Of Strings and God

So I read a couple of physics books yesterday that have begun to open a whole new line of thinking for me on God. That's a weird sentence isn’t it?

I’ve been noticing for awhile now how we tend to read the Bible like a textbook or something. Genesis has gotten a lot of attention lately in this regard with the creation thing and floods and all that. There are many people saying we shouldn’t read Genesis as a science textbook. That’s not really what I’m talking about though. I’m talking about the whole thing.

For example, just as science dissects things into smaller and smaller parts and studies them, we break the books of the Bible into chapters, and the chapters into verses, and the verses into parts of verses until we’ve got it all broken down. Then we categorize it and put it into a concordance or a topical Bible so we can find every time it mentions “love” or “baptism” or some other word. And so, unlike most of Biblical history, we begin to read the Bible in little bits. We pull out the “good stuff” and memorize it. None of those things are bad (I love my concordance and I’ve got like 3 topical Bibles and I have looked up both “love” and “baptism”), that’s not my point.

But now it’s gotten to the point where the Bible is this textbook or an answer book or, heaven forbid, an “instruction manual” and we’ve got God it’s this nice convenient box we can put in our purse and pull out when we want to take a peek at him (oops, no that was my eye shadow). Count me among those who are beginning to reject this belittling view of God. And before you ask, I don’t own a purse and I’m not even sure eye shadow comes in a box of any kind, but you get my point. Isn’t God bigger than that?

I think part of the reason we’ve gotten tied up in this mess is because when God is so much bigger and deeper we don’t have a nice little formula to describe him. And when you start to talk to modern people (as opposed to postmoderns who fill our current generation) about God in analogy and metaphor they don’t buy it.

Analogy.

Metaphor.

Stories.

I was talking to a good friend of mine tonight, Kelli Neargarder, and she had the perfect word for this type of talk…poetry. The problem is, if what you’re talking about is poetry, then it can't be packaged up in a nice little 4 point formula, it’s not real in the modern mindset. Poetry is tantamount to mythology.

This is where the physics books I was reading come in. While our generation is quickly developing from modernism to postmodernism, physicists are beginning to learn some revolutionary stuff in quantum physics and string theory and all sorts of other things that just blow your mind off its hinges (what kind of metaphor is that??). So as I was reading these physics books by some of the guys on the front line I was astounded by how they speak of the theories they’re developing (not WHAT they’re saying, but HOW they’re saying it).


For example, there’s this idea that the things that makes up the tiniest bits of things aren’t actually particles like we once thought, but “strings.” Very small strings. If you can imagine how many atoms you could stretch from here to the nearest star, that would be about the same amount of “strings” it would take to stretch a distance roughly equal to the diameter of one atom. That is to say, they’re itsy bitsy teensy weensy…er…small. And what determines what these strings form is somehow determined by their “tune,” so to speak. So if you were able to pluck these strings (which would be difficult because they’re rather little) and change their “tune,” they would basically form something different. So there’s this whole music analogy.

And now some physicists also believe that the universe has 10, 11, or even 26 dimensions of space/time instead of just the usual 4 (3-dimensional space plus 1-dimensional time). But to describe why we can’t see the other dimensions they say they’re really small and “scrunched up.” Another sort of analogy. They describe it like looking at an orange. From a distance it looks smooth (our 4 dimensions are the smooth ones), but as you get closer it has these ridges on its surface (the ridges are the other dimensions). Yet another metaphor (or was that a simile?).

Sometimes they’ll say it’s like looking at a drinking straw. From a distance it looks 1-dimensional (a line), but as you get closer it appears 2-dimensional (a tube), and if you get really close you see it as 3-dimensional (a tube with thickness).

And they go on to describe things like the “fabric” of space/time, and now they think that everything may be, at its most essential, “information” – more analogies.

So what’s this all mean? I think one thing it may mean is that the doors are being reopened for us to take God out of the box again. We may be able, once again, to speak of God in language that begins to express his depth and mystery instead of the alternative- something we can package and sell like toothpaste or friendship bracelets.

Physicists use these analogies because there’s just no way to appropriately describe space, time, dimensions, and matter in any other way. If our language can’t describe these things without elevating to poetic language and imagery, what makes us think we can describe the God of the universe through anything less?

So, like Rob Bell (teaching Pastor at Mars Hill Church) once said, “high-end quantum physicists are starting to sound like ancient Jewish poets.”

I think this may be the beauty of the postmodern church as it begins to develop. Postmoderns are beginning to be raised to embrace depth and mystery instead of fear it or ignore it. God is worming his way out of the box we've put Him in. He’s growing, he’s getting bigger.

I think this fits so well with how Jesus spoke. Jesus didn’t go around handing out tracts with the “4 Spiritual Laws”, or the “Romans Road,” or some other list of how to get saved. He came preaching in parables.

Metaphors.

Stories.

Poetry.

One time, His disciples, his talmidim, asked him why he spoke in parables. His answer, which used to perplex me greatly, was basically “I speak in parables so the people won’t understand me” (Luke 8:10). What? That didn’t compute for me for the longest time. But now, I’m beginning to see, perhaps, why Jesus found this more valuable than giving us a list of rules or an “instruction manual.”

If Jesus would have come and given us a list of do’s, don’ts, how’s, and why’s (which he could have done) we would likely feel like we had God in our own nice little heart shaped box. That’s not what Jesus was after. When you speak in parables it doesn’t promote rightness, necessarily, but it does promote relationship. Don’t the parables intrigue you? They’re deep, complex, mysterious, engaging.

If he gives us a tract with the steps to salvation, we walk away with a profound sense of feeling that we’ve got it all figured out now. The problem with that is the words in the previous sentence, “walk away.” Jesus doesn’t want us to walk away. If Jesus tells us a story, on the other hand, we’re tempted to follow him, to learn more, to get deeper, to further the relationship which ultimately is what he’s after.

May we all be poets following in the steps of our Rabbi.