Providence: John Piper's View VS Mine

I have just begun to read John Piper’s book Providence.  It will take me awhile since it is 711 pages…but I figure I made it through The Count of Monte Cristo as a high school student, so I can handle this.  I am wondering what insights it might give me as I struggle with the loss of my husband.  I believe in God’s sovereignty and providence.  I believe God orchestrated my husband and me meeting, so I must also believe it was His hand that brought about our parting.  Sovereignty and providence bring comfort.

John Piper and I graduated from Wheaton College the same year.  I would not, however, presume to call us “classmates.”  We were never in an actual class together, I never spoke to him until decades later at a conference, and we did NOT travel in the same circles.  As a college student, he was already “known,” and his potential recognized.  I was an obscure oddity.  I entered college having already completed nursing school.  I was paying my own way through college, so I was off campus a great deal working.  Also, I was a chemistry major.  Nurses normally majored in Nursing and took a watered-down chemistry course referred to as “nurses chem.”  I had developed a fascination with the chemistry of the body and the way in which medications worked.  Chemistry satisfied me intellectually.

If known for anything, girl chemistry majors were maligned.  The notion circulated that we were only there to meet guys who were going to be doctors in hopes of an advantageous marriage.  My senior year there was an article in the campus newspaper discussing the best places on campus to study.  A male chemistry major stated that the best place to study was the Chemistry Library, because “have you ever seen the girl chemistry majors?”  His meaning, of course, was that guys would not be distracted by our physical appearance.  If I had not been already engaged at that point, I am afraid I might have carried out something about which I have since fantasized.  At the age of 23, I had rather “stunning” proportions which I modestly disguised.  I would have loved to have maximized them and strutted through the library in a clear attempt to distract. 

All of that to say, I was an unknown entity.  I am not now, nor have I ever been a theologian, so it is probably presumptuous for me to give my view on Providence.  Nevertheless, I am guessing that John Piper has taken 711 pages to say what I have been saying for decades:

All of the elements of the universe and of our individual lives are like pieces in a gigantic and infinitely complex Rubik’s cube.  The hands of God move the pieces about in such a manner that they are always working toward His glory and our ultimate good.  He alone knows the solution and exactly how to achieve it.

Three sentences versus 711 pages.  I just finished page 45.  I’m sure John’s approach is more scholarly than mine, and that I will enjoy and be challenged by it.

Now about that complementarianism….

 

The Lonely Path

I did not mean to walk this path.

I stumble, slip and fall,

Blocked from the path I prefer,

By death’s impenetrable wall.

 

I did not make a wrong turn.

A landslide forced me here.

I do the best that I can do,

In spite of grief and fear.

 

The ground is so uneven,

I trip on jutting rock,

And then I hit loose gravel,

Or roots that interlock.

 

I wished to avoid it,

This painful lonely journey,

Without the one I dearly love,

But, this path was chosen for me.

Beyond Biocentrism--a Review

I just finished reading Beyond Biocentrism by Lanza & Berman.  I guess I should have known where it was going given the recommendation by Deepak Chopra. 

 

I was a bit surprised when I compared the definition of biocentrism to the content of the book.  Biocentrism is defined as “an ethical perspective holding that all life deserves equal moral consideration or has equal moral standing.”  That concept does not emerge as primary in this book.  Lanza (who seems to be the main author) discusses current physics in general and quantum theory in particular, as only being able to be understood through a biocentric viewpoint.  Never mind the fact that many physicists believe the one thing that you can understand about quantum theory is that it can’t be understood.

 

Some thoughts on the book:

In the second chapter Lanza states:  “By the time the Old Testament books were penned…a key point was a stationary Earth ruled by a single, easily upset God.  The rabbis of the time showed no inclination to question this prevailing worldview.  They duly filled the pages of Genesis and Deuteronomy with the flat-earth, glued-in-place mindset of their time…   Figuring out how nature operated was on nobody’s to-do list.  Indeed, the things that provoke our curiosity today—the nature of life and time and consciousness and the working of the brain—all would have seemed alien to early civilizations.”

 

I beg to differ!  Skipping over my discomfort with an “easily upset God,” let’s go to the flat-earth notion.  Having read through the Bible in its entirety multiple times, I have never seen the flat earth notion.  Job, which is believed to predate Genesis, refers to the earth as being suspended over nothing.  Chapter 26 also refers to the horizon on the face of the waters, which obviously could be observed to be curved.

 

I have to assume Lanza has never read the book of Job because it is full of deep philosophical questions.  What is the origin of pain, suffering and evil?  Why would an Almighty God pay any attention to us?  What is the purpose for our existence?  In chapters 38-41 of Job, the Lord asks Job a series of questions which touch on many of life’s mysteries.  I, of course, believe that the Bible is inspired and God-breathed, so man would not necessarily have come up with these questions by himself, but he is certainly presented with them.  Keep in mind that the book of Job is believed to be the oldest book of the Bible.  If it was not God-inspired, humans were already pondering the imponderables.

