by Danny Vellekoop
Deep in the darkest recesses of space lurks an object that seems to have sprung from a bad sci-fi movie. Apparently, for reasons known only to God, Stephen Hawking, and a select group of astrophysicists who have never been on a date, this monstrosity forms when a gargantuan star collapses under its own weight, creating a gravity field so obscenely strong that not even O.J. Simpson can escape. We call the resulting object a Black Hole (not to be confused with the apartment from my bachelor days).
Scientists don’t know a lot about Black Holes. Since nobody can see the darn things, they have to make deductions based on how their gravity yanks nearby objects around, and by studying radiation from gas clouds just before they swirl down the drain. Matter doesn’t even behave normally under those pressures, and some physicists mutter obscure phrases like “mathematical points of infinite density.” But who’s going to check it out to be sure? You first, buddy. I like my molecules just the way they are, thank you very much.
Black Hole’s mom to child: “Deah, why cain’tya be just like oowal the utha normal stahs?” (She happens to be from Jersey). Indeed, a “normal stah” like our sun cheerfully blasts ridiculous amounts of radiation into the surrounding space. Its gravity, though still impressive, isn’t strong enough to trap light.
If our sun suddenly collapsed into a black hole, not only would we be robbed of our summer tans, we’d also suffer the inconvenience of being ripped to shreds by its gravity. Fortunately, however, the sun seems to be of the long-life, low-mass variety that will keep burning at more or less the same rate for another billion years—which shouldn’t interfere with most of our retirement plans.
The long and the short of it is that you can see a star but you can’t see a black hole. Whatevs, you didn’t need to read a stupid blog to figure that out. But if you’re still reading, I am going somewhere with these musings.
I think.
Let’s rewind time to when our wonderful progenitors frolicked happily in the tropical paradise of Eden, free of all responsibilities like paying their internet bill, cleaning the garage, and filing their 1040’s for the IRS. Oh, yeah, Adam had to work naming animals.
It must have been a really stressful job, because suddenly they decided that being kicked out of the garden and farming for their food by the “sweat of their brow” would be a great career move. Not one of humanity’s brightest moments.
But far worse than the sudden need to work our fingers raw, worse than the field’s nasty tendency to grow weeds instead of food, and even worse than the agony of giving birth was our race’s lost relationship with Papa God. Our grandparents took something that wasn’t theirs to have, and something inside of them died—that part of them that had the right to take afternoon walks with the One who invented Afternoon in the first place.
Up until that moment, God was their Sunshine. They could see Him without shame and without death. But after our Big Mistake, God became invisible to us.
Like a black hole, God was still detectable in an indirect, general way. Nature shows that He’s really, really smart (microbiology, anyone?), enjoys defying our attempts at categorizing things (seriously, the platypus?), has a flair for excess (does the universe really need to be that big?), and that He’s got some mad skills (speaking light into existence just puts the Clapper to complete shame). But knowing that John Travolta likes to fly his own private airliner isn’t the same as finishing his sentences for him, and knowing that God is a great artiste just isn’t the same thing as knowing Him. Indirect revelation remains dreadfully impersonal.
To know a star, we study its radiance. NASA has more hardware pointed at the sun than national tabloids have cameras on Joan River’s latest face-lift. Studying the images, which include everything from gamma rays to radio waves, astrophysicists have been able to figure out a lot of what makes the sun burn. But we had no way to see the radiance from the Creator, because our inner eye capable of seeing Him had long since withered away.
For God to make Himself known to us, He had to find a light frequency that we could see. Perhaps the easiest thing we can understand is another one of us. So the “Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”
God the Son is the radiance of God that shines among us. As Jesus tells Philip, “He who has seen me has seen the Father,” and St. John writes, “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.” The author of Hebrews describes Christ the “radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.” When Jesus came, that mysterious, invisible Being that inhabits the sky suddenly burst into brilliant colors, visible again to His lost children.
Now, a farmer working his field on the Nile Delta in 3,000 B.C. probably knew very little about the atomic nuclei fusing in the sun 93 million miles overhead, but his ignorance didn’t prevent the suns rays from driving the photosynthesis in his cultivated plants to make them grow. So, too, the subject of Christ’s oneness with God the Father goes way beyond theological conjecture.
The former alcoholic who Jesus saved from his old addiction can testify more about God’s power than the best theologian who doesn’t have a personal experience with God. The light of God shines on him.
We can do nothing to make the sun glow brighter, but we can choose whether to hide in the dark watching the Shopping Channel or to lie out on the beach and bask in the sun’s brilliance. Jesus has shown God to the world, but it’s up to us to spend time in His presence to soak up His life-changing rays.
Cited:
Black hole image: http://schools-wikipedia.org/images/221/22162.jpg, artist unknown/
No specific works of science are cited, as the scientific content of this article is considered very general and/or speculative. All biblical citations are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2010 by Biblica, Inc.™ All rights reserved worldwide.
John 1:14 “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
John 14:9 “Jesus answered: ‘Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”?’”
John 1:18 “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.”
Hebrews 1:3a “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.”
