From an Angel’s Point of View
About the limits of SCIENCE, and the reality of SPIRIT.
So much disagreement nowadays; so many different opinions. So much guess work, even when it’s called scientific. Sure, scienterific!
Within a certain circle of experience, we know an awful lot.
On the edge of that circle, we know a little, and our guesses help us find more knowledge.
But outside that circle, well, we are just guessing wildly, aren’t we? And why? Because really, we don’t have the faintest idea.
What am I talking about?
About how this life came to be, how this world came to be, this universe, and ultimately, how we came to be. How did mankind arrive on this amazing planet in this amazing universe?
Now, science is an amazing discipline. It’s almost an art form, like classical music. The greatest music combines highly intelligent musical structures with wonderful imaginative melodies.
Scientists are remarkable people, practicing a remarkable craft. Constantly pushing the envelope, trying to think outside the box, combining complex knowledge with powerful imagination, all of it supported by high intelligence.
Yes, it is worth comparing science with the music by Bach, for instance.
Building on all available information, coming up with amazing concepts, all the while trying to understand the mysteries that surround us. To be a good scientist, you need to master your field of expertise obviously, but more so, you need to be passionate about solving riddles, be a creative thinker, relentlessly playful and determined to find the needle in the haystack.
Through science people were able to walk the moon, and through science we now know that our universe is not the only one. Not so long ago WE discovered that in the greater picture, our sun is just an ordinary star among thousands of similar star-suns. And each of those suns has it’s own universe with solar system, stars, moons, milky ways, comets, the lot. Imagine that. What was already VAST, now becomes so incredibly VAST, there’s no imaging it. Beyond the beyond!
By the way, you wonder, would each of those universes have it’s own PLANET EARTH? Wow, what a thought! Imagine that!
Such vastness of space! Even travelling at the speed of light will not get you there in a million years. Yet, it’s been discovered; it’s there!
Picture a space craft space travelling at the speed of light for thousands of years; you’ve been frozen, scheduled to wake up at the end of the journey, and then, finally the moment has come, you get woken up, you shake the ice and have some coffee; than, you open the curtain, the screen, and you look out the window, to discover that you’ve not even left this universe; our street as it were. You’ve barely even reached the corner shop.
Space is so VAST, if we’d travel at 10 times the speed of light, we’d still need ETERNITY to get to just the next SOLAR SYSTEM. And there are 100 solar systems beyond that one.
Some Scientists looking at the VASTNESS of SPACE, get scared! Even the cool blooded scientist gets dizzy, looking at the endlessness of space. It’s like looking into eternity, or staring at the sun; you just can’t do it for very long.
Looking for answers to the many questions that are unresolved, we get some (answers), and resolve a few matters, but the fact is, while searching for answers, many new questions come up, that we have no answers for.
The number of unresolved questions doubles, and doubles again, and again… It’s overwhelming!
We, the ordinary Joe Public, were thinking that any day now the scientists will report to the media that all questions have now been answered and all mysteries resolved. Piece at last; no more political fighting of the evolutionists against the creationists. It’s all been settled. But no (alas)!
Even the most brilliant people who have given their lives to research & study, tell us that the universe, the mystery of life, the human body; all of it is far more complicated then ever imagined. In the greater scheme of things, our famous trip to the moon was nothing more than little Johnny crossing the busy road for a Mars Bars, and getting back again, all on his own.
Really, we continue to be scratching at the surface, and it is a mistake to think that all the answers to life-and-death will be found through science; they will not!
The more we know, the more we realise how little we really know. So should we think that perhaps in 10 or 20 years we’ll have the answers, and all our questions will be settled? Clearly we already know that that is not going to happen.
How can a scientist work out ETERNITY? He or she just can’t. It’s beyond us! Work out the essence of life; the endlessness of space; Spirit over Matter. Nobody can work those out. But these mysteries DO surround us!
Now, for the sake of argument, lets imagine for just a few moments, that somehow we are able to work out those big themes of eternity and life & death. Imagine we work it all out, how this earth came to be, how we, the people came to be here, life before death, life after death. We take hold of eternity and endless space; somehow we crack the code.
There was a time people thought the earth was flat, and you’d fall of, if you got to the edge, and you just kept going.
Than, when it was discovered that the earth was round, all kinds of big questions were suddenly answered. For instance, you travel to the East and you just keep on going, eventually you re-appear in the West. What a mystery resolved! (And you didn’t fall of the earth.) Perhaps TIME has a similar quality. You just keep going forward, and all of a sudden you find you’ve arrived back at the beginning. Maybe that’s how God exists: He is still in the past; He’s in the now, and He’s in the future; past, present and future, all at once. Must be a HIGH PLACE, where time has been elevated to FOREVER NOW. Heaven?
Who knows?
Now imagine, you space-travel in one direction to find yourself (eventually) returning from the other direction. Sounds grand! How long would it take to get around? Would anyone dare try it out? I guess, by the time you finally get back there will be nobody to welcome you back. Bit of a let down.
Somehow I think time doesn’t bend like space. It’s a separate mystery!
Perhaps in the time, long ago, when people thought the earth was flat, they didn’t realise that gravity as we know it only exists on the surface of the earth. Up in space there’s no gravity. Think of it! That is an incredible reality. The weight of just a wheel barrow full of earth is more then you want to know, if you’re having to move it. The weight of mountains, countries, oceans, hills, farmland, forests, deserts, and towns & cities, the weight of the core of this earth. It must be some astronomical figure. Completely beyond imagination, how all of that weight could ever be shifted. And yet the whole of it just floats in space! Unbelievable. (And than to think that the Aussies are doing their whole life, society, buildings, cars, people, everything: upside-down.)
