My God is an awesome God

Is your God too small? I expect all of us have a perception of God that is too small. We sing and talk about our awesome God, his majesty, his eternity, and his all-powerfulness and omniscience. But what does all that mean? 

We all have some concept in our mind of God, but for a human being to understand God it’s a bit like a bacterium trying to understand a human. It may know and experience that human, and even have an intimate relationship with him, but it can only experience a tiny aspect of that human, perhaps the surface of just one cell. But a human is made up of 70 - 100 trillion cells, and what is more, a human is much more than a mere collection of cells. A bacterium could never understand the astounding biological complexity of a human body, much less the emotions, the thoughts, the creativity, the soul, nor the spirit of a human person. So too, God is so much beyond us, there is no way we could ever hope to come even close to grasping his true nature. 

That given, God has revealed himself to us, at least in part. As in Michelangelo’s famous painting, God has reached out to mankind. He wants us to know him, to have a relationship with him and love him. God has revealed himself to the fathers of old and to the prophets, and we can learn of him through their writings, the Bible. Last of all, he revealed himself as Yeshua who came in human form, to suffer, die and rise again, for the forgiveness of sins and to bring salvation to all who will respond to Him.

God has also revealed himself to us through nature and the scientific exploration of the natural world. I claimed in my previous article that my study of science has in no way undermined my faith or belief in the Bible, but has rather been faith-building and faith-confirming. It wasn’t until I began to learn about some of the recent discoveries in physics, biology and astronomy, that I began to have an inkling, the merest inkling, of the stupendous awesomeness of our God. 

Jewish and Christian theologians alike believe that God created the world by ‘fiat’, that is to say, He created the world out of nothing by means of a spoken word. Atheists have a problem with such a notion, but cannot explain the origin of the universe. This reminds me of the story of the debate (source unknown) between an atheist and a Christian pastor. The atheist stated that he could not believe in a God that made everything out of nothing, upon which the pastor replied, “It would take me much more faith to believe that nothing made everything out of nothing”!

Science tells us that the existence of our universe began by means of a “Big Bang”. According to this theory, about 13.8 billion years ago, the universe rapidly expanded from a very hot, very dense ‘singularity’ and has been expanding ever since. Initially the universe was just energy, but as it cooled some of that energy converted into the particles that make up the matter that forms the stars, planets and other entities of the universe as we know it today. 

Does the Big Bang Theory contradict the Bible? I do not believe so. In fact, God himself describes his creative act in a way that seems consistent with the Big Bang Theory:

  I am the first and I am the last. My own hand laid the foundations of the earth,
    and my right hand spread out the heavens; Isaiah 48: 12-13

I used to teach middle school students about the Big Bang Theory, and in every class, at least one student would ask, “But where did the singularity come from?” or “What made the Big Bang happen?” And in most classes, another child would answer, “God”. The Bible does not give us much detail about how God created the heavens and the earth, only that He spoke and it happened. I see nothing in the Big Bang Theory that contradicts that. 

I suspect the main reason that so many Christians oppose the Big Bang Theory is that it requires a very long time period, given the age of the universe (since the Big Bang) at around 13.8 billion years. This opposes the received traditional dating of the Creation about 6,000 years ago, based on the Biblical genealogies going back to Adam. I will discuss this issue in more depth in a future article. 

For now, let us consider the size and complexity of our universe. 

If you go outside on a dark, moonless night, far from the lights of civilization, and look at the night sky, you will be astounded by the number of stars in the sky. King David wrote:

The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament shows His handiwork. Psalm 19:1

Yet David, like us, could see only about 4500 stars. With binoculars, we might see about 100,000 and with a 3-inch telescope about 5 million. Yet even with the best telescopes on Earth, our view of the Universe is limited by the distortions and scattering of light caused by the Earth’s atmosphere. It wasn’t until the Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, started sending us high-definition images of deep space that we understood that our view up until then had been very limited. In fact, there are far more stars out there than we imagined. Not only that, but we found that many of the ‘stars’ we can see are not stars at all but whole galaxies. Now, the James Webb Space Telescope, launched in 2021, is sending us even higher resolution photographs and infrared images, which show us even more stars and galaxies even more distant from Earth, and earlier in time.

So how many stars are there? Astronomers now believe that our galaxy, the Milky Way alone contains somewhere between 200-400 billion stars. 

It is impossible for us to imagine a number that big. Most of us can picture a hundred or even a thousand, but after that, our comprehension gets a bit fuzzy. We cannot even imagine 1 million – which is 1,000,000 – much less a number like a billion. 

How big is a billion? In American English, it is 1,000,000,000 and in British English, it is a thousand times that number. To count to even the smaller American billion, it would take 31 years at one count per second, with no stops. 

Scientists believe that there are something like 200 billion galaxies in the Universe. So how many stars are there? Assuming that our galaxy is an average-sized galaxy, that would put the number of stars at something like 40,000 billion. If we wanted to count the stars, it would take us around 1.3 million years counting at the rate of 1 count per second, with no stops! If this is so, then the number of stars in the universe is greater than all the sand grains on all the beaches in the world. 

Does this blow your mind? If not, then try to get your head around this: physicists now believe that the visible matter, the stars, planets, galaxies and ‘dust’ in the universe, make up less than 5 % of the universe. They tell us that most of the universe is so-called dark matter (27%) and dark energy (68%). Scientists do not yet know what dark matter is, but we do know it does not give off electromagnetic radiation in any form and interacts with ‘regular’ matter only by means of gravity. 

