Dialogue with the Divine

This morning during my time of stillness and prayer I asked God to remove the nagging doubts of his existence and involvement from my mind. I said amen and then checked my email where I found this:


07/21/08
Explaining Away Light
Jill Carattini

Ballet lost some of its wonder when it was explained. It was a class that was supposed to lift my mind, lighten my spirit, and boost my grade point average. Instead it became a one-credit nightmare: a class dedicated to dissecting moves I could not duplicate, within a semester that seemed to slowly dismember my fascination with dance.

Explanations sometimes have a way of leaving us with a sense of loss. Students note this phenomenon regularly. Expounded principles of light refraction and water particles seem to explain away the rainbow, or at least some of its mystique. Air pressure, gravity, and the laws of physics deconstruct the optical mystery of the curve ball. Knowledge and experience can leave us with a sense of disappointment or disenchantment.

I recently read an article that scientifically explained the glow of a firefly. The author noted the nerves and chemical compounds that make the "fire" possible, pointing out that it is merely a signal used for mating and far from the many romantic myths that have long surrounded it. I put the article down with a sigh. And then a thought occurred to me in a manner not unlike the promise of Christ: The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.(1) Where nerves and photocytes seem to explain away the glow of the firefly, have we any more erased the miracle of light?

However accurate or inaccurate our explanations might be, they sometimes have a way of leading us to short-sided conclusions. They have also led us to outright incongruity. We have now tried with great effort to define humanity as an impersonal product of chance, an adult germ in a vast cosmic machine. We have brusquely described life as a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing, only to claim this should not lead us to despair. We have declared our appetites the gods of a better religion, while insisting both God and religion to be an invention of the human psyche. We scoff at the notion of a savior who frees the captive or restores the fallen, while maintaining we live with every qualification for human dignity, distinction, and freedom. But are these even realistic applications of our own philosophies? Do the explanations warrant the conclusions?

On the contrary, we are undermining our own mines. In the words of R.C. Sproul, we are living on borrowed capital. Why should a product of chance have intrinsic value? Why would an impersonal, cosmic accident see herself as a personal, relational being worthy of dignity? What we are attempting to explain away in one sentence, we are arguing for in the next.

Explanations need not always lead us to the conclusion that all is lost. But neither should our explanations lead us to conclusions that contradict our own accounts! Thankfully, in both cases, there are times in life where we find, like Job, that we have spoken out of turn and discover there may be more to the story. After sitting through the whirlwind of God's 63 questions, Job exclaims: "I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know" (Job 42:3).

The invitation is before us. "Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and hidden things that you have not known" (Jeremiah 33:3). God’s presence can be overlooked, but it cannot be explained away; the effort is as futile as the attempt to explain away the miracle of light.

Jill Carattini is senior associate writer at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.