 

Lanza also states that the ancients (i.e. authors of the Old Testament) “may have been onto something” as they frequently mention “light” which is a “central character in Reality’s puzzle.”  He equates light and energy in this passage.  I am astounded that any scientist can dismiss the fact that Genesis begins with the statement “Let there be light.”  How could the uninformed ancients possibly have known that the first created thing had to be energy?  Of course, a Creator could have known that light and the energy it represents was the way to begin.  It appears that Lanza dismisses this as a lucky guess.

 

The book spends quite a bit of time on the idea that “time” doesn’t really exist except as a creation of our own minds in order to function in life.  “There are places in the universe where only a single second of events pass while a millions years’ worth of activities simultaneously elapses here on Earth.”  II Peter 3:8 seems to indicate that God lives outside of time stating that “with the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.”  Genesis 1 states that God created the sun and moon to “serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years.”  In other words, He made them for the benefit of human beings to be able to keep track of time.  He doesn’t need them.  Timelessness is nothing new.

 

Several false statements are made regarding the beliefs of creationists and proponents of intelligent design, but then Lanza states “Give them this.  When they complain that the creation of the eye’s architecture cannot be explained by natural selection, and some scientists respond by summarily dismissing them, it is the latter who are guilty of sloppy reasoning.”  He correctly takes evolutionists to task, although not for the same reasons I would as a believer in an intelligent Creator.

 

Quite a bit of time is spent on the idea of consciousness and the fact that no one has an adequate explanation for how it “evolved” or came into being.  We all have it, but science can’t explain where it came from.  I believe that when God said “let us make man in our image,” he was not talking about physical form, but about consciousness of self, the ability to be creative, and the ability to make choices.  Consciousness is one of God’s gifts.  Having also recently read an article on Artificial Intelligence, I very much doubt that a computer will ever gain self-awareness, even if it can recognize itself in a mirror.

 

The book clearly states that “randomness is not a tenable hypothesis” for the finely tuned cosmos that allows for the existence of the earth and life on it.  But, just the time one thinks Lanza may be arguing for the existence of an intelligent Creator, we learn that by some mystical means we have created all this ourselves.  We are “one” with everything that surrounds us.  We “create” things by observing them.  This ties in with quantum theory where photons and electrons are waves until they are observed and then materialize as particles which can be measured and their location determined.

 

Co-author Berman takes his turn to describe a life-altering experience in which he realized his oneness with everything and felt over-whelming peace.  The eastern vs the western mind is discussed.  The eastern mind can simultaneously hold seemingly conflicting thoughts….such as light is both a wave and a particle.  But, this can be applied to all areas.  It seems we need to abandon our notion that time and space are “real.”  They are only constructs of our mind.

 

About this place in the book, I wrote in the margin “flirting with schizophrenia?”  Then I came upon “Don’t trouble yourself with endless questions about God, existence, destiny and all the rest.  Instead find out who is the person who wants to know such things.  A person who made such self-inquiries with all sincerity and good effort ultimately could find no one home.  He or she would discover that there is no separate individual self, only a stream of thoughts….one would clearly see that the “self” was either nothing at all …or the entire cosmos.”  Sounds suspiciously like, we are encouraged to become our own “god.” 

 

The very next chapter after I had decided this requires being out of touch with “reality,” he points out that in order to function in the world “we have appointments to keep.  We live in a society based on a shared notion of time and have to act accordingly if we’re not to be locked away in a psychiatric ward.”  Indeed!

 

The book actually says a lot that is correct.  In the concluding chapter:  “Science’s ever-growing twentieth-century assumption of a dumb, random universe, in which life arose by chance, had the secondary effect of isolating the human psyche from the cosmos….This together with the growing abandonment of religion, probably led to a sense that in a cosmos ruled by accidents…we humans need to exploit the environment and grab what we can.”

 

He sees biocentrism as the solution to man’s current dilemma.  I see the solution as a return to belief in a God who defines both justice and mercy, and who controls human history.  I am confident God understands dark matter, dark energy and quantum theory.  I am perfectly in agreement with scientists trying to gain additional knowledge about these areas.  Since God Himself defines Truth, anyone honestly searching for Truth will come face to face with God.

 

Lanza and Berman have found much truth, but they have not employed Occam’s Razor:  the theory that the simplest explanation is usually the best.  They have constructed a whole theory of biocentrism "entangled" with quantum theory instead of the much simpler explanation that there actually is a God.