by Aaron Davis
Plagues covered Egypt in Exodus 7:11 because the Pharaoh would not release the children of God from slavery.
What about Gideon defeating an entire army with 300 men (Judges 6:8)? Or Balaam’s donkey talking to him (Numbers 22)? How about the time the Pharisee, Saul of Tarsus, was knocked off his horse in the middle of a quest to kill Christians and was converted to Christianity (Acts 9)?
There’s the time when Paul and Silas are in chains in prison and begin to sing praises to God. All the prisoners’ chains were broken and all the doors were opened, yet no prisoner leaves or escapes because the liberty and freedom they were experiencing in that prison was greater in that moment than what they would experience outside its walls (Acts 16).
Each of these instances defies any and all logic or knowledge about God prior to His doing it. Before these events, man would have, based upon his previous experience, assumed these things unfathomable. Afterward, the perception of who God is and how He works was forever changed as He revealed something about Himself that mankind didn’t know about Him before that moment.
NOT SO BLACK AND WHITE
Before I go any further, let me say right now—I believe without a shadow of a doubt that a God who could create the universe would be “all powerful” (omnipotent). But I have come to question the conditions that He Himself may have placed upon His omnipotence.
I had a conversation a few weeks ago with a friend in which he justified his perspective with the common, “Well, it must just be God’s will,” as if to state that everything is black and white. Either it’s God’s will or it’s not.
Then I asked him a question: “What if it was not that God willed it, but that He actually couldn’t do anything about it?” The very thought of that was completely foreign to him and I could tell by his facial expression that he didn’t like it.
Now, don’t write me off for heresy or start building a mental case for why that statement was false. I was trying to get my friend to think outside of a box that tradition has made for most of us to be very black and white. I’m not convinced it is as absolute as we have been led to believe.
I get it. For most Christians, that question would directly oppose their perspective of what it means for God to be omnipotent and borders on blasphemy, because many believers think that when God doesn’t act, it’s either His will or that He simply chooses not to. But what if there is more to the equation? What if what is happening is completely contrary to His will but He is actually in a position where as much as it irritates or grieves Him, He actually can’t respond because of an additional variable? And if there were a missing variable in our understanding or experience, wouldn’t you want to know what it was?
A GOD OF LAWS
If God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, is it possible that this aspect of who He is or how He reveals Himself is also the same? Could it be justified that He is ever the same in totality but ever-changing in our perception of Him as He continues to show us more? And furthermore, if He is omnipotent, is there anything that He can’t do?
If you say yes, I pose the question: What is it that omnipotence is limited by?
If you say no, I pose the question: What if, in spite of His omnipotence and omniscience, He created a law that limited Himself in some capacity? Then, considering the additional variable presented in that scenario, would there be anything He couldn’t do?
The Bible says God is not a man who can lie. What if He made a declaration that somehow limited His ability to be able to use His omnipotence at will? If God is all-powerful, is it possible that in the depth and width of His might, He could have made a decision that kept Him from action because His Word or a law that He created bound Him to not act?
In that case, does it mean that His omnipotence is even defined by an ability to act or a choice not to? Could it be argued that God is still completely omnipotent, but also because of His own rule, He could be confined or restrained? And if so, could that explain why at times it seems God doesn’t interfere directly in every event of our lives, in wars, and to prevent murders and death? Might this also substantiate some of the missing variables of “free will”?
WHAT’S IN A WORD?
Many times our understanding of a concept or word is based completely upon what our perception of the definition or experience relating to the word is. But what if we thought we knew something about a topic, only to find out more was true? Could that change the definition and our perception altogether?
I’m about to intentionally present many thoughts for consideration that may initially seem as though I’m not answering or elaborating upon them. This chapter should create more questions than answers. Please understand that while introducing you to these questions and thoughts, what will be addressed in future chapters of this book could step on the toes of what many have traditionally and simply accepted at face value.
I place a significant amount of value upon where we have come from traditionally. I just think there may be more than what we may have assumed to be our complete understanding. Right now, the answer is not as important as allowing yourself to think and process some questions that until now you may have never considered. Much of what I will be presenting is an exercise in thinking outside the box and coming to your own conclusions without just spoon-feeding you mine. So take a deep breath, open your mind, and consider these ideas with me.
I wonder: is it possible that our definition of God’s omnipotence hasn’t somehow incorrectly also included the additional “unrestrictedly capable of doing all things” to our perception of the definition? After all, if I could point out a single area where God could not do something (which I will do in a moment), wouldn’t that add perspective to an argument that you may have already completely resolved in your mind?
