Life, Jim, but not as we know it

Submitted by Michael S (United States), Jan 27, 2015 at 08:51

"Actually the 'name riddle' is no riddle at all. It's glaringly obvious..."

Hmm... Waza, I really AM dense. If I ever figure out your name, I will have to kick myself. The problem there is, I still haven't figured out how to kick myself! Now, is that dense? or is that dense? (I once could put both feet behind my neck, if that's any help; but nowadays, I have trouble tying my shoes!)

"..It is true, that we can't see the Kingdom of Heaven with our earthly eyes.." But Jesus did say both 'the Kingdom of Heaven' is within you' and 'seek and ye shall find' , no?

Luke.17
1.[20] And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:

He said you can't see it with your eyes -- which makes sense, if it's inside you.

Was he lying or trying to send people on a wild goose chase? I think not. In fact, I know not. This kingdom actually shows itself when you are very here and now.

Now, that's something he didn't exactly say. Tanakh says,

Proverbs 27
[12] A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself; but the simple pass on, and are punished.

He said we should watch and wait. That's being "here and now", to be sure; but also expectant. He also said a peculiar thing,

Jesus describes the Kingdom of God as something we receive, something we inherit and something we enter.

God is repeatedly called the "God of heaven"; and when we consider "heaven" as being everything above us (and "earth" being that which is below), we can see that it it goes on quite a ways -- some 15 billion light years, i've been told. That's the limit of what we can know scientifically -- which is to say, what we can learn by observation. Beyond that lies the unknown; and our own scientists say that once the Universe was very small, smaller than a grapefruit. As "Master of the Universe", as the Jews say, or "God of heaven", as the Bible says, we can imagine that God is and was greater than this. Paul said to the Athenians,

Acts 17
[28] For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

It's not hard, therefore, to conceive of God with our reasoning; and His existence is most reasonable. He lives beyond the heavens; He lived before the Universe existed; yet He has done a truly amazing thing: He can exist inside our minds! Not in the matter of our minds; because we can see that all the matter in the universe is smaller than Him; and not in the energy of our minds, because we know that matter and energy are different forms of the same substance. He exists (or I should say, ought to exist) in the realm not of ideas that we conjure up with firing neurons, but of the ideas themselves, which have an existence themselves, an eternal existence, even when they aren't resident in us.

These ideas can be expressed as words; and words themselves can be strung together into sentences, pages, books, into wisdom itself, to become one word, one thought: As John said,

John 1
[1] In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
[2] The same was in the beginning with God.
[3] All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
[4] In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
[5] And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

We sing the song,

"By wisdom O Lord
Heaven's gates open up
With understanding You order the seasons
Creating day and night
Turning darkness into light
Arranging the stars to Your pleasing"

The song is adapted from the Psalms. It stresses that

Colossians 1:
[16] For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him, and for Him:

Note that I capitalized the "Him", to make it clear that we are talking about God here, not Messiah. This isn't religious, trinitarian gobbledegook; it's a straitforward statement of what we ought to know: We can see the universe. We can't see what or Who made it. But what we can see of the universe tells us something of its maker: Its maker was or had great wisdom, which we know as the laws of physics. From the singularity, it apparently flew apart with tremendous force, then coalesced as matter (as we know it and as we don't know it) and forces, dancing together as though led by a symphony. The greatest wisdom on earth cannot duplicate it.

So we know that the Master of the Universe is wise, and powerful. We also know that He (or a "Super-wise It???") is just; for there is balance and symmetry in the universe. As the Apostle Paul said,

Romans 1:
[20] For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
[21] Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
[22] Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools

Some scientists and mathematicians have been trying, over the years, to come up with a mathematical expression that connects the matter, forces and phenomena of the universe. Forces and matter, for instance, can be shown to be related to one another: They both have wave properties and particle properties at the same time; and we know that both waves and particles can be described mathematically. We also know that physics is different in different regimes: as one approaches the speed of light, we describe things with relitavistic physics; when dealing with the nano-scale, we use quantum physics. This, and other things, makes the math extremely complicated; and some briliant thinkers have come up with "string theory", to put it all together.

Underlying string theory, is the reasonable assumption that everything can be described mathematically. If you will, it can be described as "1"s and "0"s, the building blocks of the programs we a communicating with. These numbers are, in fact, alphanumeric "words"; and a string of all these words, arranged with infinite wisdom, are also a "word" -- the Word of Super-wise "It", if you will; but to those of us who love Him, the Word of God.

The Apostle John, then, and also Paul, thus anticipated the greatest minds of our time.

I haven't described God here, as though I had "seen" Him the way a person sees another person. I have described Him rudimentary fashion, according to what I see (and what our greatest minds have seen) in the world around us -- our vast universe which was, alas, brought forth from a very small beginning. I didn't see this God with my eyes; I saw Him within me, in my mind. At the time that I "saw" him this way, I appropriated Him by faith; and He showed Himself to me not as human understanding that would make Him a "thing", as something I could explain and control; but as a person: not as an abstract concept such as "love", something I could never fully understand, but as the One who loves me. I have submitted to Him as my King, and entered into His Kingdom. I did that in the middle of a forest, on a pitch-black night; and I have walked in His light ever since (Well, OK -- I step the other way sometimes).

Now, this fellow in Sydney -- did he walk in such a light? Did he have such a life? He had life, Jim, but not as we know it.

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