Let me tell you about myself in an attempt for you to know
me better. In an attempt to pull back the curtains and look inside my being to
know a bit more about who I am.
To begin, I will tell the story of the atom. The atom is the
foundation of all pertinent matter in this universe of ours (to say nothing of
nothingness and dark matter). Suffice it to say, nothing physically present in
space exists without them. Atoms unite to form molecules, molecules unite to
form compounds and all things are thus held together. Since Grecian times
humans have known (or at least, posited to that end) atoms to exist and in our
estimation of them our knowledge has grown from thinking them to be small, hard
ball bearings to the infinitesimally complicated little universes we now know
them to be. They are physically present yet displaying metaphysical tendencies.
They are immutable and unsquishable; they are bound by immense attractions and
charges; their predilection to holding fast to one another can hardly be severed
and given the right circumstances, they contain within their minute bodies
potential energy capable of leveling the earth. And yet, there they are
floating in your bloodstream, composing the very grey matter of your brain and
linking arms to form the layered, spherical substrate you walk on – the Earth.
They are nothing short of miraculous.
And it doesn’t stop there. Bear with me, because this is
important. Atoms are made of three things, in general: protons, neutrons and
electrons. Protons and neutrons, like the nucleus of a cell, are tightly bound
together in the center of the atom and give it its mass. The proton is charged
positively, the neutron is neutrally charged and to balance it out is the negatively
charged electron cloud. So you’ve got a weighty center being orbited by a
hyperactive cloud of electrons. But here’s the thing: scale.
The scale of the atom is unbelievably vast.
Atoms are already small. Like, millions fitting together on
the head of a pin small. And yet, within themselves they are even smaller. The
nucleus is 2,000 times heavier than the electrons surrounding it (think 2,000
elephants versus 1 elephant), yet that same tiny, heavy nucleus is 100,000
times smaller than the electrons surrounding it.
100,000 times!
To put this in perspective, it’s as if the nucleus of an
atom is the sun of our solar system and the electrons buzz around a spherical
path on the outskirts beyond Pluto – but that sun is 2,000 less massive than
Pluto! Can you imagine?
A tiny sphere maybe a 1/3 mile around you could walk in 6
minutes spinning in the middle of a solar system in which there is nothing but
emptiness for decades and decades until you come to a thin, minute screen of
negatively-charged, hyper-fast buzzing force way out on the edges.
All of that space and nothingness exists right now in every
atom composing your existence. Every atom, to last trillion billionth in your
very eyeball as you read, is full of empty space more vast than the space in
our very solar system.
It’s true.
Selah. (That’s a Hebraic word for “take a breath, praise
God, pause.”)
So that’s where I come in. What do I have to do with an
atom? Who am I and what is an atom to me?
It’s Jesus Christ in me that I mean to talk about, or
rather, my faith in the Way of Jesus, the carpenter-Jew from Nazareth who
claimed to be the Son of God and whom the disciples and early church claimed
rose from the dead, many even claiming to have seen it with their own eyes.
I have, by the power of the very breath of God, put my faith
in the ridiculous claims of this Christ. I have staked my eternal soul on them
in fact, so much so that my identity has been fundamentally changed.
“It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, ” to
quote Paul of Tarsus.
What this means for me and for the atom is simply this: my
identity in Christ is my nucleus. It is my mass and weight, my very substance
and stabilizing force. Who I am now is because of the person and work of Jesus
Christ. I am forgiven of my sinful condition, I am adopted into God’s family, I
am no longer at enmity with God, my Father. My heart no longer beats for my own
life but for the lives of those around me, my soul yearns for the liberation of
the oppressed, for mercy to be shown to the merciless and the penniless and the
loveless and my being longs to extoll the goodness and joyfulness I have found
in Christ to all living creatures, human and otherwise, in every ghetto, every
city.
My identity is comprised of these weighty, heavenly bodies:
protons and neutrons tightly bound together in my center.
This means that all other identities, then, float busily
around and above my core, like that electron cloud spinning out past all that
empty space. My sexual preferences, my talents, my desires, my fears, my future
hopes, my job, my familial roles – anything else that might “define” me is,
necessarily, insignificant when
compared to my core. In fact, it is all able to be lost to me. It is dead in
comparison to my core. I have died and am an altogether new thing in Christ.
But hear, insignificant does not mean meaningless. Remember
it is the electron cloud which allows the atom to bond to other atoms. The
electrons, in equal number to the weighty protons within, balance out the atom
and allow it to connect to others.
And yet the electrons can only connect because they are counterbalanced by the
core of positivity, which holds it all together in proper tension!
What a metaphor!
My center has given my identity a new job to do. Whereas
once my identity was self-focused, concerned with purely the exultation and
satisfaction of my identities, my
wants and desires, it is no longer. My purpose has changed. My charge has
changed. My core is Christ.
Oh my soul, praise Him.
