Quantum Physics and The Resurrection

Sunday’s scripture speaks to the deepest question about our existence.   Does life end at death, or will we continue to live for all eternity?   While Jesus says repeatedly that sin brings death, in today’s gospel He makes it abundantly clear that we will enjoy eternal life if we believe in Him:

 “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live,
and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die."  (John 11: 25)

Our faith tells us that each of us is a unique soul enfleshed in a human body.   St. Paul makes this very clear in today’s epistle:

“If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you,
the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also,
through his Spirit dwelling in you.”  (Romans 8:11)

Every human life is sacred because the Spirit of God dwells in us from the moment of conception.  Miraculously, we grow from a few cells to a complete human being in a matter of weeks because God Himself created us this way.  This is no accident of nature and neither is our intellect, our emotional being, nor our capacity to love one another.  When we observe nature, we stand in awe precisely because it demonstrates the beauty, power and majesty of our creator.  Classical art imitates nature out of respect for the grandeur of creation, but modern art seems to work at distorting beauty, mocking nature, and in too many cases, deriding God Himself, as if asserting our human will is somehow art when it is shocking, crude, or just plain stupid.

Nature reveals a great deal about the intelligent design of the universe, including human life and our destiny.  The seasons of the year, each with their own beauty, reveal the process of birth, growth, death and rebirth.  On a grand scale, the universe itself might even reveal something about the destiny of every human being.  We live our mortal lives, measured by the passage of time, and we know that our bodies will eventually die and return to the dust of the earth.  However, Jesus promises us that He is the Resurrection and the Life and that we will live with Him and Our Father for all eternity, if we possess the Spirit of Christ.  How can this be so, if our mortal bodies decompose in the earth?  But there is more to us than just mortal bodies, we are also spirit and soul. 

We know that all things are possible for God, and the universe provides examples of amazing things we can hardly comprehend.  For example, physicists agree that the universe came into existence in a spectacular event commonly referred to as the big bang.  Prior to this, all matter and energy either did not exist, or existed in the form of a singularity, compressed into an infinitely tiny object in which the laws of physics as we know them did not apply.   More recently we’ve come to understand that black holes exist throughout the universe as the result of exploding stars in which their entire mass has then been compressed into an infinitely tiny object.  At the center of these black holes are what is called a gravitational singularity, in which the curvature of spacetime is infinite.  This means that the path of anything that comes near a black hole curves to enter into it, and the gravitational pull is so strong that nothing, not even light can escape.  Oddly, even time curves and slows down infinitely as it passes the point of no return.  This point of no return is referred to as the event horizon.   In a sense, human death is like an event horizon.  As we pass through it, we are attracted inexorably to God who is the ultimate singularity.  The laws of physics no longer apply, there is no more time, no laws of physics, only God Himself, to whom everything that exists owes its existence and to whom everyone returns.  The only way we can go there is through death when our soul and spirit are liberated from our earthly body and we are filled with the Spirit of Christ.   This is of course, a great mystery.  Perhaps the structure and substance of the universe is merely a reflection of the nature of God and all thing, including our human spirit, are attracted back to God who is the source and summit of all existence.  

God is indeed the source of all matter and energy, and the big bang was His way of creating the universe and everything in it.   He ordered existence out of nothing, or chaos if you like, so that ultimately, human beings of His creation would come into existence with both bodies and souls.  God had no need to do this, but did so purely out of love.  He has revealed Himself in scripture and in the life of Jesus, who not only explained our destiny, but prefigured it by being the first to rise from the dead, just as He promised.

The universe is still a great mystery, but our faith has no reason to fear or refute the truths of nature.  This is because the more we learn about the physical universe, the more we learn about God’s omnipotence.