We should all see it.
Few accounts of a life are more remarkable than this man’s incredible journey from heartbreaking disability to globally recognized brilliance.
The movie The Theory of Everything is one of those rare films of emotion and substance that you know you’ll be glad you saw before you enter the theater.
It tells the inspiring story of renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, his intellectual giftedness and his battle to overcome a rare motor neuron disease that ultimately robs him of mobility and speech.
His amazing genius as a cosmologist has earned Hawking an imperishable place in the history of science. The film depicts how much he suffered and his struggle to persevere against grim prognosis. In the end, it shows us the strength and possibilities of love and hope.
Impressed with Hawking’s courage and achievements, we may be disappointed in his theories.
It’s ironic that such a story of personal faith – and of hope – would lead to scientific conclusions that omit God and the glory of his transcendence.
Conclusions that seem, in the end, so hopeless.
In his book, The Grand Design, Hawking argues that our universe “can and will create itself from nothing.”
“Can and will” are dogmatic words – especially when exploring the mysteries of the universe and its origin.
Mr. Hawking has moved from the doubt of agnosticism (earlier writing, for example A Brief History of Time, left open the possibility of divine design) to the certitude of atheism.
Hawking asserts that “Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing…It is not necessary to invoke God to…set the universe going.”
This is The Theory of Everything.
In its truest sense it’s also the theory of nothing.
Perhaps the Christmas season is a good time to release this film about Stephen Hawking. After all, this is the greatest annual celebration of spiritual faith – and of love and hope – that the world knows.
Christmas rejects the meaningless idea of nothingness. It embraces the true Grand Design.
Christmas rejects “spontaneous creation” and instead joyfully marvels at and worships the Creator who planned and designed it all; who “set the universe going.”
Christmas presents a gloriously hopeful narrative of cosmic existence as the alternative to the drab and ultimately untenable explanation of science without faith, and therefore without meaning.
Creation from nothing means nothing. It is without hope.
Creation by a Creator means everything. It is the source of hope.
Science accounts for so much of the progress of the human race. For this we honor it and give thanks for its discoveries. It is only when science demands that we exclude God that we must renounce its arrogant tyranny over the mind and spirit of man.
Christmas points us not only to a Savior. Christmas invites us to bow before our Creator and celebrate The Truth of Everything.
No one declares so clearly and powerfully – so incontrovertibly – the supremacy of Jesus Christ in creation than does the apostle Paul in the first chapter of his letter to the Colossians.
It is truly beautiful. It lifts our souls in ways that mere science cannot do.
He is “the image of the invisible God”, Paul writes (Colossians 1: 15, KJV).
Paul insists that Jesus “is the exact likeness of the unseen God” (The Amplified Bible).
Don’t ask to see God, Jesus told Philip. “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father!” (John 14:9, NLT).
Could Jesus have made his deity any more plain?
Paul writes with encompasssing majesty:
“For by him [Christ] were all things created, that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:
And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.” (Colossians 1: 16-17, KJV, emphasis added).
Jesus created everything.
Jesus is before everything.
Jesus holds everything together.
Not only, says Paul, is Jesus the head of the church but he “is the beginning …that in all things he might have the preeminence” (Colossians 1: 18, KJV).
Why?
Because God the Father was “pleased” that in his Son “should all fullness dwell” (verse 19, KJV).
He was, renders The Message, “supreme in the beginning …and he is supreme in the end … towering far above everything, everyone …Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe – people and things, animals and atoms – get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies” (verse 17-20, The Message).
With Jesus Christ, as theologian R.C. Sproul points out, “there are no random atoms.”
This is Christianity’s answer to science on the origin of the universe.
How smothered with glitter Christmas has become – and how weak, helpless and distant the world has made the Christ child at Christmas time. Oh that Christians would contemplate the triumphant Cosmic Christ – King of all kings, Lord of all lords!
“O, come let us adore Him!”
Our Creator God.
This is the miraculous Truth that science can neither explain nor defy.
Science postulates theories. The Bible proclaims Truth.
Jesus is no theory. He is our eternal reference point.
Jesus Christ is The Truth of Everything.
May God bless you and your family.
A Word of Grace 