How Faith Is Like Special Relativity

This morning I read in the Magnificat a whole passage from Psalm 97, but the particular phrase that struck me was this:

Clouds and thick darkness are round about him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.

I had just been looking at the heavy, gray, low-hanging rainclouds outside which are usually so depressing for me. So, it was surprising and helpful to realize that, rather than being a sign of God's absence, those very clouds signified His presence. 

A little later on in today's readings, I saw a familiar passage from Romans 8, particularly these verses:

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words... We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. 

--Romans 8:26-28

I always think of this passage as St. Paul's encouragement to Christians who find themselves overwhelmed with their circumstances. First, he says that the Holy Spirit Himself is with us, and helping us to pray, especially when our fatigue and perplexity leave us without words. Then, St. Paul reminds us that all things ... not some things, and not most things, but all things work together for our good.

Later on in today's readings in Magnificat is a short exhortation written by Pope Benedict XVI, which I thought was especially on point for me:

The first thing should be that God is present in our life. The sums of human life don’t work out if God is left out: all that remains then is nothing but contradiction. So we mustn’t just believe in some theoretical way that God exists: we must consider him to be the most important and real thing in our life. As Scripture says, he must penetrate every layer of our life and fill it completely: our heart must know about him and let itself be moved by him; our soul; the power of our will and decision; our intelligence. He must be everywhere. And our fundamental attitude towards him, our fundamental relationship to him, must be called love.

Often this can be very difficult…. Often assent to God seems almost impossible. But those who abandon themselves to this rebellion poison their lives. The poison of negation, of anger against God and against the world, eats them away from within. But God wants from us as it were a down-payment of trust. He says to us: “I know you don’t understand me yet. But trust me: believe me when I tell you I am good and dare to live on the basis of this trust. Then you will discover that behind your suffering, behind the difficulties of your life, a love is hiding. Then you will know that precisely in this way I have done something good for you.” There are many examples of saints and great people who have dared to have this trust and who have thus found true happiness—for themselves and for many others—precisely in the greatest darkness.

I was particularly struck, moved even, by the sentences that I highlighted, and especially by the notion that God is asking of us a 'down-payment of trust'.

Here's the weird analogy that came to mind this morning. As you may know, Einstein derived all of Special Relativity from two postulates:

• The laws of physics are the same in all inertial reference frames.
• The speed of light is the same in all inertial reference frames and is not affected by the speed of its source.

In a way, St. Paul and Pope Benedict offer us a view of reality that is just as unexpected as Special Relativity was, and like it, is derived from a handful of postulates, namely:

• God is all good, and desires only our good.
• Our ability to receive the good which God intends for us depends on us always being ready to make another act of trust in Him and His ability to act.

The second point means that all circumstances, whether they are the result of our choices or of the choices of others or from 'acts of God', can still lead to our good if we entrust those circumstances and ourselves to God.It seems to me that if we can embrace these postulates through an act of faith, then they enable us to respond to God's graces, and eventually to understand what He is doing in our lives.

Being nourished by doing God's will

In today's Magnificat morning prayers, there is a passage from Psalm 119:17-24 which speaks of the psalmist's desire to know God's commands and to do God's will. The preface for this passage introduces this reading with another brief passage from John 4, which is part of the story of Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well:

Meanwhile the disciples besought him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.” So the disciples said to one another, “Has any one brought him food?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work...."

That got me thinking about the difference between the way Jesus experienced doing his Father's will, and our own experience, which often is much less enthusiastic about doing the Father's will. For some reason, I then thought of a very interesting comment that I heard many years ago in a talk by, I believe, Ralph Martin. In this talk, the speaker was recounting his experience in learning to ski. He had basically taught himself to ski, but then later in life had the opportunity to get a lesson from a genuine skiing instructor. He was amazed at how difficult this was. The problem was that he had taught himself a number of incorrect techniques, which were quite limited in what they could accomplish. If he wanted to learn the right way to do those things (such as the proper way to turn), then he had to un-learn all of the bad techniques, and replace them with mastery of good techniques. He was also amazed at what a difference learning the proper way to ski made, and how much easier it was to ski faster and more flexibly.

