Over the
past week the news dominating the media has not been good. The precise stories
are not the point, since this next week new ones may take their place. Or the
old stories—of Ebola and ISIS, of political paralysis and economic greed, of
brutality, mistrust and injustice—may have evolved into new versions, as bad as
the last one, or worse.
And if you
take the time to dig deeper into the reality of the brokenness, you find it
extends far deeper than we know. Consider “Ebolanomics” in The New Yorker (August 25, 2014, p. 21). It’s a reminder that the
problem is not merely individual sin or evil but that the brokenness infects
all the systems of the world as well.
When
pharmaceutical companies are deciding where to direct their R. & D. money,
they naturally assess the potential market for a drug candidate. That means
that they have an incentive to target diseases that affect wealthier people
(above all, people in the developed world), who can afford to pay a lot. They
have an incentive to make drugs that many people will take. And they have an
incentive to make drugs that people will take regularly for a long time—drugs
like statins.
This system does a reasonable job of
getting Westerners the drugs they want (albeit often at high prices). But it
also leads to enormous underinvestment in certain kinds of diseases and certain
categories of drugs. Diseases that mostly affect poor people in poor countries
aren’t a research priority, because it’s unlikely that those markets will ever
provide a decent return. So diseases like malaria and tuberculosis, which
together kill two million people a year have received less attention from
pharmaceutical companies than high cholesterol. Then, there’s what the World
Health Organization calls “neglected tropical diseases,” such as Chagas disease
and dengue; they affect more than a billion people and kill as many as half a
million a year. One study found that of the more than fifteen hundred drugs
that came to market between 1975 and 2004 just ten were targeted at these
maladies. And when a disease’s victims are both poor and not very numerous
that’s a double whammy. On both scores, a drug for Ebola looks like a bad
investment: so far, the disease has appeared only in poor countries and has affected
a relatively small number of people.
One must be
careful, since only God has the capacity to absorb the full brokenness of the
world with descending into despair or cynicism.
One friend
appended to an email, “I have been following the news and ‘this world is not my
home.’ ‘Even so come Lord Jesus.’” He is half right.
My friend’s
final phrase is from the end of St John’s stunning Revelation that brings the New Testament to its glorious end. The
apostle allows us to see behind the cosmic dual of good and evil to the deeper
reality of God’s triumph over the forces of death, darkness and disease that
have infested his creation. To assure us that this is not merely the optimism
of an exiled visionary, Christ as Lord speaks: “He who testifies to these
things says,” St John records, “‘Surely I am coming quickly’” (Revelation
22:20). The king will return, will not delay, will consummate his kingdom, and
his reign will be one of justice, world without end. This is the hope of every
Christian who prays, as our Lord taught us to say, “Thy kingdom come, thy will
be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” So, St John adds, “Even so, come, Lord
Jesus!”
My friend’s
other quotation is not from scripture but from the hymn, “This World is Not My
Home,” by Albert Brumley (1905-1977).
This world is not my home,
I’m just passing through.
My treasures are laid up somewhere
beyond the blue.
The angels beckon me from
Heaven's open door
And I can’t feel at home in
this world anymore.
It’s an understandable yearning, I suppose, but it’s wrong.
The
brokenness of the world is unnatural, true, and so we should feel the
brokenness as wrong, as a perversion of what should be and of what was
intended. The reason for my sin and brokenness is not “I’m only human,” but
“I’m fallen and in need of redemption.” My hope as a Christian is not to escape
this world for heaven, but for God’s redemption to be complete, so that a
renewed heaven and earth show forth the full glory of which they are capable.
The news also
provides glimmers of that glory, shining through the darkness, as it were. Last
week I also read “Termite Soldiers’ Legs Sense Alarms” in Science News (August 23, 2014, p. 16). This is the species of
termite that builds tall mounds of red soil that hardens like rock for defense
and is constructed with a myriad tunnels to provide cool air for the bustling
millions of insects living below the surface.
Africa’s
Macrotermes natalensis termite relies on a fighter caste to defend its
hardened, meter-high-plus mounds and up to several thousand square meters of
underground tunnels. When an aardvark or other predator gouges the insects’
home, termites known as major soldiers pound their heads against the floors.
