Optimisfits Read online

  Is it the corporate world of the business-casual clothes, the weekly salary, and the thirst for the CEO’s approval? Do you trudge forward with your umbrella tucked safely under your arm as you make your way to a job where you will drown yourself in the drudgery of yet another day? Along the way, are you guided by highway signs and billboards that seem identical no matter where you are? Do the golden arches of McDonald’s offer your best promise of sustenance for your journey?

  Or is it the secret country of Narnia that beckons you?

  And does that umbrella double as a sword you can brandish in a swashbuckling manner as you do battle against boredom and complacency?

  Just out of the line of sight, you know you exist in more than a world of binary code…

  10010110011101010100001110

  We are living in a wondrous world. A world where a child’s laugh might give birth to a fairy.

  Nature itself is as magical as the greatest fairy tales. It’s a world where ducks wiggle their feet above the surface of the water as they perform a raucous headstand while diving for their next meal. Where kangaroos transport their young out of harm’s way in the safety of belly pouches. Where macaque monkeys stuff their cheeks ridiculously full of food, making them look like some greedy young child from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Where parrots hold dialogues with their human pals.

  It is a wondrous world.

  That’s a truth that children know.

  And one that most adults have forgotten.

  In his book Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton reminds us of why this is so important. The reason we need fairy tales that tell us about a river that flows with gold, he says, is because we have forgotten how bizarre it is that rivers flow with water.

  Our culture’s picture of God is that of a Newtonian mathematician whose universe is a giant, logical, and sensible place where everything is done according to natural laws. It is a world marked by the monotony of a sun that rises and sets every day, just like clockwork.

  Monotonous. That God is the Great Machinist who oversees a Great Machine.

  Chesterton believed in a different kind of God, and so do I.

  When I was a kid, my dad would put me on his shoulders as we played in the pool. We would submerge together, me crouching on his back as we sank slowly to the bottom. When his feet touched the floor of the pool he would push against it with all his might, launching us both upwards, and tossing me into the air, where I would splash down spread-eagled, causing the water to lap over the sides of the pool. As soon as I caught my breath I yelled, “Let’s do it again!”

  I could have done it all day.

  I never got tired of it.

  My desire for repetition was the exact opposite of monotony. Chesterton argued that God had that same childlike quality. He never got tired of sunrise and sunset, or of creating billions of daisies, all the same and yet each an original work of creative genius:

  Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.2

  An eight-year-old wants to read a story about how Harry opened a door and saw a dragon behind it.

  A two-year-old is just amazed that Harry could open a door!

  As we get older we are more interested in the materials the door is made of than in what might be behind it. We require ever more stimuli to remain interested. We grow indifferent to the wonder.

  We become Muggles in a world of magic.

  We can pass through the wardrobe into the world of Narnia.

  There is diversity to be found in a single drop of water. In the refracted glory of a rainbow streaking against the sky after the rains. In the dancing stars, the spinning planets, the spirals of the stretching galaxy.

  We have brains capable of storing some 2,500,000 gigabytes of information—and turning that information into inventions, artistic creations, scientific theories, literary masterpieces, love notes, graduation speeches, rap songs, and a thousand other uses.

  We come into the world with a supercomputer in our head.

  And we quickly learn that there are quite a few things that are beyond that supercomputer.

  The earth we live upon is a magical kingdom filled with enchanted forests and snowy peaks, upon which Gandalf and the Fellowship may be climbing even as our backs are turned. Maybe I’m a Romantic (I’ve been called worse things), but I sincerely believe there are gnomes in the garden and fairies in the flowers. I’m with the kids on this one.

  And with George MacDonald, who also believed that flowers were fantastical things.

  Jesus walked among the lilies and the mustard seeds, looking up at the doves and the sparrows, and He spoke of these in His teaching. He was paying attention. He saw the whole world as a temple of God, a place where we need to remove our shoes because we are treading on holy ground.

  Some of today’s scientists are in agreement when they remind us that it is better for our flesh-and-blood soles to make contact with the grass and the earth and the soil than to tread the world on the rubber soles of our shoes. It is, they say, vital to our health and well-being to make that kind of contact.

  Our soles feed our souls.

  (Insert groan.)

  Yes, this is Aslan’s country all around us. It is harder to spot in the landscapes created by human beings—the highways and skyscrapers and shopping malls. But look close. Look up. Look around.

  Look up and see the spine-tailed swift fly by at 105 miles per hour. How is that less magical than Harry Potter’s broomstick?

