What Other Surprises Does God Have for Us?

The relatively big news out of astronomy recently is the amount of water discovered in space. They have found an amazing amount of water surrounding a massive black hole—enough for 120 trillion earthlike planets! (That’s even nearly ten times the size of our national debt!)

But wait, there’s more…

Astronomers say that the quasar generating this water was created when the universe was only 1 billion years old. Normal black holes (and quasars are special kind of black hole) form from the death of certain kinds of stars, which typically takes billions of years, so either this was the “Live Hard and Die Young” of stars, or it formed via another mechanism. An astronomer friend of mine says the latter is the most likely situation, that current understanding of the Big Bang theory allows for certain eddies of matter and energy to form unique structures and bypass the traditional mechanism of formation.

So what?

Every time we think we have a handle on what’s “out there,” we get a rude awakening. It is as if God delights to overturn our understandings and expectations, to show us that we are sophomoric at best in putting Him and His Creation into the box of our modern science and theology.

This is nothing new. Jesus did it repeatedly to the religious leaders of Israel. Scripture regularly takes our understanding of the way things are and throws them back in our face with Truth and truths that are both simpler and more complex that we give them credit for.

It is a constant reminder to me to be very careful about which topics to be dogmatic. It reminds me to hold my theology with a relatively open hand, majoring on the majors, and exploring with humble wonder everything else.

Age of the universe? Length of time of Creation? Extra-terrestrials? “Junk” DNA? Causes of natural disasters? Is ‘x’ event a divine judgment or just the vagaries of natural forces? All interesting questions, but as my dad is fond of quoting,

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Hamlet, Act 1, Scene V

Is your God (or at least your picture of Him) big enough to accommodate discoveries yet to be made?

SDG