Hubble, Humility, and Man

Spirituality Column #246
July 26, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers

Hubble, Humility, and Man
By Bob Walters

Dramatic deep-space images from the Hubble satellite telescope have inspired worldwide awe the past couple of decades.

On TV, in magazines, and clogging our inbound email, we’ve seen the luminous light of exploding quasars and collapsing galaxies, thanks to Hubble’s above-earthly vantage point and mindboggling technology. The pictures are phenomenal: scientists marvel, artists are humbled, and poets are left speechless. Atheists proclaim man’s insignificance. Believers see God’s magnificence.

Some people just sit back and say, “Wow!”

A recent network evening newscast noting the end of NASA’s space shuttle program aired a sidebar on the oft-repaired Hubble’s history, trials and triumphs. The reporter’s parting words grabbed my attention. Voicing over surreal intergalactic photography, he intoned (approximately), “Hubble’s images have made mankind think differently about how he views himself.”

I just sat back and said, “Wow.” For here was a brilliantly crafted, politically correct, non-committal statement carefully and perfectly framing a truth with no conclusion, casting light with no heat, making a brick with no straw, and balancing a platitude squarely on a secular fence.

The reporter left the sharp arrow in the quiver, the logical follow-up question: “Different … how?” That ponderance was left dangling with the audience. One could muse, simply, “Look what man found!” For sure, many said, “Behold, the face of God!”

Because the interview leading into that final statement was a scientist marveling at our “13-billion-year-old universe” – which I interpreted as an enthusiastic and institutional bon mot for Evolution and a purpose-pitch at the chin of Creationism – it seemed the reporter intended us viewers to gain further appreciation for our personal smallness against the big, meaningless, postmodern emptiness of everything else. In other words, “Those Hubble images sure put mankind in his rightful, small place.”

I think not. In the Hubble images I see unequivocal, gigantic proof of a great God, and the shimmering, show-stopping, unimpeachable truth that God not only exists but that He builds utterly amazing stuff. I see overwhelming evidence of a God Whose glory I cannot adequately express.

“What is mankind that you are mindful of him?” David asks God in Psalm 8:4.

The Hubble images are no adequate picture of God, because God is bigger than that. But in those images we see something the creation of which God considered worthwhile for His glory. And to think, He created us, too.

All I can say, humbly, is “Wow!”

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) notes that the Bible gives us a more instructive view of God than any telescope. Psalm 8. Yeah.

Dealing with Jesus

Spirituality Column #79
May 13, 2008
Current! in Carmel (IN) newspaper
Current! in Westfield (IN) newspaper

Dealing with Jesus
By Bob Walters

Ben Stein’s recent movie Expelled presents Intelligent Design/Creation as a salient life science subverted by 150 years of incomplete yet burgeoning and now pervasive Darwinian/Evolution worldview and education.

The 1996 PBS NOVA episode titled “The Ultimate Journey,” a video on evolution commonly shown in high school biology classes with fascinating microphotography of embryos, confidently asserts itself as “The Odyssey of Life,” a veritable highlight reel of how life works. The video contains this direct quote, “We don’t know how life began.”

How odd. I know how life began; God created life, and us. The Bible lays it out in plain terms in Genesis chapters 1 and 2.

The fact that there is life because God wanted there to be life – and our trying to figure out the how and why of life based on that – is entirely different and I daresay more satisfying than evolutionists stuffily saying “we don’t know how life began” and foregoing any explanation of why life exists.

To an evolutionist, there is no “why.”

Creationism is different. That’s because the Bible is different, and Jesus is different.

Our God-given human creativity and freedom to invent secular views like evolution, humanism, and broad and competing swaths of philosophy – or conversely, to discover God, life, love, purpose, salvation, relationships and truth in the Bible – too often create conflict, not understanding. For the record, I don’t think science is specifically secular or necessarily divisive.

Discussing this with a friend from church, wondering why so many people insist on separating science and scripture, she said, “The problem is that if you deal with Creation, you have to deal with the Bible. And if you deal with the Bible, then you have to deal with Jesus … and a lot of people don’t want to go there.”

So true. The thing is, we should recognize that our individuality, uniqueness and significance all come from Jesus, not Darwin. Evolution defeats all those ideas, and Darwin doesn’t demand that we act right and love each other.

We’d all be better off dealing with Jesus, even in science class. And by all means … go to science class.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) finds dinosaur bones and carbon dating quite fascinating, but not as fascinating as his relationship with God, Christ and the Holy Spirit.

Freeing Up a Choked Debate

Spirituality Column #77
April 29, 2008
Current! In Carmel (IN) newspaper

Freeing Up a Choked Debate
By Bob Walters

I saw the movie Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed and thought it was pretty good.

What has surprised me is that the reviews and comment I’ve seen are predictably, iconoclastically “Conservative – Intelligent Design” or “Liberal – Darwinism” and have consistently missed Stein’s central point of the movie – Freedom.

Evolutionists, Atheists and anti-Creationists certainly saw – to their way of thinking, I’m sure – an unfair attack on their beloved and holy Darwinism. Believers like me were likely struck by Stein’s images, boldness and surely snickered at some of his forensic mischief and filmmaker’s license.

