Christmas: A real event in space-time

Yes, I admit it. What a geeky title for a blog post. Bear with me a little though, if you will.

There is a Christmas song I heard on the radio the other day. I've known it for most of my life, and I've even sung it as part of a choir. It is a beautiful sentiment, and makes its point powerfully. Its name is Some Children See Him.

Yes, it is a beautiful song. Here is one of the best renditions ever, recorded by James Taylor:



The main point of the song is a good one. The gospel is intended for all people everywhere. At the time when Jesus lived on the earth, many of his fellow Jews felt that the Messiah was coming exclusively for them. So many parables, so many actions, so many teachings were designed to show that he had come for the whole world - Jew and Gentile. The gospel, the Kingdom, was for the nations. The message was there throughout he Hebrew Scriptures, from Adam, to Abraham, to Moses, to Isaiah. But they just didn't get it. After his resurrection, Jesus said to go into ALL the world. Reaching out to all people, of all races, with all skin colors.

And we in the Western church can be just as stubborn as the people of 1st century Palestine. So much of our Christianity is centered in what's good for us. We see a lily-white Jesus who wants to make all people more like us. We may not say it, but it creeps into our subconscious so easily. And I think that is what the song is speaking to.

But to me there is one thing we have to watch out for as we sing these lyrics. The objective is good, but the execution may be flawed. You see, one of the biggest dangers to faith today is the idea that truth is relative. "That may be true for you, but it's not for me." The word of the day is "tolerance," and it's clear that as a society we are defining it as total acceptance of everyone's belief's as equally true.

This is contrary to both Biblical revelation and common sense. Either your car is red or it's not. We can';t say with a serious face, "That car is red to me, but if you believe it's blue I'm sure that's equally true."

And now back to the geeky title of this post. God entered the world in the person of Jesus, born as a baby. The miracle of the incarnation: the Word became flesh. The creator of space-time entered his creation at a specific time in a specific place.

And with specific skin.

So yes, children all over the world may see Jesus as being like them. And that's great....as long as they are also taught that he was actually one person with one body and one skin tone. He is not a concept, a spirit, a symbol. We must not spiritualize his coming. He was, and is, a person.

The song gets this right: It is likely that most of our depictions have been wrong. He was Jewish and therefore probably had darker skin that most of our paintings. But he had one skin color. He was really in the flesh. We don't know what it was. But we know it was real.

A picky point? Maybe. But I just worry that when we de-emphasize the humanity of Jesus, we lose the truth of the incarnation. The real God of the universe became a real person with real human characteristics based on real human DNA.

Maybe the fact that for almost all of humanity (all but Jewish) he is a different ethnicity from us means this: we don't have a corner on his nature. He's not our Jesus - he's everyone's Jesus. And he came to save people from every corner of the earth.

And they sang a new song, saying, "Worthy are you to take the scrolls and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. (Revelation 5:9)

Hallelujah!

Our little corner

Last week I saw something so incredible, I had to share it right away - so I put a link on my Facebook page. It still resonates with me, so...a little more about it.

We live in one of the bands of an indescribably big galaxy known as the Milky Way. There are around 300 billion stars in our galaxy. And (this boggles the mind) there are at least 100 billion galaxies in the universe. Well, the closest galaxy other than our own is visible in our night sky; it is known as Andromeda, and it is about 2.5 million light years away.

How far is that? Well, one light year is about 60,000 times as far away as the sun. So Andromeda is about 150 billion times as far away.

Wow!

So, as a kid who drew up fascinated with astronomy, seeing a 4 GB picture of Andromeda, zooming in on detail, was indescribably awe-inspiring. Here is a video that zooms in on a portion of the picture. If you realize what you're looking at, it'll take your breath away:



So far away. So big. And just the closest one out of billions.

I have heard many people say it makes them feel insignificant. They think it means our little corner of the universe is too small and too remote to be significant. That is not what I see at all. Instead, I marvel that God has singled out the earth to accomplish his eternal purposes.

This verse tucked away in Isaiah sums it up for me:

For thus says the LORD, who created the heavens (He is the God who formed the earth and made it, He established it and did not create it a waste place, but formed it to be inhabited), "I am the LORD, and there is none else. (Isaiah 45:18 NASB)

First, why is the universe so big? How can the earth be significant when it is so big? Is God that wasteful?

By no means! God is so awesome, so powerful, so infinite that it takes this kind of vastness to even begin reflecting his glory. The universe was created for his glory, and its size, wonder, and complexity is the natural result of that. If anything, we might ask, why isn't it bigger? And maybe it is - maybe we're just beginning to see it.

Second, why is the earth so perfectly fitted for life?

It is a unique place...situated in a safe corner of our galaxy...the perfect distance from its sun (which give out just the right amount of heat and light)...tilted just right on its axis...with gravity just strong enough to support life. And I could go on and on and on. As Isaiah says, he formed it not to be a waste place, but to be inhabited. And so it is.

With us. Creatures he has chosen to love.

So I watch the video in awe. The heavens are indeed declaring the glory of God.

Yeah, I think I'll watch it again now.

Amen.

"Is the universe a simulation?"

Huh?

The question is the title of an article that appeared in the New York Times last Friday:

Link: Is the Universe a Simulation?

It was fascinating to me as a math geek. But also as one who thinks about the meaning of life and what it all means. To get the full meaning you'll want to read it for yourself. But here's the gist:

Philosophers and mathematicians have considered for years whether mathematical concepts exist independently - just sort of "out there" whether we discover them or not. Most mathematicians believe at their core that this is the case. Math is true, objective, and timeless, just waiting to be discovered.

If this is true, the article asks the question, Is it possible that our universe is just a computer simulation created by a person in the future? Could it be that math is so fixed, so unchangeable, because it is actually computer code of that simulation, just waiting to be discovered? The article then presents the idea that it might be possible to test this theory by looking for anomalies - inconsistencies - in the computer program. That is, in our universe.

This sounds familiar in a way, right? It reminds me of the plot of The Matrix, and the author is proposing that there is a "red pill" for us to learn the truth.
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To me, it's not so far-fetched. Not because I believe that there is some random person who wrote a program and we are living out his simulation. No, I don't think so. But I do believe that there is a Person who designed the universe. He wrote the code, and all the immutable laws of math and science are His "computer code." When man discovered the Pythagorean Theorem, he was discovering something that already existed - programmed, not by a random person, but by the creator God.

So yeah, I read this, and I saw another piece of the puzzle. No matter what you believe about how it was done and how long it took, there are clues all over the place that we are here by design. There is a purpose and there is a plan. And I am awestruck by the fact that I'm a part of it.

What a creation. What a Creator!


Do you think the laws of mathematics exist on their own? Or are they creations of the human mind, like art? If they do exist on their own, what does that mean?