Super symmetry

So I watched the next episode in this Stephen Hawking series. I apologize for focusing on just a few seconds out of such an enormous body of work. There's so much of it that goes right over my head. I'm picking the few pieces that relate to something else I know.

Hawking describes the beginning of the universe as a dot, a pinpoint, where all matter is compressed and held by this force that is perfectly even across the entire surface. The documentary called it super symmetry. The question that I'm posing is - is this force personal or impersonal?

At the same time, I was finishing up Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow. In one chapter, he talks about success. If you look close enough at successful companies and/or people, you will find a confluence of events totally out of their control. He concludes that success if blind luck. No amount of skill or effort on our part can guarantee success. Hard work just isn't enough.

My brain pulls these two things together because they both go back to the same question - is God personal or impersonal? The documentary and the book both viewed the universe as impersonal. Success is dumb luck. The Big Bang was controlled by natural law. It's all just stuff.

If God is personal, then success is providence (aka blessing). God chooses. Either way, it is still entirely out of our control. This is why God asks us to believe. Believe that He is real. Believe that He is personal. Belief offers hope. 

The Hawking documentary also touched on idea that there are multiple dimensions. Physicists use the extra dimensions to explain the behavior of gravity. That's right, scientists espouse that there are things in the universe that we can't see. Isn't that what the term spiritual means? Circling back to the question - personal or impersonal?

I believe that God is personal. That He actively directs the universe and it obeys His commands. I believe that in my pride I too often think that I can do the same thing. It doesn't work out so well. But I also believe that He loves me enough that He made a way to restore what's damaged. And I'm looking forward to the day when I don't have to wonder if I'm listening to Him or me. 

God of Creation

So my co-worker found a recent fascination with black holes. I've been watching some videos of Stephen Hawking so I can hold my own in the discussions. It's fascinating to hear what's out there in our universe. And being me, my brain is busy reconciling these things with what little I know about God.

Did the universe pop into existence billions of years ago when a black hole exploded? Who cares? Whatever mechanism God used doesn't really change the facts that the universe exists, it's big, and we live in it. So let's have some fun talking about the amazing ways that it works. And see where we might go instead of where we've been.

What are black holes? Hawking describes them as, well, holes. There's no bottom. And they seem to draw everything inside. If we accept that matter/energy is neither created nor destroyed, then what goes in must still exist. Is it trapped in the black hole or expelled somewhere else?

What would be the purpose of expelling it? Motion might be one - like a jet engine. The black holes propel the universe. Transfer is another idea. Sending used up energy to another place to start growing new galaxies, stars, and planets. This raised the question - are new planets forming?

I have to admit, I grew up in very strict fundamentalist circles. In recent years, God has really opened my eyes about how much I limit Him with my rules. So think about it this way, are the trees you see today the same ones that were here when He created the Earth? Of course not. He created trees that seeded and grew new ones. Why wouldn't He seed new galaxies?

Science fiction is fascinated with the idea of faster than light travel. We can't get to another star without it. Or at least, not very many. Our life spans are just too short. But what if we lived forever? Imagine a billion years from now, would you care about having spent 100,000 years on a space ship? Forever means no end. In a finite universe of limited size, you would, eventually, see everything and go everywhere. Is that really the limit of God's reach?

I stated earlier that energy is neither created nor destroyed - the first law of thermodynamics. I take issue with it. Well, just the first half - energy is not created. The first law assumes that the universe is a closed system. I believe that it's not. I believe that God is still pouring Himself into it.

God did not create the universe, set it in motion, and step away. He has always been intimately involved with it. He hasn't changed. He found pleasure in creation, and still does. He didn't paint a picture just to hang it on the wall. He's still painting it!

If God always intended us to live forever. And if He's bigger than our imaginations can fathom. Doesn't it stand to reason that He would expand the universe to reflect His size, not ours? By the time we explore everywhere, He will have somewhere new for us to go. Isn't that amazing?! We will never run out of new places to see, new things to learn. At every turn, He expands our knowledge just a little bit more. Refines what we thought we knew in ways we can't see yet. Over, and over, and over.