  I was recently speaking at an event in Southern California. I was trying to get in a nap before my talk was to begin. I stretched out on the hotel bed and closed my eyes. Just as I was starting to drift off, I heard a loud and persistent knocking outside. When I scrambled off the bed and answered it, there was nobody there. Before I could get settled I heard the knock again. Loud and impatient. I flung the door open. Still no one there. The third time this happened I stepped fully outside, only to discover a woodpecker just above the doorway.

  What can you say about a creature who can bash its beak into wood in search of food without getting a headache, despite pecking up to 20 times per second?

  Or what about the Arctic tern, a bird that migrates for 32,000 kilometers in its yearly journey from the Arctic to Antarctica and back? What kind of GPS is built into them, that they can return to the exact spot they left?

  What kind of GPS for wonder is built within us?

  We carry within us the wonder we seek around us.

  While we live on this planet Earth we are also living on planet Narnia.

  Aslan is still on the move.

  The breath of the Great Lion still reanimates hearts that have been turned to stone.

  And so, we venture from the safety of the front door each day to undertake an adventure in this strange and wonderful world of ours. And we find joy and meaning and awe in even the most mundane tasks we perform—because we see them as part of the epic story that is each of our own lives.

  Remember Chesterton. He was a man who literally brandished his walking stick as if it were a sword. He was out for an adventure every single day.

  How about you?

  12

  THE SCIENCE CHAPTER

  Be careful.

  You are about to step into fantastical territory.

  What am I talking about? Stepping into Aslan’s territory? A place where the sorting hat is singing? Where H
obbits are doing their merry jig? Or are we going to tumble down the rabbit hole?

  Nope.

  Welcome to Planet Earth. It is the most magical place of them all. It’ll cast its spell on you.

  Disclaimer: Read this chapter at your own risk. Its mixture of science and enchantment might just wreck you. If you read on, your ideas about your world might come apart at the seams.

  But if you are brave enough to journey there, let’s explore the magic of the Neverland we wake up in every morning.

  There’s a good reason why what we call science today, the ancients called magic. There isn’t much difference between them when we drill down to the very deepest level. About 150 years ago, when quantum mechanics pulled the rug out from under Newtonian physics, we realized that we live in a much weirder universe than we had previously suspected. The old rules of materialism no longer applied. The world, we came to see, has more in common with Hogwarts than we thought.

  Atoms are the keys that unlock these secrets because they make up, well, everything. And they play by their own rules.

  Atoms are tinier than tiny. An atom compares in size to a golf ball as a golf ball compares to the whole planet. The nucleus of an atom is so dinky that if you blew up an atom to the size of a football stadium, its nucleus would be the size of a grain of rice. But here’s the kicker. The grain of rice would weigh more than the stadium.

  Does that blow your mind?

  Well, I’m just getting started.

  Pick your jaw up off the floor and consider this:

  Atoms are 99.9 percent empty space. If you removed all the empty space from all the atoms in the observable universe, the universe would fit inside a single sugar cube.

  One lump or two?

  What we see as solid is just an illusion. The rapidly swirling particles (made up mostly of empty space) are moving so fast that our eyes are tricked into registering the objects we see as solid. Everything we imagine to be stable is but a snow flurry of particles.

  Tiny as they are, atoms are made up of even smaller building blocks, which we call subatomic particles. Scientists who study this stuff have counted more than 150 different kinds of subatomic particles. A veritable Particle Zoo.

  The most famous of the subatomic particles is the electron. You were probably taught in school that electrons orbit the nucleus of the atom just as the planets in our galaxy orbit the sun. But what they do is actually quite a bit nuttier than that. They actually leap from point A to point B without traveling the distance in between. A quantum leap.

  Which is really just a fancy term for teleportation. Or, maybe it’s what Madeleine L’Engle called “a wrinkle in time.”

  Is your brain hurting yet?

  An electron moves so fast that it can actually do 47,000 laps around a four-mile tunnel in one single second. And there are some electrons that can be spun 360 degrees and still not reveal their original face. You must spin them 360 degrees twice for them to return to that original position.

  The so-called laws of nature don’t seem to apply to these little guys. Our “laws of nature” only apply to what we can observe…which is a very small part of the universe.

  The universe itself disobeys the rules. Who knows if it isn’t doing all kinds of funny things behind our backs when we aren’t looking.

  There are subatomic particles that can exist in two places at the same time—that can literally pop into existence out of nowhere—and can be everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

  Subatomic particles can communicate with each other, though we have no idea how. There is no signal. It’s like telepathy or collective consciousness or something. If you turn a particle in Los Angeles it will turn a particle in New York in exactly the same way. They mirror each other even when separated. One theory is that they are traveling via quantum wormholes.

