Blinding Science and Meaningless Theory

Yesterday I read ‘Stephen Hawking – My Brief History’. He describes his childhood and education in post-war Britain, his diagnosis of motor neurone disease aged twenty-one:

‘When you are faced with the possibility of an early death, it makes you realize that life is worth living and there are lots of things that you want to do.’

But then there was theoretical physics and cosmology, theories of time, black holes, time-symmetric theories of gravity. I was blinded by the science, out of my depth.

One commentator summarised, ‘Hawking proposes that the universe is neither created nor destroyed: it just is… Hawking introduces the concept of imaginary time… if Hawking is right and we do find a complete unified theory, we shall really know the mind of God.’

I didn’t understand the science so I couldn’t understand the theological implications…

Yesterday evening our church home group talked and prayed about ordinary people… the folks who’d been baptised on Sunday – their problems, their faith, the changes that faith had brought to their lives, the powerful impact of their stories… our own friends and families, – physical and mental ill-health, life-changing challenges, tough decisions and uncertainties… our personal weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

No blinding science, just the ordinary stuff of life.

Hawking reminded me of the grandfather paradox: ‘What happens if you go back in time and kill your grandfather before your father was conceived? Would you then exist in the current present? If not, you wouldn’t exist to go back and kill your grandfather?’

This morning I read Oswald Chambers commenting on Jesus washing his disciples’ feet:

‘The things that Jesus did were of the most menial and commonplace order… it takes all God’s power in me to do the most commonplace things in His way. Can I use a towel as He did? Towels and dishes and sandals, all the ordinary sordid things of our lives, reveal more quickly than anything what we are made of.’

No binding science; no meaningless theory. Just the ordinary, menial, commonplace… and me.