Do black holes feed into that? I have no idea. But won't it be fun to find out? To travel to one and figure out a way to measure, see, learn what happens. God didn't create a universe that puts things out of our reach. He created it to reveal His majesty and splendor. Then populated it with us to appreciate them. We can't appreciate what we don't know. It would be self-defeating to put things out of reach. They may be hard. It may take a very long time. The journey is half the fun.

And don't worry about learning all there is. He's way too big for that. There will always be a new mystery. Some twist or turn that we didn't expect. Now that's exciting!

Stress

So a couple of things have been running around in my head for a while. First is a sermon from Stephen Gambill about two mountains - Sinai and Zion. Mt. Sinai represents judgement, condemnation. When the Israelites came to that mountain, God surrounded it. There was thunder, lightning, darkness. The Bible describes the mountain as melting before Him. Sinai was where God gave the law to Moses. Imagine facing that alone. An angry God and He's looking right at you.

Zion, in contrast, is open arms. God saying welcome home. Thunder and lightning replaced with bright light and tranquility. It's a stark contradiction from Sinai.

And both of them are real. God is the same God, the same person, who expresses Himself in both ways at the same time. Sinai and Zion are in tension. Two opposites that are both true and exist at the same time. My brain can't reconcile that.

Thing 2

This made me think about the tensions in our world. My friend likes to describe these as grey areas. I hate grey areas. I cannot hold two emotions at the same time. And the idea that there is an acceptable balance between them is completely foreign.

Tension is everywhere. There was tension this morning when Vania snuck in a video game she wasn't allowed to play. There's tension every Monday morning when I have to get up for work, but I love what I do. The fact that I have to creates tension.

Sin creates tension. The apostle Paul talks about the law of sin and death versus the law of life (the spirit). These two always stand in opposition to each other - tension. Darwin summed up the law of sin and death very neatly: survival of the fittest. The strong prey on the weak. It's every man for himself.

Survival of the fittest is how the world works left to itself. It's a world of erosion, excess, self-destruction. Every advance exacts a price (think cars and smog, or industrialization and environmental concerns). On its own, the world breaks down. This the law of nature. Everything runs out, winds down, and eventually dies. Even the sun will one day burn out. It may be a very long time. But it is inevitable.

Contrast that with the picture painted in Revelations, the lion lays down with the lamb. Picture that for a second. A full grown male lion, with a full mane, sitting on the ground, his paws wrapped around a lamb. Both are at complete peace. The same passage says that a baby (think of your grandchild) will stick his hand in an adder's nest. And nothing happens. Well, maybe the snake licks his hand and the baby squeals because it tickles.

This is God's law of life. The law of sin and death breeds fear. Approach a snake now, and it will bite you because it's afraid. Sheep are afraid of lions. Lions are afraid of us. We're afraid of the ozone layer, pollution, and dying.

Fear leads to the dark side (to quote Yoda). We do self-destructive things because of fear. Fear creates tension.

Wrapping It Up

How do you resolve tension? How do you reconcile two opposites that are constantly fighting? Each trying to kill the other? I don't know either.

We should be enjoying our world. Admiring a beautiful sunset. Eating good food because it's fun to taste the flavors. Standing in awe of a panoramic view as the clouds touch the mountain tops and the sun glistens off the lake. Instead, we worry about starving, rush to drive home from work, and stand back from the edge of the cliff. Why? Because that world is out to kill us.

We know, deep in our hearts, this is wrong. We know that it shouldn't be survival of the fittest. In X-Men: Apocalypse, Charles Xavier tells the strong mutants to protect those who are weak. And the audience applauds that as noble, heroic. That's how the world should be. That's what we want it to be.

