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The Inversion
You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay, that the thing made
should say of its maker, “He did not make me”; or the thing formed say of him who formed it,
“He has no understanding”? — Isaiah 29:16 ESV
Sometimes as I review some of the new stories that Google decides to suggest to me, some headline just grips me. This happened this week with a story titled “70-year-old quantum prediction comes true, as something is created from nothing.” (https://bigthink.com/starts-witha-bang/something-from-nothing/) I’m sure you saw the article because you are also trolling for new stories on quantum physics… but just in case you missed it, the headline makes you think that the all-wise scientists have finally created something from absolute nothingness, therefore rendering God irrelevant. However, when you read the news story exactly the opposite is true. The article explains that, really, the universe contains incredible amounts of energy and information even in the “maximum nothingness” that physicists must start with to get any sort of “something.” But this point seems to be lost on the article writers as they conclude
With electrons and positrons (or “holes”) being created out of literally nothing, just ripped out of the quantum vacuum by electric fields themselves, it’s yet another way that the Universe demonstrates the seemingly impossible: we really can make something from absolutely nothing!
It is clear in this article that there is a toxic combination of severe confusion and supreme pride. Confusion because there is no possible way that anything at all can be created from “absolutely nothing” or from “literally nothing” – see R.C. Sproul’s work for a great understanding of true nothingness (https://www.ligonier.org/posts/out-nothing-nothing-comes). Pride because the statements made in the article have an assumption that the lab experiment or “thought experiments” of the great scientists have done something impossible and, therefore, these men are to be revered as creators, presumably to the exclusion of creator God.
In my devotional reading this week, providentially I was scheduled to read Isaiah 29 and was struck by 29:16 as quoted above. Isaiah records the words of God as He describes a rebellious people who not only have turned their back on God, set their rules above His rules, and invert reality (or “turn things upside down”) to make the “potter be regarded as the clay.” How dangerous and foolish! Contemporary science is an amazing tool and can be, by my own experience, a beautiful means of enhanced worship of an infinitely wise and creative God. However, when materialism and science are taken as your god, then the created order is inverted and God is relegated to, at best, a created entity and, at worse, a wishful delusion.
Do not be fooled by articles like the one I reference above — similar articles are published at least weekly with such sensational headlines. Also, don’t just discard them, if the science interests you! I suggest you glean from such material the majesty and beauty and creativity of our Heavenly Father, worship Him for revealing Himself to us through the created order, but then discard the obvious “scientism” and pray for those trapped in the philosophy of the world that can only end in despair. We can rejoice in knowing, as Isaiah did, that the end of all things will result in the proper order being set back in place in the universe; the inversion will be set right again, as he records in Isaiah 35:4b-10:
…“Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of
God. He will come and save you.”5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of
the deaf unstopped; 6 then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing
for joy. For waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; 7 the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; in the haunt of jackals, where they lie down, the grass shall become reeds and rushes. 8 And a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Way of Holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it. It shall belong to those who walk on the way; even if they are fools, they shall not go astray. 9 No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it; they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there. 10 And the ransomed of the LORD shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
Pastor Aaron
