Light Speed and God

I believe that as we discover the mysteries of the cosmos, we discover the ways of God. For that and many other reasons, I love learning about science especially Quantum Science and Relativity. I have been thinking a lot about some ideas brought up in the book The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene, and this is the first post that is an attempt to relate those ideas in print.

We know a lot about the speed of light. Most of it is wild, but not mysterious:

1. Light travels at 186,000 miles per hour second.
2. Though it has wavelike properties it is composed of tiny particles called photons (more on that in a later post).
3. The closer you get to approaching the speed of light, the slower time passes.

Here is the mystery: imagine someone fired one of these photons away from you, and you decided to pursue it. You could imagine that if you started to run at 186,000 miles per hour second, the photon would appear to be standing still (or going the same speed as you). In other words, it would not appear that the distance between you and the photon was increasing. Furthermore, you could imagine that if you started to creep above the speed of light, that you could eventually catch up with the tiny light packet.

That is not the case. In fact, no matter how fast you travel, light will always appear to be traveling away from you at 186,000 miles per hour second. It is simply not relative to you.

God is the exact same way. Isaiah 55:9 says, "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are God's ways higher than our ways." (my paraphrase) No matter how much we try to make God conform to our rules of culture or logic, he never seems to fit. No matter how many times we look at each other to decide how God will or should work, he never conforms to our pattern. God is simply not relative to us.

God is the constant. God is the measure. God is. May we be ever seeking to measure ourselves against the person of God, and not the other way around.