March 30, 2003: Divine Shock And Awe

When I consider the works of creation, it provokes in me both amazement and fear.

Amazement because of the complexity. In our adult Sunday school class we're watching Unlocking The Mystery of Life, a video in which scientists describe some of the biological machinery that performs technological wizardry at life's molecular level. The data they present are riveting. A bacterial flagellum, for example, has all the components of an outboard motor, rotates at 100,000 rpm, can stop dead in the space of a quarter turn and then start rotating the other way. That didn't come about by chance. Somebody made it. And he made a lot of other things too.

While there is plenty in nature to amaze me, I must admit there is also a lot to scare me. Just watch any National Geographic video, and consider this: God concocted the poison in the cobra's fangs. God taught the praying mantis to chew its mate. God put hot death in the volcano's chamber, and armed all the oceans with village-destroying tidal waves. I can't be the only person who feels deep disquiet when I watch film footage of a cheetah harassing a calving wildebeest, and eating the newborn as soon as it is expelled from its mother's womb. That disquiet becomes fear when I understand that God taught that cheetah how to hunt, and gave it teeth and claws and a relentless instinct to consume the weak.

God amazes me and scares me. He fills me with dread and astonishment - or, as the phrase of the day has it, "shock and awe." As you know, "Shock and Awe" is a label placed on the U.S. military strategy for deposing Saddam Hussein. The idea is to overwhelm the opposition, causing it to cower in fear of all that smart firepower, and to make immediate surrender look like the only good option.

I make no statement here about the war in Iraq. Reasonable people may differ about whether the cause is just or the means are wise. All I am saying is that in creation, it seems likewise that God gets our attention by means of "shock and awe." In this world we are like Iraqi citizens, aware of an invading force that is technologically superior, overwhelmingly powerful and capable of doing us fearful harm - but that strangely keeps informing us that we are loved, and that we are being offered freedom and peace and escape from savage tyranny. Like the Iraqis, we can respond to that "shock and awe" by either shaking our fist at the invader and vowing to fight him to our death, or by raising the white flag in meek surrender. It is better to surrender.