Job 38:4-7, 40:15-19
“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows forth his handiwork.” Psalm 19:1
This exchange between God and Job is one of the most intriguing, not only in all the Bible but in all literature. It speaks to the core of human finitude and the immensity of God. Job is understandably broken by all of his suffering, and he questions God’s justice as a result. God counters with an extended argument by pointing out Job’s limitations.
The primary example God uses to underscore the god-ness of God is creation. This was meant to awaken Job to his own temerity in questioning God. God then proceeds to lay out chapters’ worth of mysterious and awesome aspects of creation, for which Job has no context to understand and which the human brain lacks the capacity to grasp in its proportions.
‘Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! … ‘Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, so that a flood of waters may cover you? Can you send forth lightnings, so that they may go and say to you, “Here we are”?’
And then later, God describes this awesome creature, the Behemoth, with a tail like a cedar tree, its bones like bronze, and its limbs like bars of iron.
Only God can tame this creature. The wild description of the Behemoth is meant to help Job understand that there are things that are not for him to know or comprehend—creatures that have nothing to do with humanity.
There is a certain danger in Christian theology that leads us to think we know more than we do about God. This is understandable since Jesus, as God in the flesh, has revealed a great deal of God’s nature of love, grace, and forgiveness. But we must be reminded that God is eternal, and we are finite. This exchange with Job is really meant to remind all of us to have proper respect and humility before God. Job 36:26 says it plainly, “God is greater than we can understand.”
God enumerates all of these aspects of nature that Job can’t comprehend, and our modern minds might be tempted to believe this was simply the result of a superstitious age that didn’t realize the sun was a gaseous ball of fire and that gravity causes the Earth to circle around it. And to a certain extent, some of this is true. We know a tremendous amount more about the natural world than Job and his contemporaries could even imagine.
However, modern science has discovered aspects of the natural world that are not only difficult to understand but that are inherently incomprehensible. Science can measure them, but it cannot explain them—or rather, the human mind is not sufficient to grasp them. By the way, these are not my thoughts but those of one of the greatest physicists of the last century, Richard Feynman: "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics."
And it is not simply a question of being able to understand the structure or rationality of a particular aspect of the natural world that confounds us; there is the existence of certain things that cause us to throw up our hands because they’re so crazy and wild.
Dogs are man’s best friend. Dolphins are smart, powerful, sleek, and beautiful. Birds soar with grace and have dazzling plumage. But what about the naked mole rat! I’m sure some of you have been to zoos and have seen their underground habitats. They are blind, with huge front teeth that dig through the dirt. They’re strange and mind-boggling creatures. The platypus lays eggs like a reptile, has a bill like a duck, and webbed feet for swimming—not to mention the poisonous spurs on their hind legs!
The honey badger is a rather unassuming-looking mammal, about two feet long and ten inches high. They have been known to fight off lions! They have such loose skin that when a lion grabs hold of them, they can twist free, and the honey badger is so fierce that it uses rather ungentlemanly fighting techniques, forcing the lion to protect his “heritage.” Perhaps the most awesome of all is the tardigrade, a microscopic creature that looks vaguely like a bear. It is so tough that it can survive the frozen ice of the Arctic, boiling water in natural springs, and even the vacuum of space!
In the 1970s, there was a discovery in the biological world equivalent to Christopher Columbus and Europe suddenly realizing the world was twice as big as they had thought. Deep in the ocean off the Galápagos Islands, superheated water from deep within the Earth vents into the ocean. In 1977, the world suddenly realized that there are creatures on this planet that don’t rely on the power of the sun for life. Instead, these huge, red-tipped tube worms, ghostly fish, and shrimp with eyes on their backs thrive near these vents. It makes the Behemoth seem rather tame in comparison!
So, God not only uses creation to teach us something of the divine but to remind us that there is more to God than we will ever know. John Calvin pointedly put us in our place: "Man, with all his shrewdness, is as stupid about understanding by himself the mysteries of God as an ass is incapable of understanding musical harmony."
But though we cannot understand it, we can be led to God by it. In 1927, Werner Heisenberg made what is perhaps the most straightforward discovery about the inherent unknowability of nature. Before Heisenberg, it was thought that nature was something like a billiard table—if we could know the position of everything at the beginning and measure the angles of the shots, we would know for certain which balls would fall into the pockets and be able to perfectly predict the final resting place of all of them. But Heisenberg discovered what is known as the Uncertainty Principle, which simply tells us that nature does not act like a billiard table but rather like a roulette wheel, in which you cannot know which number the ball will finally land on. Nature works on probabilities that cannot be perfectly predicted—something like the very nature of God. Heisenberg found a surprising source to help him grasp this discovery, "After the conversations about Indian philosophy, some of the ideas of quantum physics that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense." —W. Heisenberg
The natural world is inscrutable, even to the most brilliant scientists the world has ever known. The size of the universe cannot be appreciated by the human mind. The beauty of certain creatures and the strangeness and otherworldliness of others all have something to teach Job—and us. And it is something fundamental to the human experience. Just as I said a few weeks ago that we need to be in nature in order to be mentally and spiritually healthy, to be refreshed and renewed by its peaceful and beautiful presence, there is another reason that we need nature: it points to an essential aspect of our relationship with God.
‘Hear this, O Job; stop and consider the wondrous works of God.’ To wonder is essential to being fully human. Paul wrote in Romans 11:33, "Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!"
Paul swooned in wonder, and wonder opens our minds to be able to worship God more fully.
Bill Brown, a Columbia Seminary professor in Atlanta, wrote persuasively of our need to restore wonder to our lives, "What constitutes a bona fide experience of wonder? Something that takes your breath away and at the same time compels you to cry out in joy: a mixture of fear and fascination."
Dr. Brown has pointed out that our myopic focus on our differences in this country has stripped wonder from society. We spend too much time debating and arguing, and as a result, we have forgotten how to wonder.
As we grow wise, we grow more connected to each other. As we wonder over the majesty of God, we become more forgiving—not only of others’ sins but of our own. As we gaze out on the wonder of the world, we grow toward God, which leads us to our destiny, captured so well in the closing words of Charles Wesley’s hymn, "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling," which concludes with the arresting phrase, "Lost in wonder, love, and praise."
May all of us be lost in wonder, that we might grow in our love and praise.
Amen.