What I heard the Lord say at this point is that our response to doing the Father's will is much like that. Growing up in a broken, fallen world, learning from broken, fallen parents and other teachers, we have learned to do a lot of things, but we have learned bad ways of doing them, based on fear and selfish impulses. Because of that, when we finally hear what the Father's will is, it seems painful and hard, and counter to what we naturally want to do. But if we had learned from the beginning the proper way to respond, then we too would experience doing God's will as being nourishing and energizing. 

May we all come to experience what Jesus did, that our food is to do the will of Him who sent us, and to accomplish His work! And may the Father give us the courage to unlearn the old ways we have of living, and learn the new ways that Jesus came to teach us.

On the Crookes Radiometer as a metaphor for our relationship with God

This is a typical example of a Crookes Radiometer. Inside a partially evacuated glass bulb is a needle, on which rests a set of vanes mounted on a very low friction hub. The vanes are white or shiny on one side, and black on the other. When you place this device so that it is illuminated by bright light, particularly the light of the sun, then the set of vanes spins merrily away, in the direction of the white or shiny sides. This Wikipedia page explains the origin of the device, and lists several different possible explanations of how it works. The short explanation is that each of the vanes acts as a tiny heat engine, converting incoming electromagnetic radiation (primarily infrared and visible light) into motion through subtle thermodynamic phenomena occurring right at the surface of the black side of each vane.

I have always been fascinated by these devices, and all the more so as I have gotten older. Besides the intriguing and unexpected physics of these devices, I have also found them very cheering to have around, especially on a sunny day in winter. It is strangely satisfying and uplifting to watch the vanes of a radiometer spinning furiously in bright sunlight. It can be, however, a bit subduing to watch the vanes spinning very slowly on a hazy day or very late in the day as the sun goes down, and even depressing to see them sit motionless on a gloomy day or in a room this is only moderately illuminated. 

About 6 years ago Mary and I decided to replace all of the windows in our house with top-of-the-line Anderson windows. The new windows greatly reduced our energy bill, both in winter and summer, which was what we were looking for. One of the primary ways the windows achieve these savings is through a slight tint, which allows very little infrared and ultraviolet to pass in either direction. However, one unintended and unwanted side effect of this blockage of light was that all of our plants began to get sickly. Although the diminution of light was so slight as to not be noticeable to the eye, it nonetheless had a big impact on our plants. It took Mary a while to find out how to position the plants so that they could still get enough light to thrive. Another side effect that perplexed and depressed me was that the new windows also blocked so much incoming solar energy that the radiometer spun very listlessly even on an apparently bright sunny day. You can visibly see the difference that the glass makes by simply sliding a window open so that direct sunlight passes into the room through the window screen alone. As soon as you do this on a bright day, the light instantly stokes up the radiometer vanes into a blur of motion. But the vanes go back to their half-hearted spin when you close the windows again.

One of my quirky predilections is an obsession with analogies and metaphors. (This is a very old interest, and it would take a while to explain how I got this way.) As a result of this obsessive tendency, I often notice analogical parallels between physical phenomena and more abstract ideas. It is surprising the turns this can take. All of the above is a long-winded prologue to an explanation about why a Crookes Radiometer makes me think about being a disciple of Jesus.

Recently, I have been thinking a great deal about being a disciple of Jesus, and about how one becomes a disciple, and especially how one helps others to become disciples. Jesus of course also used analogies a lot in His teaching, with the best known bits being His many parables. The use of these analogies is yet another dimension of why Jesus was such a powerful and effective teacher. By telling stories that tapped into people's everyday experience and understanding, He communicated His message about the Kingdom of God in a memorable and thought-provoking way. Everyone knew what a king or a shepherd or other character in one of His parables did, so it was easy to grasp at least some of what He was saying. The stories often had dramatic or exaggerated elements (the good Samaritan caring for the man set upon by robbers, or the king who compelled guests to come to his son's wedding feast) that made them easy to remember, but there were also puzzling elements which provoked the hearers to remember and ponder the parables later, and to ask questions.