And I must say that the sound track was fabulous. To Yoko and her “Imagine” complaint, all I can say is “Let It Be.”

But whether I think the movie’s message is right on or someone else thinks the message is right off the loony farm, Stein began and ended the movie talking about Freedom.

Freedom. Galatians 5:1. As a Christian believer, and an American, I want to stop right there and drink in the elegance of focusing on Freedom in a debate about science. And religion.

Religion is a quest for Truth. Science is a quest for Truth. Both require freedom of honest inquiry to establish Truth, or you wind up with idolatry and demagoguery, not religion and science. You have Political Correctness, not Truth.

What is Truth? That’s easy. It’s in the Bible. John 14:6. Jesus Christ is the Truth.

And how Darwin got to be more politically correct than Christ I do not know.

Stein addressed science, but mainly he was talking about Freedom; Freedom which I interpret as being of ultimate importance to our relationship with God and its utter necessity in our search for Him.

Trotting out the Bible as the ultimate science book is not satisfying, because our God-given thirst for discovery requires us to investigate beyond the relationship Truths of Genesis-to-Revelation. Yet the church cannot define science without stifling human creativity (look at the Dark Ages). When science stifles the church, you have, well … today.

Our creativity is an absolutely essential part of our humanity Christ came to redeem. How else can we discover Him?

We all want Freedom for our own point of view. If we battle to preserve Freedom on all fronts, religion and science will take care of themselves.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) figures our purpose in life is our quest for God, and our pursuit of Truth. We find both in Christ.

Reproducing a Controversy

Spirituality Column #45
September 18, 2007
Current! In Carmel (IN) Newspaper

Reproducing a Controversy
By Bob Walters

In a recent Sunday morning Bible study on Genesis 1 my friend Tom, a scientist, posed a great creation-vs.-evolution question:

How did sexual reproduction evolve?

That’s a real stumper. Cells (maybe God’s most underrated miracle) can divide to the satisfaction of an evolutionist who’d rather not accept the Creator God’s existence, but sex isn’t just a dividing; it’s a joining then a dividing. How could it evolve? No room there for evolutionary trial and error. Either you reproduce on the first try or you don’t get another generation to, um, evolve.

Like they taught in journalism school, you can’t get a little bit pregnant.

The first chapter of Genesis of course is the story of how God in the beginning over six days created 1. the heavens, the earth and light, 2. land, 3. seeds and vegetation, 4. the stars, sun and moon, 5. birds and fish, and 6. animals and Man (male and female; created Man in His own image).

You have to read Genesis 2 to get details of Adam and Eve, which – I guess – is the detailed version of Day 6. A lot of people stop right there and start arguing about man versus woman or how all that could happen in one day or in one week.

They forget it’s about God, not about them.

I think it’s easier just to believe Genesis and move on to what the story says to us about God in this one life we live.

In the unfallen and perfect world of Genesis 1 and 2 (the “fall,” aka “sin,” happens in Genesis 3), morality wasn’t yet an issue. Since the “fall,” morality – knowing right from wrong – is mankind’s second biggest issue next to our salvation in Christ.

If God created it – sexual reproduction, that is – He must have thought it was pretty important. Maybe we should respect all that He has to say about it.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that God created light (Day 1) before creating the stars and the sun (Day 4). So then, what is light? Hint: Jesus Christ.

Can you relate?

Spirituality Column #28
May 22, 2007
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper

Can you relate?By Bob Walters

To those who view the Bible as a guide book for our relationship with God, the Cosmos and other people, it is a liberating book of immeasurable depth.

If you try to make the Bible the full literal story of all history and the complete rules of life, you will be trapped by its smallness. There is no freedom in specific orders; there most definitely is freedom in Christ.

The Ten Commandments? Great rules. But do you mind if I work in my yard on Sunday?  For commandments that work all the time, I like “Love God” and “Love others.”

Genesis and Creation? Brilliant people on both sides of the Creationist (God created the world in six 24-hour days) and Evolutionist (we are mutated fish that crawled out of the primordial ooze over several billion years) debate will not give an inch on their respective views of Genesis 1.

Inasmuch as God, Christ and the Holy Spirit pretty much are Creation (done deal), there doesn’t seem – to me – to be a whole lot at stake arguing the topic of Creation / Evolution. It has already happened just as God planned it. Christ is all about faith, hope, love … and looking ahead.

As a believing (if personally flawed) Christian I will tell you that the main point, the sum-total of the entire Bible, is that we are to build a faith and relationship in Jesus Christ.

Can you believe in Christ without believing in Creation? I say, of course, because Creation isn’t the main thing in our relationship with God; Christ is the main thing. The Bible is crystal clear in saying Christ is the only way to have a relationship with God. The Holy Spirit will help your heart and mind sort out the details.

Instead of asking “How did I get here?” I’d ask, “How is my relationship with Christ?”

Now there is a deep question.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is a Carmel resident who believes we are here for a reason … and it isn’t to prove that mutated fish can build hospitals and highways.