Again, in this exercise I’m not telling you what to think; I’m trying to teach you a different way to think—a way that traditional teaching typically does not encourage but will lend you some very significant perspective if you continue on with me just a little bit more.
If God made a covenant to not act in a certain manner, then can He go against His own Word and still maintain His unchanging character? God swore to Noah that He would never destroy the earth by flood again. So can He or not? The question is not if He is conceptually capable of doing it. If God did it once, then He proved that He can through the first flood. But does His covenant with man create a circumstance in which He actually cannot do what He may very well have wanted to do or was physically capable of otherwise doing, in essence making Him incapable (or at the very least restrictedly capable) of doing what He is physically able to do?
If God cannot lie and His covenant binds Him to His Word, then it would seem logical to me that in spite of His omnipotence, there is apparently something that God cannot do (like destroying the world by flood again) without the said action changing His character as one who keeps covenant to a liar.
I’ve spent a lot of time deeply pondering these catch-22 type of scenarios and I know for at least a percentage of people, this may be the first time that you are even considering these thought processes. Maybe you’re trying to think of every biblical occurrence that fits the same reasoning as above. If you are, I say, good! I, too, had to work through those thoughts to arrive at a place where I could even rationalize what came next.
You might be mumbling to yourself: Well, Aaron, you’ve certainly made me think. But how does this have anything to do with my daily life?
Everything.
Understand I’m attempting to pose one scenario to help you get past the traditional perspective of God being omnipotent. Many people struggle with this (perhaps yourself included) as they process their own disappointment or failed expectations for God to act, based upon what they have been taught. You may even assume because of your belief and perception of God being all-powerful that His failure to exercise power in your circumstance was somehow directly related to how He feels about you or that it reflects His desire or will concerning you.
> Something bad happened, and you thought it was your fault because you didn’t pray enough. You called out to God, and He didn’t answer, so you think maybe that’s because He doesn’t love you enough—or at all.
But that’s not true.
God loves you dearly. In every circumstance. In every disappointment. Through every death and illness you walk through with a loved one. You cannot do anything to make Him love you less.
That alone may be a revelation to you.
But to help make this a bit more clear for the one struggling, in the scenario above, it’s not necessarily the case that God is incapable of breaking covenant; He can’t break covenant (as in the example of Noah and flooding the earth again) and remain the same, because if He did, it would change who He is. So if He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever, and He’s not a man that He can lie, is it safe to say that even if it is by choice, there are things He cannot do because His Words or covenant hold Him to a standard that would change Him if He did not live up to them?
Now what if there are other scenarios (like his promise to Noah to never destroy the earth by flood) that we may or may not be aware of at this point that could equally keep Him from intervening in situations?
THE MISSING LINK
All of these are hypothetical scenarios, so let me help you see it from a modern point. I will build on this train of thought and reveal what I believe is the missing variable in the equation.
The Bible lists hundreds of promises concerning God, who He is, and His desires for us, His children—to supply all of our needs, to be a friend who sticks closer than a brother, to never leave us nor forsake us, and more. And yet many have felt like God didn’t fulfill His end on these types of promises.
If God is a loving God and a father to the fatherless, as a few scriptures in the Bible claim He is, do you think it is His desire for little children to be savagely raped or killed? Personally, I don’t. Do you think if He truly has the heart of a father and loves more than we possibly could ever imagine that these kinds of scenarios grieve Him infinitely? I believe that it does. And if you answered either of those questions like I did, then you would have to concede that there would have to be more to the scenario than just His will, or else our perception of love would be diametrically opposed to His.
What if God is more completely grieved and brokenhearted at scenarios in which the innocent are hurt or killed than any of us could imagine, but His ability to intervene is limited, not by His will or desire but actually by His Word, His covenant with man, or even directly His people?
What if that time when you didn’t understand why He didn’t intervene on your behalf had nothing to do with His desire or will in the situation but actually had an additional variable that was not understood by you—one that actually made Him incapable of responding in that situation? Could that additional information into your scenario change your perspective of who God is?
Many have difficulty fathoming a loving God when they see how much evil and darkness is in the world. They rationalize that if God really is a loving, omnipotent God, there is no way He could allow such atrocity. If He is all-powerful and still allows it, then He could not be loving. And I have no difficulty understanding that rationale. Agnosticism is significantly fueled by the above scenario and the question of “Why?” But I’m convinced that there is more to it than most of us have been told or even considered.
What if God’s plan was always to use redeemed man to institute His kingdom and dominion in the earth? What if we are the ones who were made to be the very conduit of His power? Might that change the context when we ask Him, “Why?” if we were created to be something more than we have become (even in ignorance) and He, in turn, is expecting us to be the conduit of the very change that we were asking of Him?