The vibrations from the drumbeats tell other soldiers to speed to the breach.
These headbanger alarms vibrate
through the walls of tunnels at about 130 meters per second. What lets a
soldier know which direction to go is the slight delay between when the
vibrations hit the soldier’s leg nearest the drumbeat source and when they hit
its farthest leg, says Felix Hager of Ruhr University Bochum in Germany. A
delay of as little as 0.20 milliseconds was enough to orient soldiers.
Even in a broken world, creation reveals a few hints of the
wonder of what this world, made to be our home, will be like when the rightful
king returns.
This past Sunday Margie and I wandered through five acres of
woods with our good friend, Joe Schwen, organic farmer extraordinaire. The woods belong to a neighbor of his, a place
where he has harvested wood for their furnace to warm their home through the
long Minnesota winter. It was a delightful day, fluffy clouds scattered across
a blue sky, with bright sunshine and about 65 degrees. The reason spring is so
delightful this far north.
Spring is a bit late here this year. We had a big snow (over
a foot) in May, and plenty of cloudy, chilly, rainy days since then, keeping
farmers, including Joe, out of their fields since they’ve been too wet for
planting. The weather has also meant that everything is rather lush with lawns
growing well and lots of underbrush in woods.
We were looking for morels. If you have never tried them,
you are missing one of the great delights of life. Though they look
weird—actually they look appalling, but let’s not go there—they are tender,
light, with a delicate flavor that is hard to describe. They are precious, so
we have them rarely, though we often stop and look longingly at them at
Farmer’s Market where they are usually priced at $28-$35/pound.
Because of their delicate flavor Margie usually makes them
simply, dipping them in a light batter and frying them gently in butter. I have
not been fond of mushrooms, finding them a bit slimy and earthy-tasting, though
I’ve grown to appreciate them. But I’ve loved morels from the first taste.
Margie often when hunting for morels as a child with her
mother, as she tells in The Exact Place,
and Joe often finds enough to sell at the Market, so I was in good company.
I’ve only found morels in the wild once, while fishing for trout along a stream
near Preston, MN. I wasn’t hunting for them, and the trout were not biting, so
I told Joe that if my record held we simply be enjoying a lovely walk on a
Sunday afternoon.
My main task was to try to not get too lost, which I failed
to accomplish. I expected to get lost, since I am so directionally challenged
that I use my car GPS to get around to some places here in Rochester, where I
have lived since 1981. After wandering for a while I texted Margie and told her
I was lost. She texted back that I should look at the sun and go towards 2
o’clock which was the direction of the road at the edge of the woods. The sun
was directly overhead.
Soon after entering the woods I watched Margie and Joe
disappear confidently into the greenery. At that moment I realized that hunting for morels was not what I was
doing. I was wandering aimlessly
around, and any morels I happened upon would be entirely providential. As
providence had it, I happened upon none.
As you can see, I found lots of mushrooms, however, and found each variety
lovely. They seemed to be lurking quietly in the underbrush, surprising in
their uniqueness, always living amidst decay. As if to say that somehow the
process of death ending life would not be allowed to be the final word.
There were also little flowers, often spreading out into
lush carpets and I hesitated to walk through them because I would step on the
some of the plants.
Some flowers seemed to float along the top of leaves, as if
in a subtle, quiet ballet that was in tune with its own music.
And there were Jack-in-the Pulpits, appearing in little
glades between stands of trees and growths wild raspberries whose thorns pulled
at my pants as I pushed past them.
The afternoon was a complete success. I got found,
eventually, or more precisely, found myself out of the woods to the road. I
loved the quiet, listening to birdcalls, the lush green growth, and the
numerous mushrooms peeking up out of the leaf and wood litter. A lovely Sabbath
rest.
Oh, yes: morels. Margie found a few, and Joe discovered a
thick stand of them as he walked back to the car. That too, was a success.
On his new Facebook page, my friend Ellis Potter asks an
intriguing question. “Which is more humanizing: The Good, the True and the
Beautiful or the Gratifying, the Affirming and the Empowering? Which set is
more self-centered?” It’s also a timely question since it touches on some of
the swirling eddies of ideas and values that compete for attention in our
postmodern world. Perhaps compete for attention is the wrong way to express
it—it’s more like a series of eddies that suddenly twist into a vortex that
pulls us under before we a fully conscious of the change.
