The Law of Uncertainty

Our new sermon series is entitled The Physics of Faith. It is based on a series of message shared by Mark Batterson from National Community Church in Washington, D.C. In this series, I am going to challenge you to explore some immutable laws of physics that will help us better understand the God whom we worship.

By having two eyes instead of one, we are given an amazing optical capability called depth perception. If you cover one eye, everything seems flat. The reason is simple: you lose the ability to judge distances.

Unfortunately, sometimes many Christians go through life with only one eye open when God has given us two. Of course, I am speaking figuratively. Just as God as given us two physical eyes, He has also given us two figurative eyes. They eye of intellect and the eye of faith. If you choose to close either of them, you are not getting a full picture of what God desires you to see.

When we compartmentalize our intellect from our faith, we often lose perception and perspective. Albert Einstein may have said it best. “Science without religion is lame and, conversely, religion without science is blind.” Some Christians focus entirely on the intellect, and they lose the ability to dream, to trust, to believe in things that seem impossible. Other Christians, focus entirely on faith, and they live their lives without a sense of realism.

But what I hope to do in this series is to help us understand that learning and worshipping are not mutually exclusive endeavors. In fact, they are proportional: the more you know the better you can worship.

John 4:22 contains a fascination exchange between Jesus an a woman we refer to as the Samaritan woman. Jesus said to her, “You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know.” Read the New Living Translation of that verse and let me underscore a couple of words. “You Samaritans know very little about the one you worship.” Do you see it? Jesus links knowledge and worship together. Intellect and spirituality are not mutually exclusive terms.

When an astronomer looks into the night sky, he has a greater appreciation for the constellations and stars and planets because they see more than I do. When a musician listens to music they have a greater appreciation because they hear more than I do.

Even in the Great Commandment to love God, one quarter of the mind deals with the intellect. Mark 12:30, “Love the Lord your God with all of your heart and all of your soul and all of your mind and all of your strength.” Loving God with your mind is one-fourth of the command.

This series is being based on the passage of Scripture found in Romans 1:20, which says, “Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.” Can you see the connection? We grow to understand God's invisible qualities like his eternal power and his divine nature, when we understand His creation. We are able to more fully worship God for who He is when we more fully understand what He has created.

As Batterson asks, "Can you imagine studying about an artist like Pablo Picasso without looking at his paintings? Can you imagine studying about a composer like Ludwig Von Beethoven without listening to his music? It seems absurd doesn’t it? It’s about as absurd as studying about the Creator without studying creation."