Astronomy
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained (Psalm 8:3 KJV).
My parents were my teachers. They homeschooled me and my four younger siblings from first grade through high school. When I was nine or ten, my mother began to teach us about astronomy. We learned to identify the constellations of the northern hemisphere from studying books on astronomy and star maps: Orion, Ursa Major (the Big Dipper), Ursa Minor (the Little Dipper), and the Pleiades, among others. On clear nights we would gather up our astronomy books with their star maps, a flashlight, and an old quilt, ragged with wear, that my grandmother had sewn years earlier. We would portion these items amongst ourselves and head out into the pastureland around our small home.
After finding a nice even patch of ground free of large rocks and the ubiquitous cow pies, we would unfold our quilt on the dewy grass and lie down to study the incarnation of our books. To my knowledge, no mystic or philosopher ever said, “To look at stars you must first close your eyes.” But they should have. When looking into the night sky, you should close your eyes for at least a minute to allow your eyes to adjust. Some stars, such as Beetle Juice (in the constellation Orion), are so bright they can be seen in most circumstances. However, the majority of stars that are visible to the naked eye require preparation to see.
While lying in the field with my eyes closed, I could hear the bullfrogs in the cow pond down the valley and the innumerable crickets in the grass all around me, and I could feel the cool damp air on my face. I would sometimes imagine what it would feel like to gather dew as a blade of grass. And I would anticipate what I would see when I opened my eyes.
Finally, our minute would be up, and I would open my eyes to gaze into what seemed the infinite depth of the night sky. That sounds cliché, but sometimes clichés are truer than originality. For the sky is bottomless—infinitely so. I would always forget that, but when my eyes would slide open, I would find myself staring into eternity.
This experience never failed to shift something deep within me. And I suppose it must have done the same for my brothers. Though we were ever driven by the irresistible impulses to pinch, punch, and prod one another mercilessly, during those moments under the firmament, we were, for a time, stilled, and it seemed that eternity entered into our finite beings.
This infinite expanse above us was ruled by order and stability. Each star had its place in the sky. Nothing was ever amiss. Polaris was reliably just slightly askew of true north and making his slow way around the top of the world, always happy to help you find your way to your destination. Orion never rose without his sword drawn for battle, and the Big Dipper was persistently pointing to the Little Dipper. Planets would move about in the sky, but they were always where they were supposed to be when they were supposed to be there. The order of eternity would press itself into me. I could for this brief time feel the immutability of God and the structure of His thought as if they were tactile things. It was there in the sky, written in letters too big to miss but too visible to be noticed without concentration or perhaps even meditation. Astronomy had slipped into theology. How could this be?
Revelation
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse (Romans 1:20 KJV).
In the beginning, God created all things by speaking them into existence. Moreover, as the Apostles John and Paul explain (Jn. 1:1–3; Col. 1:16), He created all things by and through Jesus Christ: the Logos. John’s use of the term Logos in the opening chapter of his Gospel is purposeful. He is describing Christ as the fullness of God’s ordered thought communicated to man. Christ is the fulfillment of God’s revelation that we receive in two ways: through the created order (general revelation) and the Scriptures (special revelation).
Of course, the Apostles are expanding on and clarifying what God already explained to us in Genesis 1. There, we read that God’s spoken thoughts brought the entire cosmos into existence. Unlike the gods of the pagans who fashioned the universe from other substances, the Bible depicts God imagining and then bringing into existence everything out of nothing—ex nihilo—through the power of His Word.
This revelation of God’s creative process gives us insight into how and why we perceive order in the universe. Abraham Kuyper explains that because of God’s creative work through the Logos, “the divine thinking must be embedded in all created things.” In fact, “there can be nothing in the universe that fails to express, to incarnate, the revelation of the thought of God.” The order we observe in the heavens and in the atom is an embodiment of the divine order of God so that “the whole creation” serves as a “visible curtain behind which radiates the exalted working of this divine thinking.”[1] Thus, we are confident that the perceived structure and orderliness throughout the universe is real and that it is knowable (albeit imperfectly) by man.
Nor is general revelation limited to believers—it is a common grace enjoyed by all. Paul explicitly states that no one has an excuse for sinfulness because God has so clearly revealed Himself to us through creation (Rom. 1:18–20). So we find that even pagan peoples, according to God’s common grace, have imperfectly perceived portions of the truth about the order of the universe, the coming judgment of mankind, and God’s invisible attributes among other things.
The Pythagorean school of Greek philosophers are a particularly excellent example of this truth. By their observation of the mathematical order of the universe from musical intervals to the regular paths of the stars, they perceived that reality is structured in a specific way that calls man to order himself in harmony with the music of the spheres. Therefore, they worked to cultivate their souls toward virtue and self-control. This does not mean that they properly understood the relationship of the spiritual to the material world, the nature of the final judgment, or the gift of salvation through Christ alone. However, they perceived the Logos that carefully and harmoniously structured the universe and realized that we would do well to order our lives in sympathy with the framework of reality.
Conclusion
Three decades ago, as I lay under the stars in my little corner of Robertson County, Tennessee, I experienced the Logos, not unlike the Pythagoreans did. However, I also had the benefit of God’s special revelation. The physical interaction with God’s transcendent order served as a bulwark for the instruction I was receiving from God’s Word at home and at church.
In later years, the stars have always served as a reminder to me of the truths of God’s presence, power, and steadfastness. For this reason, I always try to keep them in sight. Unfortunately, light pollution from the ubiquitous security lights of densely settled areas washes out the night sky so that only the brightest star shines through. This sad reality cuts us off from a key aspect of God’s communication to us. For such reasons, our family has been committed to living in the countryside.
Several years ago, our family traveled to a relatively small city for the annual convention of the National Association of Free Will Baptists. It was the first time that our six-year-old son had spent more than an afternoon in a city of any size. One night, a few days into our stay, he told me and his mother that he was ready to go home because he missed seeing the stars. Few things he has said have warmed my heart so much. I was glad that he missed the stars because I knew they were teaching him deep truths and that they would help him stay on course and ultimately find his way Home if ever he should stray.
[1] Abraham Kuyper, Wisdom and Wonder: Common Grace in Science and Art, ed. Jordan J. Ballor and Stephen J. Grabill, trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman (Grand Rapids: Christian’s Library, 2011), 39.
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