The categories of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful are
profoundly clarifying and helpful. They help us think about reality in a more
full-orbed way, and provide ways of naming things that otherwise would be
difficult to talk about. Just the fact that they have stood the test of time
for over 2 millennia means we must take them seriously. For Christians, of
course, there is an added attraction. Not that they form a trinity, for
certainly they together point to aspects of the being of God rather than
describe separate members of the Godhead. God the Almighty is the essence of
the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Yet there is, I think, a flaw. I stumbled upon it several
years ago when I set out to do a biblical study of the Beautiful. An easy
enough task, as far as that goes, because art, creativity, and comeliness are
themes that are woven throughout the Scriptures. But then I hit a snag. Using
my concordance to identify all the biblical texts in which “beauty” and
“beautiful” appear, I discovered there were very few. I dug deeper and
discovered the Hebrews didn’t talk and think about Beauty: they were concerned
for Glory. A concordance search for “glory” and “glorify” brought an
overwhelming flood of references.
This discussion brings us to a significant difference between
the Greek and the Hebraic worldviews. The Greek categories of the Good, the
True, and the Beautiful are so very helpful, but are also pagan in origin, and
are in the final analysis abstract, cerebral, and impersonal. The Hebrew
categories of the Righteous, the Wise, and the Glorious, on the other hand, are
rooted in the nature of the biblical God, and are always revealed to be
concrete, practical, and personal.
This is not a criticism of Ellis’ good question. It is a
good and insightful question that people should reflect on it carefully. Nor am
I suggesting that the Good, the True, and the Beautiful are categories that we
should somehow avoid. But I would argue that as categories they are in a
crucial way insufficient and incomplete. In the end, the Righteous, the Wise,
and the Glorious contain all that the Greek categories included, but sweep on
past them to be demonstrated and rooted in the revelation of the infinite,
personal God, in creation, Scripture, and ultimately the living Word.
Source: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ellis-Potter/274439865939134.
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Scientist Karen Warkentin has been studying the eggs of tropical red-eyed tree frogs and has discovered that the embryos have survival skills prior to hatching.
Masses of these glistening eggs hang on leaves that dangle over tropical ponds, and the eggs stay put even when branches thrash in storms. A hungry snake biting into one end of an egg mass can make the embryos’ home dip and dance too. But at this jouncing, older embryos flee. They can’t run, but they can hatch. A sudden burst of emergency hatching sends a rain of new tadpoles into the water, often saving some 80 percent of a clutch.
In both events vibrations of the disturbance radiate through the clutch of eggs. Only the vibrations set up by the predator, however, triggers the early hatch. How the embryos can tell the difference is unknown.
Even from inside its egg, a remarkably young embryo can do a thing or two to get what it needs.
Among red-eyed tree frogs, Agalychnis callidryas, embryos develop big feathery gills for extracting oxygen from the watery world inside their eggs. But just where an embryo’s head-to-be lies within its egg makes a difference in oxygen availability. The part of an egg closest to the air typically carries twice the oxygen concentration of the deep interior squeezed among neighboring eggs, Warkentin and her student Jessica Rogge found. When Rogge prodded embryos so their gills fell into the low-oxygen zone, most of the 3-day-olds twitched themselves back into place within 15 seconds.
Rogge even tested embryos just a day old. “They don’t have blood. They don’t have a heart,” Warkentin says. They move only by beating a fuzz of tiny hairlike projections. Yet when Rogge nudged embryo front ends toward the downside of the oxygen gradient, more than half of the embryos she tested worked their fuzz to chug at least halfway back to the sweet spot within five minutes, she and Warkentin reported in 2008 in the Journal of Experimental Biology.
God has spoken in creation, word, and Word. These are not different words, but one, the word of God, and in each we catch a glimpse of his glory. None will come to an end, for his word is forever. Which is a good thing, because we’ll need plenty of unhurried time in the new earth to keep looking for glory.
Source: Science News (August 15, 2009) pp. 27-29, in a fascinating article, "Smart from the Start," you can read here.