAL ATOM

  The word atom means “indivisible” in Greek. “The atoms struggle and are carried about in a void because of their dissimilarities … and as they are carried about, they collide and are bound together,” wrote Democritus in the fifth century B.C.6 For centuries, atoms were thought to represent the smallest unit of matter. This impression was in error, but little we did not know.

  Atoms are indeed tiny structures. To illustrate:

  An atom compares to an orange in the same relative dimensions as the orange compares to the entire earth.

  To see an atom with our own eyes, we would have to shrink down to a billionth of an inch in height.

  To count the atoms in a drop of water would require every human on earth counting one atom per second for twenty thousand years.

  Atoms form the basic units of chemical elements. There are ninety-two naturally occurring elements. Of these, eighty-one are stable, while eleven are radioactive, thus transforming themselves into other elements over time. The best-known radioactive element, uranium, is also the heaviest naturally occurring element, with an atomic number of 92.

  Using particle accelerators, over twenty additional elements have been discovered. Such discoveries are difficult for many reasons, not the least of which is that the newer elements often have very short half-lives. For example, the latest element, with an atomic number of 118, has a half-life of one hundred-thousandth of a second, which explains why we don’t find it lying around in train stations.

  Hydrogen and helium are the two most commonly occurring elements. Together they make up the vast majority of matter in the universe, hydrogen predominating. But, for human purposes, the real action is with carbon (the fourth most common element in the universe). All known life forms are carbon-based. Carbon is the only element that has the flexible yet spectacular properties needed for supporting the richness of life. No other element can even begin to form the kind and variety of chemical bonds found with carbon. Using hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and other elements, carbon can form an almost infinite number of compounds. We know, for example, of more than a million existing carbon compounds, many thousands of which are vital to life processes.7 This property of carbon is unique among all the elements.

  The story of carbon might seem common and earthy, but let me assure you—there is more than meets the casual eye. That carbon exists at all is either a cosmic freak accident or a miracle—depending on whether you prefer the odds of fluke or faith. Primitive carbon is formed when two elements combine. Sometimes combining elements is easy. But in the case of joining helium and beryllium, there is more involved. Combining these two elements to form carbon requires exacting conditions, and the chances of such conditions being met are infinitesimally small.

  For one thing, this form of radioactive beryllium has a mean life of 10-16 seconds. Such beryllium brevity obviously does not grant the helium nucleus much of a chance to randomly bond with it. In order for the required bonding to happen, the resonance or excitation energies must be exactly mathematically matched—precisely what scientists have found.

  When the math was first computed, unbelieving astrophysicists were spiritually stunned. “A delicate match between the energies of helium, the unstable beryllium and the resulting carbon allows the last to be created,” explains Harvard astronomer Robert Kirshner. “Without this process, we would not be here.”8 The carbon resonance match is both dramatic and extremely precise—and theologically suggestive. Hoyle was right: In plain view, Someone indeed rigged the physics.

  For all of their special properties, each of the uncountable carbon atoms in the universe is identical. As described in previous chapters, our bodies continuously exhale air molecules, slough cells, and generally recycle cells and atoms—among which carbon is generously represented. Moment by moment we share our carbon life with the environment, other humans, and all other life forms. If we had some way of tagging our “former” carbon atoms, we would find them literally scattered around the world, under the sea, in plants and animals, and within the frames of all the people on earth. God, I believe, takes particular delight in creating meaning beneath the surface of the apparent. Thus the “cosmic religious feeling” that so entranced Einstein. We need only have “eyes that see.”

  There are other atomic elements that could be discussed, each playing a key role in the affairs of the universe or in the sustenance of life: elements such as phosphorus, unique in its ability to form energy-storing compounds; or oxygen and hydrogen, uniquely suited for the formation of the essential water molecule; or nitrogen, sodium, chloride, potassium, calcium, and iron, each essential in the physiologic processes regulating life. It is time, however, to shift our focus from the elements to the substructure of the atom itself. Here we have extraordinary findings awaiting us.

  THE ATOM’S SHADOWY UNDERWORLD

  When we think of the atom—if we think of it at all—we probably imagine it something like a miniature marble. But an atom is no more like a marble than cotton candy is like a bowling ball. When we put cotton candy in our mouth, it disappears. The same happens to the atom when we put it under scrutiny. “The physicist draws up an elaborate plan of the atom and then proceeds critically to erase each detail in turn,” explains astrophysicist Arthur Eddington. “What is left is the atom of modern physics.”9

  An atom is a tiny puff of smoke that stays put. It is weaselly, ghostly, otherworldly. According to physicist Paul Davies, “Atoms and subatomic particles inhabit a shadowy world of half-existence.”10

  An atom is almost scary. If you don’t understand what I mean, it is because you don’t yet understand the true nature of the atom. It even unsettled Einstein, who, despite all his brilliant insights in theoretical physics, resisted the weirdness of atomic behavior as long as he could. Perhaps it is best to simply accept the fact that when things get this small, the nature of reality itself changes.

  An atom is the original hyperactive kid. Everything associated with it is flying around like mad, bumping into things. The electron, for example, circles the nucleus of the atom billions of times in one millionth of a second. Subatomic particles are bursting in and out of existence as if they can’t make up their nanosecond minds. A single oxygen molecule, comprised of two bonded atoms, experiences over three billion collisions every second. Very confusing hyperactive stuff. Atomic essence, looking for Ritalin.

  Actually, it is this rapid movement that allows atoms to “appear” solid. Dimensions at the atomic level—just like dimensions at the astronomy level—are almost all occupied by seemingly empty space. Almost all of an atom’s mass (99.9 percent) is located at its diminutive core nucleus. Yet the nucleus only occupies a hundred thousand billionth of the atom’s volume (10-14).11

  The notion of the atom being the smallest unit of matter persisted until the early 1900s when British physicist Ernes
t Rutherford experimentally showed there were indeed smaller subatomic particles. Since that time, new particles just keep coming, like bedbugs jumping out of a moldy mattress. Every time a researcher hits the quantum mattress with a stick, out pops another quark. When the muon was first discovered in 1937, Nobel Prize-winning particle physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi greeted its arrival with a surprised, “Who ordered that?”12 All the while, down in the orchestra pit the superstrings quartet plays “Ode to the Eerie.”

  Today, we know of over 200 subatomic particles, with the postulated-but-not-yet-proven superstrings representing the tiniest entity by far. The study of elementary particles is called particle physics or high-energy physics because the energies involved are enormous. Detailed lists of subatomic particles can get quite complex, and I see no need to go there. Let’s discover what we can in the generalist mode, while leaving the complex specifics to physics classes.

  The more classical view of subatomic structure is familiar to us all: the electron, proton, and neutron. This famous trio were the first subatomic particles discovered, in 1897, 1919, and 1932, respectively. While protons and neutrons are firmly stuck together in the nucleus, the electrons orbit around it in a manner more like a cloud than a ring.

  Electrons— The electron spins around the nucleus so rapidly that the word “inconceivable” comes to mind. It has a very small mass, and a negative charge. Large numbers of electrons coursing through conductors constitute the familiar electric current.

  Electrons move back and forth from an energy state to a particle state. This adds to the aura of mystery that surrounds their behavior and even their existence. If you look for a particle, you will find a particle. If you look for a wave, that is what you will find. “The ‘inconceivable concept’ of the electron as a ‘wave of matter’ touches upon a metaphysical dimension,” observes Gerhard Staguhn, who writes popular essays about science and spirituality. “These ‘waves of matter’ are more than shape; they are metashape, shapes to which we can no longer attribute a substantial content—only a spiritual one.”13