And when this world let's us down, we find ways of hiding from the pain. It shouldn't be this way, but it is. We live on Mt. Sinai. We want to live on Mt. Zion. Tension.

Rules for Living

In an earlier post, I mentioned some simple rules that I follow. A friend asked me what those rules were. I have to admit that I don't know (or realize) all of them. One that stood out today - no one wants to listen. My life is boring. I don't tell a good story. And no one really wants to listen to me complain. Or that's the rationalization.

So that begs the question - what am I rationalizing? Talking is hard. I don't know why. I have never been able to follow conversations. This goes back to that system 1 (the automatic system) and system 2 (the thinking system). I live the majority of my life in the thinking system (2). Conversations rely heavily on the automatic system (1). Try this little experiment - list out the cues you use to know when it's your turn to speak. I'll wait...

My guess is that you couldn't really come up with many. Certainly not a comprehensive list. Then add the extra complexity that every person involved is different - sending out different signals. The thinking system works with rules and algorithms. What's the algorithm for something you can't define? I don't know either. So it takes a lot of mental energy to figure out when it's okay to speak. I just don't have that kind of time. Thinking is slow.

Now let's add one more dimension - the lies we tell ourselves. I lie to myself. That's what rationalization is - a lie I tell myself to justify something I want to do (usually something wrong). I know that I do this. And I spend energy vetting the things I say. So not only do I expend energy thinking about when to say it, but also what to say. Is it appropriate? Is it selfish? Am I complaining or expressing emotion in a healthy way? What is the algorithm for that?

Want to know how I came up with the last paragraph? It's exactly what went through my head when I decided to write this. Seriously, I almost went for my walk first and did the dishes, I've found these things are blocks. They are blocking me from doing the thing God asked me to do. Why? Because I'm still broken and my human nature is directly opposed to what God wants. My natural instinct is to do anything but what He asked me to do. I block His voice by filling my time with other stuff. Some of it may be important or valuable. But it's not what He asked me to do right in this moment.

In The Artist's Way, author Julia Cameron gives 10 principle of creativity. One that really stands out to me is the refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature. Blocks represent a refusal to be creative. God is a creator. The Bible even starts that way - in the beginning, God created. The things He commands us to do are creative - build up people, build things, do something that makes the world a little better than it was. My refusal to obey Him is a refusal to be creative. And it is putting my will over His.

Rules and Laws

So now I'm going to totally change direction and make one last point. The apostle Paul, in one of his letters, says that we're no longer under the law of sin and death, but the law of life. What exactly is the law of life?

The law of sin and death he referred to meant the old Mosaic law. You know, the 10 commandments, the book of Deuteronomy, all that Old Testament stuff - obey or else. To the Jews it meant dietary restrictions, work restrictions, rules about how to do things. And these were very detailed laws. Breaking one meant that you had to kill an animal. Seriously, something had to die.

That law was specifically designed to point out everything you did wrong. Nobody, and I mean nobody, could possibly keep it perfectly. Jesus even came along later and said that merely thinking about breaking it was exactly the same as breaking it. This is the law of sin and death. Hopeless. Mean. Disheartening.

But Jesus kept that law. And He still suffered the penalty for breaking it - death. He did that in our place. So, as Paul says, put us under the law of life. Imagine your entire life laid out as marbles. Each marble represents something you did. And we sort them into two bowls - good and bad. The law of sin looked at the bad bowl. When Jesus took our sin, the bad bowl goes away. What's left?

Well, the good bowl of course. See? The old law focused on what you did wrong. The new law looks at what you did right. The old law brought a penalty for failure. The new law is about a reward for success. This is what Paul means by law of life. You get something for following it. Not lose something when you don't.

Now read Galatians 5 with this in mind. We are free from the penalty. No matter what you do, there is no penalty. Paul then goes to the flip side - do good things because you're building a reward. Yes, you can do anything, but why would you want to miss out on everything God wants to give you?

