In the second instalment of a five-part series, we contemplate the extent of our significance in the universe.(Read part 1.)
We’ve been looking at Psalm 8, and we’ve discovered that stargazing helps us to see how insignificant we really are.
Just think about the size of space for a moment. Imagine you could get into the fastest jet on earth (last time I checked, this was the SR-71 Blackbird). Its official speed record is almost 2,500 miles per hour. Now imagine you could speed it up 100 times to 250,000 miles per hour. Then imagine that you could take it on a trip to space. It would take you an hour to get to the moon—that’s pretty reasonable! It would take you eight days to get to Mars, the closest planet to Earth. It would take you four months to get to the planet Saturn (remember, we’re travelling 100 times faster than the fastest jet ever built). It would take you a year and a half to get to the planet Pluto at the edge of our solar system. To get to the closest star to the sun, Proxima Centauri, it would take you 12,000 years. To get to the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy, it would take you 80 million years. To the next closest galaxy, Andromeda, it would take you seven billion years. To get to the edge of the visible universe, it would take you 40 million million years. And they think that the size of the non-visible universe is vastly huger than this: that would take you a million million million million, etc. years.
Note: this is the first instalment of a five-part series.
I’m a fan of space. I don’t actually know much about the details of astronomy or cosmology or astrophysics; I just think that the space is really cool.
If there are any real scientists reading this, I want to say thanks. I know that most of your work involves boring and tedious searching, collating and number crunching. Thanks for doing all that stuff so that I can see those fantastic pictures of nebulas on the internet and wonder at it all.
For example, I’m a fan of millisecond pulsars. A gigantic star, millions of light years away, explodes in a huge supernova. It creates a fireball ten million billion billion times bigger than Hiroshima. In its ashes, it leaves behind a neutron star made of dense atomic nuclei, squashed together at a density 10 trillion times greater than steel. A teaspoon full of neutron star weighs about the same as Sydney Harbour. Sometimes this neutron star will steal stuff from a nearby star and start spinning. Some neutron stars spin hundreds of times a second—a whole star rotating as fast as an idling car engine. Many of these super-dense, revving stars send out pulses of electromagnetic radiation, milliseconds apart. And we might be able to use these millisecond pulsars as standard cosmological clocks to help us detect gravitational waves, explore space-time bending, and understand more about the tiniest particles in the universe.
But apart from the wow factor, what’s the point of learning about space?
What I’m about to say about evangelism is so obvious, so basic, so humdrum and down-to-earth that I almost feel like not saying it. It feels like a waste of a blog post. But even though it’s so obvious, it’s something that I have only just realized after years and years. And I suspect (and in fact, I know) that lots of other people are in the same boat. (more…)
Do you know for sure that you are going to be with God in Heaven? If God were to ask you, “Why should I let you into My Heaven?” what would you say?
Have you ever used these questions (or a variation on them) to talk about the impact of the gospel of Jesus Christ with friends or strangers? They are the introductory questions in the well-known gospel explanation associated with Evangelism Explosion (EE). They’ve proved themselves to be a very popular way to start a serious discussion about our relationship with God. We assume that people in our world have given at least some thought to their own death and eternal destiny. These questions help us to show how the gospel, with its strong emphasis on assurance of future salvation through Jesus (e.g. 1 Thess 1:10, Heb 9:27-28, 1 Pet 1:3-5), provides a clear answer to important issues. (more…)
What is the most polite way to refer to an old person? Have you noticed how the words we collectively use to refer to old people in the media and in private conversation keep changing? It’s a strange process. We start using a word or phrase, for example, ‘old man’, ‘old woman’. After a while, we decide that this phrase is really a little derogatory, and so we change to another, more neutral phrase, such as ‘senior citizen’. But after a while, ‘senior citizen’ sounds condescending and slightly offensive. So we try another, more neutral, word—like ‘elderly’. But the same thing happens: after we use the word ‘elderly’ for a while, it starts to sound a bit insulting. So we try ‘aged’. Then ‘ageing’. And so on. The reason this keeps happening is that our underlying concept of ageing itself is negative. It doesn’t matter what word we choose to express it; that word will start to take on the negative connotations that we associate with the underlying concept. (more…)
I’ve just read through the Apostle Paul’s letters and noted all the words he uses to describe his ministry. It’s a fascinating and humbling list. (more…)
I’ve been enjoying Paul’s series on lousy arguments. At the risk of stealing Paul’s thunder, I’ve got another argument to add to the mix: the Argument from Silence. The Argument from Silence is rather simple, often wrong, but sometimes spot-on. The Argument from Silence happens when you listen to a speaker, or read a blog or book or article, and notice that they don’t mention some particular topic. You conclude that, since they didn’t mention that topic, they are ignorant of it, or it’s not important to them. To give an example that I’ve been thinking about recently, what should you conclude when you don’t hear much about the Holy Spirit in your church’s preaching program, your Bible Study series, your favourite podcast, etc.? (more…)
I’d like to admit something to you. My admission isn’t particularly juicy or scandalous, but it’s an admission, nonetheless. The admission is this: I’m not honest enough with people when it comes to my sins. I don’t admit my sins to others often enough. The reason I don’t do it is pride, fear of what people will think, and general obliviousness to my own sin. (more…)
One of Jesus’ most jarring statements occurs in the story of the Syrophoenician woman, Mark 7:24-27:
And from there [Jesus] arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden. But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. And he said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”
This saying of Jesus, spoken as it is to a poor, vulnerable woman with a suffering, oppressed little girl, sounds uncharacteristically harsh. Not only does it seem to reflect a nationalistic, even racist, attitude to God’s blessing (God’s blessing is for his children, not for Syrophoenicians), it’s couched in the most derogatory terms imaginable. (When Jesus mentions “dogs”, he means dirty little mongrels, not adorable Labrador puppies.) (more…)
In my previous post, I mentioned a powerful and dangerous combination:
A need in the world
+ an implication of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
This formula is like dynamite. Used properly, it has the power to move mountains. But unless it is handled with care, there is the potential for grave and even life-threatening danger. (more…)
On 7 May, 1867, a man called Alfred Nobel obtained patents for a very powerful and potentially very dangerous formula:
3 parts nitroglycerin—C3H5(NO3)3
+ one part diatomaceous earth
+ a small admixture of sodium carbonate—Na2CO3
This is the classic formula for dynamite. Used properly, it can move mountains. But unless it is handled with care, it can destroy lives.
Similarly, but far more seriously, there is another powerful and potentially dangerous formula:
A need in the world
+ an implication of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
This is a postscript to my biblical word power series, responding to an excellent question from a bloke at my previous church:
Ecclesiastes 7:20 states that there is not a righteous man on earth. Psalm 14 states that there is no one righteous. So why does the Bible say that Noah, David and others were righteous? It seems to be a contradiction.
This is a very deep question, and a complete answer would be much too long! Nevertheless, I think that the definition of righteousness that I’ve provided so far in my series can go a long way to help us answer this question. We saw that:
Righteousness = being in line with a standard.
Which standard are we talking about? Well, it depends. What does it depend on? You guessed it: on the context!
Today we are going to conclude our series on biblical word power with something slightly different: a brief introduction to imputation. ‘Imputation’ is not actually a word used in the Bible. Nevertheless, imputation is still a very important word, because it can help us to plumb the depths of the issues surrounding the Bible’s use of words like ‘righteousness’ and ‘justification’, which we looked at in previous posts.