Our highly secular and material age has lost a lot of this ability to grasp things on many levels at once. We look at the world, and we just see the world. We typically do not see the many layers of implied meaning that are available in what we are looking at. So I believe that there is a work to be done by believing Christians to find new parables and new metaphors that help communicate the timeless truth of the Gospel in the situations that we find ourselves today.

Let me draw out some of the many parallels between the ingenious and unappreciated Crookes radiometer and what it means to be a believing Christian living as an child of God.

• The radiometer is designed to work on light alone. In the same way, our souls are designed by God to work on the light of His grace.
• The radiometer works best when sitting in bright, unfiltered sunlight. In a similar way, our souls are healthiest, happiest, and most responsive when they are exposed to and filled with the fullness of the light of God available through a relationship with Jesus. 
• The radiometer works because the vanes are very thin and have little mass, so that it takes relatively little force to set them in motion.  The device would not work if the vanes had more mass. Similarly, if our souls are weighed down with self-concern, it is hard for them to respond to the gentle touches of God's grace.
• The hub that holds the vanes must be free to turn with little friction. Likewise,  if we are plagued with sinful tendencies that we cannot break free from, those also impede our soul's ability to respond to the light of God's grace.
• The radiometer's operation requires that the vanes be placed in a partial vacuum inside a glass bulb. If the air inside the bulb is denser, then the thermodynamic phenomenon that provides the thrust to the vanes will be swamped by all kinds of random motions in that air, and again the vanes will not turn. In the same way, if our minds are overactive, and densely packed with the sheer number of things we trying to pay attention to, then the grace that God wants to pour out on us is drowned out.
• The radiometer worked poorly even in apparently bright light if some of the most important wavelengths of that light had been filtered out. In a very similar way, if we are operating in an environment where God's graces have been excluded by custom or law ("Don't mention God at our Thanksgiving dinner. It will set off your Uncle Frank." "Explicit vocal prayer in schools in our district is not allowed.") or where we simply cannot spend explicitly Christian time with other believers on a regular basis, we will find ourselves slowly starved of the graces that God dispenses through each other.
• Even on a dark and gloomy day, a small flashlight held close can make a radiometer's vanes spin. Similarly, even if one is not feeling God's presence, experiencing grace through the love and friendship of another believer can be enough to awaken our soul's response to grace. That friend's light is not the same as the fullness of God's light, of course, but it is the provision that God has made for you to receive some of His light when you need it.

So, it seemed to me that a radiometer might be an interesting gift for a friend who is a Christian, particularly one who is in need of encouragement, and who is also appreciative of geeky science toys. But when you give it to your friend, explain the things that I mentioned above and tell them to look at the radiometer from time to time and to remember how much one's soul is like the radiometer. Practically speaking, that translates at least to these suggestions:

• Try to make time to expose yourself in every possible way to the brightness of God's love and grace.
• Ask the Lord to help you unburden yourself of self-concern by explicitly and repeatedly entrusting your life to God's care.
• Don't let sinful tendencies, even little ones, linger.
• Try to attend to only one thing at a time, and don't let your mental air get too "dense" by multi-tasking (which is really multi-worrying).
• Pay attention to the ways that your working and living environments invisibly filter out the graces that God would otherwise be showering into your life, and try to compensate for the missing elements.
• Ask a friend to share a little light with you, if you are going through a "dark" spell, and your spiritual radiometer is spinning very listlessly, or has even stopped.

However, also tell your friend "Think of your soul like a radiometer. And if it stops spinning, see what you need to do to get it spinning again."