What if we’ve been asking the wrong questions all along?
CHAPTER FOUR
Quantum Physics
“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist,
but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”
—Werner Heisenberg, the Father of Quantum Physics
I’ve always loved science. It is far too easy for me to become completely engrossed in a program, book, website, or magazine about anything scientifically related, be it theory or fact. I enjoy seeing the process and deduction as scientists explain why and how they have come to the conclusions that they have.
Quantum physics concerns itself with the study of the constituent elements of nature which are divided into discrete units or packets of energy called “quanta.” This is where the word “quantum” comes from. The world of the quantum is the world of sub-atomic particles and photons that interact with one another in the smallest scale of the universe. Everything is made up of these microscopic quantities of energy. But to use the word microscopic can be somewhat misleading because the world of quantum realities are unimaginably smaller than microscopic ingredients
. . . There are 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that’s two sextillion) atoms of oxygen in one drop of water and twice as many atoms of hydrogen. A speck of dust can contain up to 3 trillion atoms. Imagine just how many atoms there are in the entire universe! God only knows!7
Growing up in a sci-fi generation, I have found myself intrigued by the quantum theories often referred to in movies and television shows on subjects like time travel, the butterfly effect, singularity, black holes, warp speeds, and wormholes. Several years ago (before my watch experience), I had an inkling to pursue a deeper knowledge of some of the subjects I had seen addressed in my favorite science programs and science-fiction movies. So I went online and bought several books on the subjects of quantum physics, quantum theory, and quantum mechanics.
I thought I was a pretty analytical person and theoretical physics would just coincide with how I was already wired to think. On the contrary, I quickly realized that there is an audience of people in the world who are significantly smarter than I am.
I wanted to be that smart. I tried to be that smart! I would read and reread a single paragraph trying to comprehend the content, only to feel mentally exhausted, more than a little bit stupid, and overwhelmingly frustrated.
It reminded me of a time in my first year of legal adulthood when I honestly believed that I could drop anyone if I punched him as hard as I could. Until I tried to hit that bouncer on 6 Mile Road in downtown Detroit, who was built like an upside-down pyramid. I then learned a very valuable elementary life lesson and garnered a good old-fashion butt-whooping, which gave me a physics lesson on cause and effect: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In a moment’s notice, that was also combined with, If you mess with the bull, you get the horns!
After frustratingly trying and failing to understand my newly purchased books on quantum physics, I put them back on my bookshelf at eye level, figuring that I spent money on them and secretly hoping that maybe if someone saw them there they would think I’m smarter than I am.
I forgot all about them—until that unexplainable midsummer’s night when again I began contemplating some questions about travel, speed, and theories surrounding what is currently understood as humanly impossible physical laws.
I went back to the books and also went online, bought some much easier-to-understand books on a Quantum Physics for Dummies level, and tried to read as much as I could about the history of physics and the introduction of quantum physics in an attempt to at least begin to understand a subject that, before the twentieth century, was barely even theorized.
What hit me as particularly interesting was that for centuries, physics was primarily based upon the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century teachings of the man often regarded as the first and greatest physicist, Isaac Newton. Beginning with watching an apple fall from a tree, Newton was inspired to invent the theory of gravity and later invented calculus and the three laws of motion, upon which all of mechanics is based. And for centuries, this was the relative extent of what we understood about physica
l law.
However, in the mid-to-late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the discovery of previously unknown forms of energy and radiation opened up the field of possibilities as it pertained to the combination of energy, mathematics, and physics.
In the first quarter of the 20th century two theories were proposed: The theory of relativity and the quantum theory. From them sprang most of twentieth-century physics . . . Physicists began to realize that their discoveries demanded a radical reformulation of the most fundamental aspects of reality. They learned to approach their subject in totally unexpected and novel ways that seemed to turn common sense on its head and find closer accord with mysticism than materialism.8
From these discoveries, new theories that had previously never before been considered were proposed and quantum physics came on the scene, forever changing the face of physics as it had previously been defined.
RELATIVITY AND QUANTUM THEORY
It’s not necessary for you to have a clear understanding of these theories to understand the content I’m writing about. Rather, I want you to see the collaboration and advancement in science through the exploration of sometimes completely differing perspectives leading to a common understanding. Entire books have been written explaining differing aspects of relativity or quantum mechanics. To simplify these to a few paragraphs would be nearly impossible. Instead of clearly explaining all of the science behind these theories, I want to concentrate upon the differing and even seemingly contradictory scientific perspectives and enlightenments during a common period and how they were instrumental to the whole of scientific discovery.