So you think you can IDOL the Voice? (Watta title? Aka X-Factor)

To the four people who are reading my notes, rest assured that I’m still doing my devotionals. I have several reflections in my trusty old yellow pad already that are just begging to be encoded. The title of this reflection will give you the idea of the reason. I watch SYTYCD (season 8 is now showing on AXN), the Voice and American Idol and the supposed time for encoding goes there. (Aside: Adolf, don’t you think that the show is aptly named? You know what an idol is right? It may very well be the reason why the American economy is tanking nowadays, what with the number one show with THAT in the title). Palusot #1.

Palusot #2. I’ve already told a friend that I’m cutting back on posting my reflections because I’m starting to feel proud about them. And for me, pride is a major weakness. So as not to be proud, I’ll just avoid the source altogether.

For the last few days, I have been frequently led to Isaiah 40. The chapter contains one of my all-time favorite verses (verse 31) and more often than not, my eyes get drawn to it every time I open my bible to that particular portion (Maybe because the verse is highlighted with a glowing orange Stabilo Boss marker). But these days, verse 26 is repeatedly calling my attention.

Most atheists nowadays are divided into two types: the egocentrics, those who think that they are the center of the universe; and those who are so awed by the universe itself. I have little else to say about the first type that has not been said already so I’ll just reflect on the second type. Besides I’m pretty sure that egocentrics are not interested in other things because they’re more interested with thinking how the world revolves around them as well. Only God can penetrate their perfect, little world and I’m sure He’ll do a better job of it than my pen can.

The second type of people, the people who are perpetually in awe of nature and heavenly bodies, are the people who constantly ask, “How?”, “Why?”, “What?”, and “When?” when all that matters is the “Who?” Most of these people are scientists, by that I mean both professionals and wannabes, thinking that everything can be explained. For them, if it cannot be explained then it doesn’t make sense. Either nature itself, or the explanation of its phenomena, becomes their idol. They are the seekers, the empiricists, the realists, the ones who will seek some things even if it’s right in front of them. These people cannot be contented. More often than not, they are the most voracious of learners and they have that very big vacuum inside their hearts that nothing, not even explanation itself, can satisfy. They are unquenchably thirsty and as they seek for something to quench that thirst and found nothing to satisfy it, they choose to rationalize it with the notion that there is nothing that can fill them and they just have to live with their thirst forever. They have to defend this belief or face the realization that they are still thirsty and cannot therefore sleep at night. They are prone to intellectual arrogance and would often regard people who believe things such as faith as intellectual inferiors, brainwashed into believing there is a God. Why? Because if there is a God, then all things can be explained and they have nothing else to seek after. And if there is nothing to seek after, then there is nothing to live for. Ever wonder how they still continue to discover something new even after a million years? Because they can’t help themselves.

That’s why most of them are aloof and dismissive of ordinary men because they can’t let anybody else know that they are afraid that mere laymen have already found the answer when they themselves can’t.

I’ll let you in on a secret. The very purpose of the heavens and sky is to declare God’s glory (Psalm 19:1). Why does light travel faster than anything else? To declare God’s glory. Why is the sky blue? To declare God’s glory. Why is a goat a goat and not a cat? To declare God’s glory! Everything is a great big billboard advertising a greater, bigger God. Jesus chose to speak in parables didn’t He? Nature and everything else that is happening nowadays is still His parable. Light travels faster than anything else (tentatively disproved by neutrinos) because it’s the first thing God spoke and it always has to reach darkness first before anything else happens. The sky is blue so that we’ll know that there will always be peace when God’s light is around. A goat is a goat because God is always a God and will never become anything else. “In the beginning God...” are the first five words of the bible and once you get this, the answers to the other wh- questions won’t matter (except if you are a professional scientist and actually have to rely on the answers in order to get paid.) God created everything through Him, and nothing was created except through Him- the Him being the “Who” we were talking about earlier- and if you don’t get this, none of the questions will truly be answered.

Francis Sellers Collins, an American physician-geneticist noted for his discoveries of disease genes and his leadership of the Human Genome Project (HGP), said in his book “The Language of God”, “Well, as a scientist who's also a believer, the chance to uncover the incredible intricacies of God's creation is an occasion of worship. To be able to look, for the first time in human history, at all three billion letters of the human DNA--which I think of as God's language--it gives us just a tiny glimpse into the amazing creative power of his mind. Every discovery that we now make in science [is], for me, a chance to worship him in a broader sense, to appreciate just in a small bit the amazing grandeur of his creation. It also helps me appreciate though that as a scientist, there are limits to the kinds of questions that science can answer. And that's where I have to turn to God and seek his answers. Science will tell me a lot about how things work. It will not tell me why we are all here, what the purpose is in life or what happens after we die. For that, I need my faith. And I'm grateful to be able to draw upon both of those ways of knowing in order to have a full appreciation of the wonderful gift of life that we've been given.” 

Granted, Collins may be laughed at by his scientific colleagues because of his faith but even that is biblical, "A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown and among his relatives and his own family." (Mark 6:4). Even Albert Einstein believed in God. The Encyclopedia Britannica says of Einstein: "Firmly denying atheism, Einstein expressed a belief in "[G]od who reveals himself in the harmony of what exists." This actually motivated his interest in science, as he once remarked to a young physicist: "I want to know how God created this world, I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details." Einstein's famous epithet on the "uncertainty principle" was "God does not play dice" - and to him this was a real statement about a God in whom he believed. A famous saying of his was "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

Being raised in a logical society and a Christian home, it takes too much faith for me to believe that no one controls the universe. The precise distance of the earth from the sun, the precise tilt of the earth on its axis, and the precise temperature of the boiling point of water, etc., I can’t believe that no one ordained all these! It’s just too organized! Coupled with the fact that just one gust of wind out of place, one solar flare, one step out-of-sync and the world reverts to chaos- the default system spoken of in the Bible before God spoke everything into existence. I can’t believe that people choose to put faith on the theory that is likened into a 747 being exploded into a million tiny pieces with the debris randomly assembling in the air and becoming a 747 again after a million years. Give it a few hundred millennia and scientists may just be able to explain that but you know what? I can’t honestly tell you that I care about the explanation. I’ll just open my bible and choose to believe what my faith has led me to believe- that everything is a giant billboard advertising God’s glory.

Ryan, I suggest that you appreciate the universe and everything in it as a clear window glass. If all you see and seek to understand is the window glass, you’re entirely missing the point. The purpose of the glass is for you to see the beauty behind it. You can study and explain the glass but at the end, you just might explain explanation itself away. The point is for you to see the beauty outside the window and if you focus on the glass, you just might miss it.

Ryan, can’t you hear it? The Voice? The X-Factor? The One who nature itself idolizes? It’s pointing toward its Creator and His Kingship over them. It’s groaning, singing, shouting, and bowing its existence off. Never be caught asking “Why?” or “How?” Just close your eyes and groan, sing, shout and bow down as well.

Capsule: Oswald Chambers said, “If I am united with Jesus Christ, I hear God all the time through the devotion of hearing. A flower, a tree or a servant of God may convey God’s message to me.” What’s God’s message? Jesus is Lord!