There are at least 100 billion—maybe as many as 400 billion—stars in our own galaxy called the Milky Way, which is our local zip code in the universe. But there are also billions of other galaxies—billions of other zip codes just as large as ours. That means there are at least a billion billion stars out there. Even our most powerful telescopes can comprehend only the tiniest sliver. That’s a lot of stars!
When we think of stars in the Bible, we think of the “Magi.” Modern paraphrases call them “scholars” or “astrologers.” Very simply, the magi were the scientists of the ancient world. Both astronomers and astrologers, they studied the movements of the stars and deciphered their meaning for human events.
Like many intellectuals, the magi depended on their own wisdom, their own calculations, their own mental creations—like the sign of the zodiac, for example.
Evangelical Christians today would quickly label the magi “secular humanists”—and just as quickly write them off.
But here’s the amazing part of the story: God doesn’t write off the magi!!
These pagan astrologers can follow nothing but the stars, or what they see in nature. Theologians call this natural revelation and it’s one of the ways God has revealed himself to human beings. “He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name.” (Ps. 147:4)
Modern day magi—those who trust their own intelligence—see many “stars” they are beginning to follow, just as the first magi did twenty centuries ago. Each of these “stars” in the natural world offers the telltale fingerprints of a Creator.
1) One “star” I’ve already mentioned—the now widely accepted Big Bang theory. It is generally agreed that the universe had a genesis beyond which science cannot probe. Thanks to the Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking, whose best seller A Brief History of Time moved these ideas from college lecture halls to our coffee tables in 1988, ordinary folks like us realize something new is up. The old assumptions that pushed God out of the picture have been turned upside down.
2) A second “star” is the subatomic world called quantum mechanics, where elementary particles of matter behave in very unusual ways. Light sometimes acts as particles, but other times as waves. The more accurately you can pin down a particle’s position, the less accurately you can determine its speed and vice versa.
Perhaps most startling of all, we now realize that the very act of observing subatomic particles changes their behavior. We know that observing our kids often changes their behavior—but who would expect that to be true for atomic particles? In other words, we now realize it is not possible to be objective observers, standing outside the natural world–our very experiments change the world we study.
Because of this, scientists have been forced to give up the Holy Grail of total objectivity. Science can only offer concepts that correspond to reality, but never completely capture reality itself. All this suggests much greater humility in scientific endeavor and a growing sense of awe in the intricacy of creation. The God who was not needed to run a universe that worked like clockwork is suddenly an interesting premise again in the quantum world.
3) Of the many “stars” modern magi are looking at today, let me quickly add one more: life itself.
To quote Stephen Hawking again: “The remarkable fact is that the values of the charge on the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.”
That, of course, begs the question of an “adjuster.”
No less a scientific luminary than Nobel laureate Francis Crick, who along with his partner James Watson discovered DNA and got modern biology rolling, has famously proposed that, since the spontaneous, chance generation of life now seems so very unlikely, perhaps space aliens sent a rocket to earth in the distant past to seed our planet with life.
That’s a left-handed compliment. While a supernatural creator is certainly not the only option, the ball is increasingly in the court of nonbelievers to develop an equally intelligible alternative.
All of us can take away three things from these modern-day magi:
First, an observation. Be aware that the barriers between religion and science have been lowered more in the last 50 years than in the last five centuries. The more we learn about our world, the more we are re-discovering the ancient maxim that “all truth is God’s truth.” This is truly an exciting time to be alive!
Second, a thanksgiving Be thankful that Christians don’t need to huddle defensively together, assuming we have nothing to say to our world. We do!! We can move out into conversations with our magi friends and sons and daughters and co-workers. Remember, of course, that our faith is always in Jesus Christ; our faith is never in evidence about Christ. But be glad that new evidence being discovered every day backs up our belief in a Creator.
Third, a challenge. Be amazed again with how incredibly God loves “outsiders.” The story of the magi is the story of God’s amazing grace. More and more people today find their own intellectual curiosity prompting new journeys of discovery into possibilities of a Creator they had always rejected.
Just as the first magi who followed the star to Jerusalem, modern-day magi are asking the same question: “We’ve been watching the stars and have come looking. What do your scriptures say?” And we insiders need to welcome them and respond, “it all points to one person born in Bethlehem—his name is Jesus.”
Then we must not only point them in the right direction…..but go with them.
When I was, maybe, 18 years old, I became very cynical about science and religion. I remember making a statement to the pastor of the church that I attended through my high school years that religion started our with explanations of how the world was formed and how it works, and science continues to force religion to modify its story over time. As my understanding of science grew, at some point in my adulthood, I realized that science defines what it observes using somewhat crude mathematical equations to explain what scientists are observing. Newton explained physics with mathematical theories which worked to explain what we could observe about gravity, inertia of rest and of motion and his theories worked very well for the world as we knew it. Einstein came up with better formulae which opened a whole new understanding of theoretical physics, but he did not accept quantum mechanics because it was apparently counter intuitive to him. “God doesn’t play dice.” Quantum mechanics works for very small things in our universe, but no one has yet reconciled it with the theories of Newton and Einstein. So, science generates theories and formulae that work for things that we can observe, but never perfectly. We think that we know a lot about the universe, but there is that pesky problem of 90 plus percent of matter in the universe of which we have no clue about.
Religion, for me, defines (or attempts to define) God, good and evil, love and peace, and relationships among people. Through Christ, we have an incomplete understanding of who God is and how or relationship or lack thereof, works with Christ as the one who can reconcile us with God. I have a lot of unanswered questions about exactly who God is and what he is up to, and also about how the universe works and what is its history. But nothing that I know about science or about God, Christ and the Holy Spirit seem to me to be contradictory. I am not sure that as long as mankind is around that we will understand how the universe really works (grand unified theory). I pray that and I hope that I will someday be reconciled with God through Christ. Perhaps, at that moment, I will understand how the universe works, or more likely, the question will no longer matter to me.