Posted on 06/30/2017 3:13:14 PM PDT by ModernDayCato
As many of you know I have lived in Sandy Hook, CT for about 20 years. Newtown (the Connecticut town that Sandy Hook is part of) has its institutions, including Fairfield Hills, the former mental institution and $30 million albatross, our giant American flag in the center of Main St., and the rooster weathervane atop the Congregational church that Revolutionary War soldiers used for target practice. It later became the town symbol according to legend.
We also have the deli and coffee shop owned for decades by my friend of 20 years Agnes (not her real name). Agnes is known affectionately as Newtown's town crier, and always has the latest scoop on everything that is going on in town -- everything from the latest political boondoggle to whose wife is sleeping with whose husband.
I have spent many an afternoon chatting with Agnes, both of us frequently getting up to wait on customers.
I have also helped out over the years on Sunday, her busiest day. My two decades in town, business ownership and political activism mean that I know many people in town and have both fans and detractors, with whom I share good natured banter as I wait on them Sunday mornings. I work for food. If you know me you know that isn't necessarily a good deal for Agnes, but she doesn't complain.
Over the years Agnes has employed many people of all ages and personalities. She is very serious about her product and her service, and can be a demanding boss. There have been many memorable employees, both positive and negative over the years, some of whom I still see now and then around town and have tremendous affection for.
One of the current crop of employees is Mary (not her real name), a high school sophomore. She is a good kid -- smart, personable, honest, conscientious, friendly. She is also articulate and good with customers.
I frequently perform errands for Agnes, and Mary was helping me unload supplies from the trunk of my car recently. I made some offhand joke that included something about God, and she informed me that she was an atheist.
That revelation made me think of Albert Einstein. When I was 16 we were studying Albert Einstein in school. I went to the library (our generation's Internet) and read several books on him. Einstein called himself an agnostic, discarding the personal God of the Christian (and Hebrew) Bible as "childish" and "naive."
As my opinions and beliefs came into focus I always felt sorry for Einstein, who lacked the intimate knowledge of a personal God. His comment above makes me smile because it makes Matthew 18:3 echo in my head -- "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
Many people mistakenly believe that Einstein was an atheist. He subscribed to the theory of Intelligent Design, writing that he believed in "something beyond the natural, physical world – a supernatural creative intelligence." That sounds like God to me.
There is either an order to the universe, or it is, as atheists have to believe, created by randomness. Anyone who looks closely at any creation of nature, be it a tree or a turtle or a fern or a frog, must really stretch the limits of randomness to believe that any of them just randomly appeared or grew or evolved or whatever quack theory is in fashion today Whatever it is it has to be "un-intelligent design." If I bang myself on the head with a hammer for 20 years I won't randomly grow another arm, no more than microscopic organisms were randomly and magically created from the so-called "primordial soup."
Einstein and I both believe that "behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable." Nothing else makes sense.
As it turns out Einstein was wrong about many things. Quantum physics is showing us that. I believe he was right about this though.
He also touched on a fourth dimension, spacetime, which, if accessed, would show us our lifetime all at once in a straight line, which I was taught was the way God could see it. Hearing this was the first time that religion and science overlapped for me. As quantum mechanics advanced there were many more instances. I am absolutely fascinated by quantum entanglement, which Einstein famously called "spooky."
For those of you who haven't delved into it, Chinese scientists recently performed an experiment with two protons (bits of light) 500 miles apart. They made a change to one proton and simultaneously affected the other one. It was, in effect, instant teleportation, which has far reaching implications across the board. As one scientist said, "it makes the idea of space an illusion." That is an example of quantum entanglement.
I am 100% sure, beyond the shadow of a doubt that there is a God. He is a personal God, and He is intimately involved in my life. He is not to be feared -- He is no longer the angry, fire spitting, sacrifice-accepting tyrant of the old testament.
There comes a time in everyone's life (several times if you are fortunate) when God will stand on your shoulder and yell into your ear. It is entirely your decision whether or not to listen.
A very personal God chooses a very personal way to present you with the choice to welcome Him into your life. For me it was through a romantic relationship. We met at a Christmas party (of course), where I was Santa and she was singing Christmas carols.
Her name was Jean (not her real name), and she was part of a church that I can only describe as Pentecostal. She lived with her Pastor. I wanted to date her, so I had to ask her Pastor, which of course I did. I became part of her church, and saw many things I still cannot explain, including speaking in tongues and other phenomenon that I can only describe as "minor miracles."
It was an immersion course in Christianity, including lessons in what is expected of a Christian man, which fascinated me. All the while Jean and her roommate were praying -well- religiously for me to understand. Gradually I began to see the light.
I have been told that prayer "moves the hands of God." I have seen it with my own eyes and felt it with my own heart and soul. My prayer may not be formal (most of the time), but I too ask for guidance frequently. More about that later.
I was invited to a seminar on Long Island (Jean lived in Westchester). While all of this was going on I was learning, Jean's Pastor was teaching and evaluating, the congregation was getting to know me and welcoming me, Jean and I were spending time together (unbeknownst to her Pastor) and getting to know each other, and Jean and company were praying furiously for my advancement.
That evening after the seminar my head was spinning. I was thinking about everything I had learned and felt and seen and thought. I decided to go for a ride. I have no idea where I was but as I was driving I looked at the road ahead and saw a beautiful small white church. At that moment the clouds literally parted and a beautiful full moon appeared. The moon shone its light on the church, which was bathed in it. It was breathtaking. And it stirred my soul. Deeply. In that moment I knew. In every moment since then I am remain positive beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is a God and He is active in my life.
Jean left the church and my life, but God didn't.