We cannot see dark matter and our knowledge of its existence is based on measurements and calculations which indicate that the visible matter alone is insufficient to account for the gravitational pull of the matter within galaxies. Evidence to support the existence of dark matter is found in the lensing of light, the distortion of light as it passes through regions in space containing dark matter. 

Dark energy is even more of a mystery, but its existence is considered to provide a possible explanation for a recent discovery that has shocked the scientific world. Observations show us that the universe is expanding and is doing so at an accelerating rate. Until this discovery, it was thought that the rate of expansion would be slowing down under the influence of gravity, the result of the attraction of all particles of matter to each other. However, the discovery that objects in the universe are actually pulling away from each other at an increasingly rapid pace, and faster than the speed of light, requires explanation. 

A large number of scientific observations have also led physicists to the realization that ‘empty space’, that volume between and within the particles of matter, is not empty at all but contains an infinite quantity of energy that forms a kind of scaffold on which the universe exists. What is this mysterious energy, this fabric of space on which the universe is stretched? This flummoxed physicists but it should not disconcert those who accept the existence of God. The Bible teaches us that not only did God create the universe, but he upholds it, and in Him, all things have their being. 

For by Him, all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.

Colossians 1: 16-17 (my emphasis)

…though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being

Acts 17:27-28 (my emphasis)

In Genesis 1:6-8 we can read how God created the firmament, which divided the waters above from the waters below, and he called it heaven (or sky). I have always wondered what this ‘firmament’ is. The Hebrew word rendered ‘firmament’ here is ‘rakia’ which has the same root as our modern Hebrew word ‘reka’, meaning background. Perhaps this mysterious ‘firmament’ is this ‘fabric of space’, which defines our universe and separates it from whatever is out there beyond our universe, the ‘place’ we call Heaven. 

Scientists now suggest that dark energy provides the energy to stretch out the fabric of space, even creating more space. It is as if space itself is being stretched out. One can picture the universe as being like a piece of stretchy fabric with the galaxies sewn onto it. When the fabric is stretched the galaxies are pulled apart. This discovery should not surprise those who read the Bible:

Thus says God the Lord,
Who created the heavens and stretched them out,
Who spread forth the earth and that which comes from it,
Who gives breath to the people on it,
And spirit to those who walk on it:

Isaiah 42:5 (my emphasis)

It is he who made the earth by his power,
    who established the world by his wisdom,
    and by his understanding stretched out the heavens

Jeremiah 10:12 (my emphasis)

Perhaps these Bible passages are not as metaphorical as we have thought. They may in fact be quite literal! 

As if the existence of dark matter and dark energy were not enough, one of the most fascinating discoveries of modern physics is the existence of antimatter. Antimatter is made up of antiparticles that have mass like normal particles, but opposite charge and magnetic moment. Normal protons for example have a positive charge but antiprotons have a negative charge, and positrons, the antiparticle of a negatively charged electron, have a positive charge.

In the first moments after the Big Bang, it is believed that only energy existed. As the universe cooled some of that energy became matter. In the first fractions of a second after the Big Bang antimatter and matter particles were popping in and out of existence at high speed. Antimatter and matter particles always come into existence together, and when they collide, they annihilate each other releasing vast quantities of energy. If this is so, how can matter exist at all? Yet matter exists, even though it is thought that only 1 out of every billion particles created by the Big Bang still survives. Not only that, nearly all the Universe today is made up of normal matter. Antimatter exists but it is rare. How can this be? For every ten billion particles of antimatter created since the Big Bang, ten billion and one particles of normal matter were created, and it is this tiny asymmetry that makes the existence of our Universe possible. Scientists do not yet have an explanation for this asymmetry. 

If all this sounds like science fiction you should know that we are already using antimatter in a variety of practical technologies. Perhaps the most well-known is in Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scans, in which positrons (the anti-electron) are injected into the brain. The positrons are destroyed when they encounter normal electrons and these tiny explosions emit gamma rays which can be detected to give a very accurate electronic image of the tissues of the brain, or other body parts. PET scans can show how certain parts of the body are functioning, rather than just what they look like. They are used to diagnose certain illnesses, such as Alzheimer’s Disease and other forms of dementia. In addition, they assist in the diagnosis of cancer, help in determining its spread and its response to treatment, and are sometimes used to help plan operations, such as coronary artery bypass grafts and brain surgery for epilepsy.    

So just how big is the Universe? The observable universe is a sphere 92 billion light years in diameter, but the universe is probably much bigger than that. How big it really is we will never know because it is expanding at a rate faster than the speed of light, so the light coming from very distant stars can never ever reach us. We don’t even know if the Universe is spherical, flat or hollow like a ball. For an explanation, click here.

It is apparent that the Universe is so big that we have no adequate words to describe it, and it is quite impossible for our brains to grasp its enormity. If the Universe is so huge, how “big” must God be? Of course, that is a nonsense question since God lies outside of the four-dimensional world, the world defined by length, width, height and time, the so-called space-time continuum of our universe. Thus it is literally true that God is infinite and without size. It is also true that he is ‘eternal’, that is, outside of time. 

When Job accused God of treating him unjustly, the LORD challenged Job thus, 

Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Tell Me, if you have understanding.
 Who determined its measurements?
Surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
To what were its foundations fastened?
Or who laid its cornerstone,
 When the morning stars sang together,
And all the sons of God shouted for joy?

Job 38: 4-7

In other words, God said who are you to challenge me. You do not, nor cannot understand my ways or my thoughts. At this Job was silenced. God had given Job a glimpse of His greatness. When we look upon the magnificence of God’s creation, we too can catch a glimpse of Him and as a result, we will be silenced before him. Truly, our God is an awesome god!