So now answer this question, are you afraid of someone who is looking for a reason to give you what you want? Well no. We're afraid of people who want to hurt us. The old law hurt. The new law - life - is all about our good. We're no longer slaves. I don't have to worry about the times I fail. I can find God's peace in the moments I obey.

I'll admit, that's still hard for me to live. My feelings tell a different story.

Music

I don't like sharing music. I don't want people to know what I'm listening to. I don't have a favorite song. And I won't tell you what type of music I like to hear. Why? Because music evokes emotion. And emotions have to be buried.

In a previous post, I mentioned following some simple rules to get through the complexity of every day life. A friend asked me what those rules were. Honestly, they're so ingrained, I'm not even fully aware of all of them. A really big one is the golden rule - do unto others as you want them to do to you. There are all kinds of sub-points under that one.

That emotion thing is another one of them. I remember riding the school bus one day, staring out the window, and wishing I was more like Mr. Spock on Star Trek - without emotions. Emotions hurt. And not having them is preferable. I've come to learn, after 45 years of struggling, that my emotions aren't normal.

In her book Thinking in Pictures, the author Temple Grandin describes her emotions as childish. That's an apt description. I put this together with Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Emotions feed system 1. One of system 1's abilities involves proportion. System 1 is what allows you to tell if that guy selling you the used car asked a reasonable price. It's what lets you know how angry you should be when your child spills Cheerios all over the couch. System 1 is how you decide when you got a good deal.

I have the emotions of a five year old. They are on and they are off. I feel happy, angry, sad, whatever very intensely or not at all. There is very little leeway.

I have no words for emotions. I can't tell you how I feel. I think in terms of things. Temple Grandin talks about emotions being tied to places. That's very true. Places are things. Music is a thing. I can only express things, not emotions. The problem comes when people focus on the thing instead of the feeling.

I'm sorry, but I'm a sinful person, just like the rest of you. And some of the things that pop into my brain aren't nice. Aren't pure. I get angry. It comes out as yelling, raised voice, and some verbal strikes. All of which is an emotional expression. So how do you think it feels when the only things anyone cares about is the yelling? See, when you say "stop yelling", I hear "stop feeling".

I spent my entire life listening to mantras like control your temper, sex outside of marriage is wrong, think pure thoughts. And - let me say for the record - all of them are true. But what do you do when those things are the only expression you have for what you feel?

I guess there's one last point that I want to make - I know the difference between what I think and what I do. In my mind, there is a very, very sharp difference between what I imagine and what I will actually do. Just because the thing is expressed does not mean I should or would act on it. The thing doesn't matter. It is merely an expression. The feeling matters.

I think of Vania. I think of a friend's daughter who cannot keep lists in order. None of the social norms work. You cannot train them like other children. It's like letting them loose on the open ocean in the dark, and telling them to just swim to shore. They cannot be taught through system 1. I get that. I can't learn through system 1 either.

And no, I still won't share my music.

Thinking Out Loud

I've been reading the book Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Mr. Kahneman describes our decision making as 2 systems - system 1 and system 2. It's a helpful metaphor. Oversimplifying, System 1 would be things like intuition, feelings, and instinct. System 2 is conscious thought, reasoning, and calculations.

I realize that I live most of my life in system 2. Something about system 1 is broken. Or maybe the connections between the two systems are broken. I don't really understand the mechanics.

For example, what comes to mind when you see the word peace? Now that you're back from your happy place, how were you feeling? Did you have an emotional reaction of peace?

In my brain, peace is not a feeling. It is the absence of chaos. It's nothingness. But that's not really what peace is, is it? I don't have a peaceful life. I have an empty life. Empty of the noise. System 1 doesn't register peace like it should.

Because of stuff like that, I go into all human interactions using system 2. Ponder that for a second. My brain thinks, calculates, reasons about every human interaction. That makes them very tiring, difficult. Worse, relationships are too complicated for system 2. People are too complicated. There are no rules that express their complexity. So I don't feel connected.