So lets assume that science works it all out, the beginning and the end, everything in between, and what comes afterwards. (We know it’s impossible.) With all the answers in our hands (or heads) a new question pops up: what’s the meaning of it all?
Technical answers to all the impossible questions (the mysteries) will not inform us why we are here, who we really are, what the meaning is of it all, and where is this all leading? What is the difference between good and bad, and at what point does good become bad? More questions without answers.
Perhaps we are looking in the wrong place for answers. Science with all of its exact information may just be a little too one-dimensional to be able to unlock the mystery.
The world around us is full of technical equipment, and society is all about technical achievements and technical provision. In our lives we are surrounded by technical information. We’ve come to rely on equipment, cars, computers, TV’s, satellite communication, long distance reporting, medical provision etc. This is now our daily language. Mostly black & white; the light is red, the light is green, and you get a few seconds of yellow in between.
But what about meaning, identity, love, friendship, relationship, feelings, beauty, inspiration, wisdom, joy?
A human being, a person is so rich in all of that. Even if science worked out all the answers to how we got here and so on, we all know that there’s a great deal more to life than the technical, medical, astronomical way we came to be.
To be human is all about the wealth of emotions, relationships, colour and music, character, conflict, beauty, choices, the deeper meaning of things, and ultimately LOVE. Now where did all of those things come from? Surely they didn’t just suddenly arrive when the scientific formation of mankind was completed? No! All these things came from the world of the spirit!
Most people readily agree that there’s such a thing as a ‘spiritual world’; a world of spiritual forces, like black magic, witchcraft, palm reading, astrology, religion, knowing God; knowing Jesus. The spiritual world is very real, and yet not very open to scientific research. It really is not the world of science; it’s another world; call it another layer to reality.
However, we all know that there’s plenty of spiritual DARKNESS around. Like black magic, voodoo, spiritism… ; dodgy spiritual powers that can mess with you, if you give them a chance. I for one, certainly want to stay well away from those things. So what else is there? Good question!
It’s a bit like asking for directions on the road, but you’re not entirely sure of where you’re going. The wrong person can easily send you where you don’t want to be.
WHO DO YOU ASK?
WHO DO YOU TRUST? No science now to help us out. So what do we do?
What we do is this:
We assume that GOD exists. It’s impossible really to imagine this rich world (physical, emotional, spiritual) without God’s presence. For a start, if God didn’t exist, where did the Spiritual Wold then originate? No God, no spirit life. No spirit life, no emotion, no relationship, no beauty, no music, no colour, no love, no meaning. Those are all spiritual qualities. Planet earth is full of those things, and PEOPLE are the only creatures that can actually appreciate those qualities. Some of those qualities wouldn’t exist without people, and through PEOPLE the realm of the SPIRIT becomes powerful and rich.
But leave this planet, and along with it the people that it holds, and the first thing to go is SOUND, as well as oxygen, water, gravity, warmth, hope, love, faith…
Planet Earth really is a very special place; like no-where else in space it seems. As if it was put together ESPECIALLY for us to live here. Some people would argue that it gradually evolved, and it ended up growing trees and people. I find that hard to believe. It is SO COMPLEX and SO MULTI-LAYERED, SO FULL OF MEANING, SO INCREDIBLY UNIQUE. If I tried my hardest, I cannot believe that it all just bubbled up. This existence is not the incidental result of some chaotic explosion millions of years ago. Of course not! There’s a PLOT to this story; a PLAN behind time & space. Some COSMIC SCHEME is unfolding.
If I try to analyze life, I see a struggle between GOOD & EVIL. You either operate from GIVING, which is LOVE (which brings good), or you operate from SELFISHNES, which is HATRED (which brings evil).
If I imagine that SPACE is like a big circle; that ETERNITY is like some big circle, that LIGHT can be transformed into MATTER, that it IS POSSIBLE to disappear in one place, and re-appear in another.
But then I see that this world is a FALLEN WORLD really, like you trip and fall and get hurt. Gravity can hurt anybody, and sooner or later it will hurt everybody. It comes with the territory: you live on this earth, sooner or later you’re going to get hurt. We all do. Sooner or later, you’re going to mess up; we all do. Sooner or later, you’re going to lie, or steal, get jealous, hate and dream of killing.
A fallen world with fallen people.
A beautiful place, but certainly not perfect, with beautiful people who are far from perfect, and unable to live forever, and space travel where ever we like. We’re stuck really on this little globe, for the years that we have, and than we die. What a predicament. What a let-down! While we were here, we got to look at some amazing mysteries, and for a while we thought we were getting it all sorted; but than, we discovered we were only scratching the surface, and the mysteries were getting bigger, deeper, more complex, even more impossible to resolve.With all the great discoveries of science, we didn’t really move forward!
The more we knew, the more we realized that we didn’t know anything. The more I know, the more I realise how little I know!
Now, I can keep going, and tell myself that I’ll work it all out some time…; sometime…
Or I can come to my senses and realize that I’ll NEVER work it out. Give me 5 more life times, and I’ll still be scratching the surface… Perhaps I need to change my assumptions. Lets assume that there IS a plan behind this world and this life, and that the SPIRIT WORLD DOES EXIST, outside the reach of my meters and telescope.
Let’s assume that God exists.
After al, if he doesn’t, what have we to loose working with the assumption that he does. You have to consider the possibility if ever you want to find the real thing. If you discount the possibility, well you’ll never find what you didn’t want to see.
It’s not very scientific (pushing the envelope/ thinking outside the box) to not even suppose that God exists! So let’s suppose He does exist!
Now we want to ask God a number of questions, but we know he doesn’t answer like getting the result of a scientific experiment, or like asking a friend on the telephone. So how does God speak, or should I say: how do I hear him?
Maybe the Bible has something to say about this.
After all, it’s God’s word. He gave it to us, so we can get to know him, and hear him speak.