  Just like a naughty child, subatomic particles change their behavior when they are being watched. They exist in ghost states and reveal the path they travel only when they are observed. This has led some to suggest that the universe itself can only exist when it is being watched. Couldn’t this be used as an argument for the reality of God? An ever-present observer, i.e. God, is watching at all times. Everything is naked and exposed before His eyes. All things exist because He is looking.

  Did you get all that?

  Niels Bohr, the famous scientist, once said that if you are not outraged by hearing about quantum theory, then you aren’t really understanding what is being said. It all sounds a little preposterous.

  Werner Heisenberg discovered the uncertainty principle; namely, that you cannot predict both the position and the momentum of a quantum particle simultaneously. He once said something about all this that is probably my favorite quote about science:

  “The first gulp of the rational sciences will make an atheist out of you, but God is waiting for you at the bottom of the glass.”

  Indeed.

  A little bit of science asks questions that make an atheist out of some people, but if you delve a little deeper you’ll find that there is more to the universe than meets the eye. We learn to ask different questions. Over the past few years I have done a lot of reading in advanced astrophysics and quantum mechanics. It has changed my perspective, and changed my life.

  The sheer jaw-dropping strangeness and magical wonder of the universe convinces me that there is Someone behind it all. It’s like the Wizard of Oz. There has to be Someone behind the curtain. Somewhere, out of sight, Someone is pulling the levers. Otherwise, it makes no sense.

  Sir James Jeans, the famous physicist, wrote: “No astronomer can be an atheist.” The screwy nature of outer space is more in line with believing in a God who breathes the stars into existence. Just like it says in the Psalms.

  It’s a weird world.

  Filled with charm and strangeness and mystery.

  We live in a world where a flamingo can only eat when its head is upside down. Where an albatross can fly 25 miles an hour while sleeping. Where a three-toed sloth can turn its head nearly 360 degrees. Where an anglerfish has a fleshy lightbulb suspended from its forehead to help it capture food in the dark. Where there is a species of penguin only 16 inches tall. Where an emperor penguin slides along on his tuxedoed belly and dolphins surf waves. Where an In-N-Out Burger tastes like hope feels.

  It’s a weird and wild and wonderful world.

  If you are tired of looking through the microscope, then look through a telescope. To the naked eye there are over 6,000 stars visible at night. But in actuality there are more than 100 billion stars in our galaxy. And billions of other galaxies beyond our own.

  There is a celestial body out there called a neutron star that can weigh more than 200 billion tons (that’s heavier than all the world’s continents put together) and yet fit inside a teaspoon. There is a volcano on Mars. Some of Jupiter’s moons are oblong rather than shaped like a perfect sphere.

  Whether you are peering into a telescope or a microscope, what you’ll see is a magical, wondrous, mind-blowing reality.

  Sometimes I think that this world is more like the work of an amazingly imaginative artist than a by-the-rules engineer.

  God’s playfulness is on full display in the world He has made. It’s a world tailor-made for the enjoyment of Optimisfits.

  Here is the Bible’s scientific summary:

  “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).

  Creation is an activity that belongs to God alone. The verb used in Hebrew is only used in the context of divine activity. Humans have never created something out of nothing. We can reassemble the particles in paint to bring about a work of art, or rearrange the vibrations to become a song, but actual creation is beyond us. J.R.R. Tolkien said that we are sub-creators, making something new out of elements that already exist. A songwriter friend told me that he doesn’t create songs as much as he finds them. He said he is an archaeologist more than a songwriter. To write a song is to unearth an artifact.

  The One w
ho originally buried all these artifacts deep into the fabric of existence is the ultimate Composer, Painter, Sculptor, and Writer. All we do is discover what He put there for us to find.

  Light is everywhere in the universe. Even in black holes, dark matter, and dark energy. Light is in the places that appear darkest.

  The Apostle John tells us that “God is light.” He is everywhere. Even in the darkness of the valley of the shadow of death. I know an eight-year-old who was told by a skeptical adult, “I’ll give you an orange if you can tell me where God is.” The child thought just a moment and replied: “I’ll give you ten oranges if you can tell me where God is not.”

  Just because you can’t see light doesn’t mean it’s not there.

  Like light, God is everywhere. Omnipresent even in the darkest places and spaces. Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there.

  Consider electricity. It is invisible, but you can see its effects if you are fool enough to stick a fork in an electrical socket. Sparks are not electricity, only its effects. You can’t see the wind, but you can see its effects. A dust devil is not the wind, but rather an effect of the wind. And when you toss a basketball in the air and it comes careening back down to the court you are not actually seeing gravity, only its effect.