I apply some simple rules that get me through the day. It isn't a lack of caring. It isn't a dislike or desire to be alone. To me, this is normal.

Now having said all of that, I know that peace is more than the absence of chaos. I've felt peace, solely through God's grace. It came in a few brief moments when I needed Him the most. But without His constant presence, I don't feel peace. And that messes with my head. It gives a foot hold to doubt - is something wrong with me? Am I not doing enough, being enough?

The answer is no. God loves me, broken as I am. Someone once told me that I was very personable. They're right. I learned some easy rules for smooth interactions. But I have a an almost impossible time bridging that gap into something deeper - even with people I know and trust, it's still unsettling to interact.

In those moments of peace, God assures me that He loves me. Even though I can't feel it, I remember. And one day, when He walks with us again, His strength will be enough to overcome the noise and static in my brain. One day, I'll feel a whole range of emotions, just like He does. A life I've never known.

Those brief moments (I can count them on one hand) are hope. They are the promise of my future. He reaches us all in different ways. He knows our deepest longings. And He promises to fulfill them. This is what makes God personal. A person, who wants a relationship with me, with you. And that's the hope - He's personal. Jesus is the one who makes this relationship possible. He stands in the gap - speaking the words I don't have. Watching. Guiding. Holding. Asking - before I know to ask. Jesus is why God can come to me.

Plus Love

Can we revisit the discussion about obedience and compliance? I missed something important. The difference between obedience and compliance is love. In math terms (yes, I'm a nerd), Obedience = Compliance + Love.

This little revelation made me wonder about the other fruits of the spirit - joy, peace, faith, kindness. In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul says ...but do not have love, then I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. Imagine a loud, obnoxious noise. Cymbals are great - as part of an orchestra. But you don't find many solos. You can comply, not fight, smile a lot, and even hold the door for people. Without love, those acts have no meaning, no substance.

The cymbals enhance an orchestra. They bring something extra to the piece, at just the right moment, as part of a larger whole. Love is that whole. The acts, the things that you do, are crashing cymbals. As part of a symphony, they enhance and bring out the music that is there behind them. By themselves, well, it makes a noise and goes away.

Jesus always focused on our relationship with God. His death, His teaching, His life all centered on His and our relationship. Obedience isn't just doing what's asked - following the rules. It's doing what isn't asked. It's knowing another person so well that you can anticipate their wants and needs, and doing those even before they know it. Do you get that reading a rule book?

Rules are important. They are the starting point of a relationship. Rules set boundaries. And when you're starting a relationship, the rules provides points of discussion. As you bump into the boundaries, you get to know the other person and they get to know you. You work together adjusting boundaries, opening fences, and becoming of one mind.

We've talked before about thinking in pictures. I picture structures. When I learn your rules, I learn about you. As I picture the structure, I can feel like I know you more. The same is true of my relationship with God. He gave me rules in the Bible. And as I talk to Him about them, He teaches me new things about Himself. See, when I love Him, I look at Him, not the rules. The rules become a means to an end.

The author of Hebrews talks about faith - the faith of Abraham, Jacob. Moses, Sarah. Faith = Belief + Love. You can believe in God intellectually. But until you love Him, it's not faith. In Matthew 7, Jesus says not everyone who calls me Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven. How do you turn knowledge into faith? How do you add love to belief? I don't know.

For me, it took an example of love from people who aren't believers to understand God's love for me. That's the thing - we're all different. And God knows You in a way that is more personal than any human being can ever know You. What He promises is that if You look, He will be there. God doesn't hide Himself, playing hard to get. It just takes a lot for us to look past our own fears, our own wants, our own selves. We spend so much effort trying to be the center, that we instinctively pull away from Him as our center. This is the deepest feeling in human beings. The one thing that motivates all of the destructive and evil things we hate about ourselves. The real question is, where do you go from here?