Jean once described the soulmate relationship -- those with whom we have special relationships of the soul -- deep, meaningful interactions where we learn and grow and teach, likening them to two sharp rocks in a bag, constantly rubbing together and grinding down those sharp edges until they become smooth. I've always loved that visual.
I know what you atheists and agnostics and other pains in my ass are going to say -- "If there is a God how would he allow such tremendous suffering in the world?"
C.S. Lewis was far more articulate about the answer than I could ever be -- I highly recommend his book "The Problem of Pain" if you want a more detailed answer. Albert Camus famously said that life is the sum of all your choices. If life had no choices there would be no growth.
If we had no mistakes to learn from we would never learn. Without sadness there is no joy, no love without loss, no success without failure. Without experiencing sadness or loss or failure we cannot possibly understand, appreciate or even value joy, love and success. And it's only through our choices, right and wrong, that we can experience anything. The ability to make those choices is a gift from God, and we call it free will.
Those who argue that there is no God are effectively saying that there is no right and wrong, and no good and evil, because God is perfectly good, perfectly right. We cannot understand evil without good, or grasp what is morally wrong without right.
Those who believe in moral relativism, where my version of right is different than your version of right dishonors God, as there is only one right and one wrong. Those who say "God is love" acknowledge that God is right, or good. If you believe in an absolute set of rules, an absolute right and wrong, you can't be an atheist because you are acknowledging a higher power, an intelligent designer, a morally superior being, God.
Here in Newtown we inevitably get to the shooting. "How could there be a God that allows that?" God didn't shoot those precious children. A mentally ill person did. Adam Lanza made a horrible choice, exercising his free will to destroy.
Getting back to that timespace line that is your life -- one of my favorite passages from the Bible is Matthew 10:29 - "Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows."
It delights me to no end that the Creator of the universe -- Einstein's unseen hand, gives a rat's ass about me. I am valuable to Him -- every hair on my head.
I have come to believe that He creates the spacetime framework that He can see in a straight line, with all of the choices laid out for us to discover and choose. Quantum mechanics and string theory posit that there are parallel universes to ours. I read a terrific article that speculated that there might be an infinite number of parallel universes to ours. What if those parallel universes represent all of the different paths (choices) that are open to us in our spacetime?
One of my soulmates believes that before we are born we create a roadmap of sorts that outlines the framework of our lives and sets the boundaries for our choices, just as the discovery of DNA and the Human Genome revealed a roadmap for our lives across our own spacetime that now, 50 years later, we still understand only a small fraction of. She may have a point there.
Life can be lonely. We are souls stuffed into bodies, isolated from the rest of the universe. God gives us a steady stream of other souls to help smooth the rock's edges. Yet another soulmate told me that once you realize that every character in the books you read is there for a reason, it becomes easy to figure out the plot. Such is life. Every character in your life is there for a reason, and if you can't at least glimpse God's hand in everything you are not paying close enough attention.
God uses people to teach us the lessons of our lives, and uses us to teach people the lessons of theirs. I can't count the number of times in my life I was struggling with something and suddenly found myself in a similar situation except from another perspective. I asked for some help and I got it.
Once you're listening for Him, God talks to you all the time. As one of my cop friends said, "There is no such thing as coincidence." Here's an example. Lately I have been thinking about how much I enjoyed animal rescue, and how maybe I should start doing it again.
Yesterday I ran into my friend the local Animal Control Officer, who I haven't seen in months. She is an active animal rescuer, and it was great to see her again and talk about what she does. Coincidence? I don't think so.
All those weird things we experience -- thinking about someone and having them call us at that instant, ruminating over something and then randomly running into someone related to that ruminating, that kind of stuff -- we are starting to see evidence that quantum entanglement may be a step toward scientifically explaining some of that.
To me that is just more proof that God exists, just like every time some egghead discovers "proof" of things in the Bible like the Ark of the Covenant or Noah's Ark or Solomon's Temple. Well, duh, of course they exist. Why would you think otherwise?
Einstein acknowledged that there is something greater than him in the universe. There is absolutely no question that is true. People speak of "the universe" or "nature" or whatever other word people use to de-personalize the idea of a higher power, even using the phrase "higher power" so as not to offend anyone.
God is God. Call Him whatever you want. God, The Universe, Mother Nature, The Chairman of the Board, the Big Guy, whatever. You're all talking to the same entity. All I know is that as Van Morrison says, :"Wherever God shines His light / He opens up my eyes / So I can see."
I am grateful that He didn't give up on me, and I am grateful that He has given me the people throughout my life who have taught me, broken my heart, saved my life, and just been there to help me understand. Thank God for all of them. And I have.
So to Mary, and all of you other atheists and agnostics out there, why on earth would you want to live a life without God, and how can you look at all of the evidence and choose to be an atheist?
“Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe—a Spirit vastly superior to that of man.” -- Albert Einstein.
Just listen.
I’m kinda from there too. I’m from a few places, but I lived in Sandy Hook too.
We should get together some time. I still come back to the area.
FReepmail me anytime. Depending on the time of day we can go to one of the 35 average restaurants in town, or even visit Agnes.
all very well said, and yet so hard for our ‘intellectual betters’ to understand....
wonder what happened to the high school atheist....
IT IS THEIR CHOICE AND THEIR LOSS
Some refinements could be made, but on the main a God-directed train of thought.
Some people fall so in love with destruction that they can’t see the Carpenter building before their eyes, first a temporary but still impressive structure, then an everlasting one.
But if meaningful rebellion were impossible so would meaningful obedience be.
God forgive us for finding destruction sweet.
She is thinking about the whole thing. All she needs to do is leave the door open a crack and God will work on her. She’s a good kid and I hope she listens.
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