God and the heavens (1)

Whatever the process may have been by which He did it, the undeniable claim of Scripture remains: God made the heavens (Ps. 136:5).

I have been giving some considerable thought to the heavens lately, prodded by at least two influences. First is the David’s musing in Psalm 8: “When I consider the heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and that stars, which You have ordained, what is man…?” It is a mystery, isn’t it? The cosmos, after all, is very big (you may have noticed). And even though astronomers have been making a good bit of noise of late about exo-planets and water on Mars and “Goldilocks zones” and other hopeful signs of life elsewhere, the fact remains: We are the only planet we know of which supports intelligent life.

Then why are the heavens so vast? No matter how deep we are able to peer into space, more galaxies emerge from the darkness beyond what we once considered the outer limits of the cosmos. What’s the purpose or meaning in all this cosmic vastness? How does all this enormity and blackness relate to our lives as humans, especially those of us who claim to be the image-bearers of God?

The second prod has been the understandable stubbornness of the secular scientific community in its resolutely materialist attempt to make sense of it all. The more writing I come across about dark matter and dark energy, the more it sounds like wink-wink/nod-nod to me: Something’s there and we’ll just call it “matter” of some sort and that’ll satisfy everybody, even though we don’t have a clue what this stuff is.

Something’s there, that much is obvious. But that whatever’s there must be matter of some sort is only obvious to those who refuse to consider any other possibility beyond the self-imposed blinders of their materialist worldview.

But this only leaves me musing more about dark matter and dark energy and reflecting on those mysterious passages in Scripture which describe the Lord as inhabiting darkness, coming in darkness, and spreading out darkness before His presence. But that’s a topic for another installment.

This much is clear from Scripture, as I said: the heavens were made to order. God made them, whatever the process may have been, or however long it might have taken. God made the heavens; He commanded them into existence. Therefore, the heavens, in all their vastness and complexity, must have a purpose. And that purpose must point back to God. Astronomy and cosmology therefore are incomplete unless they take us back to the Source of it all.

But we cannot expect secular cosmologists and astronomers to remark the glory and purposes of God with respect to their disciplines and research. At the same time, Christians must not be content with merely partial science. Since we know God made the heavens, and therefore the heavens have a purpose related to the divine economy, our duty as Christians observing or working in this field is to force the knowledge of the heavens back toward a closed circle, back toward the purposes and glory of God.

And this is a duty to be fulfilled in the classroom, in publication, in the professional seminar, and in everyday conversations with colleagues and laymen alike.

My SkEye app on my smart phone allows me to point up at any star and press a button. Zap! That’s Venus or whatever. My curiosity about the heavens is growing daily, and I’m grateful for the work secular astronomers, cosmologists, and engineers have accomplished to bring more of that vastness within reach of understanding.

But we have the mind of Christ. He carried out the command of God to create this great gallery of galaxies and such, and we who know Him and want to think with His mind must press the issue of what it’s all about, what it means, and what we really stand to learn from considering the heavens, the work of God’s fingers.