When the crew of Artemis II splashed down in the Pacific Ocean last Friday evening, they had traveled further into space than any humans in history. As the editors of the Free Press said of their return, “It felt magical. It felt like a miracle. But it was neither.” They explained: “The ten-day Artemis II mission was a feat of disciplined human excellence, an expression of the sheer might of the human mind and spirit.”
Yes, and no.
The science it takes to lift a rocket weighing 5.75 million pounds off the ground staggers me. I don’t know how typing on my keyboard produces these words, much less how you get into space something that weighs more than thirty-six houses stacked on top of each other. Keeping four people alive in space for ten days in a space the size of a couple of minivans is mind-boggling as well.
Then there’s the return. The heat generated by the capsule as it flew through our atmosphere climbed to some five thousand degrees, half as hot as the visible surface of the sun. The crew’s lives depended on the heat shield that kept them from burning up, and then on the parachutes that kept them from plunging into the ocean at 325 mph.
But here’s something I didn’t know: after the space capsule separated from the rockets following the April 1 launch, gravity from the moon and then the earth was the primary “propellant” carrying it around the moon and back to earth.
As an astronaut on Apollo 8 said when asked who was driving the spaceship, “I think Isaac Newton is doing most of the driving right now.”
So, a mission costing $4.1 billion and composed of more than twenty thousand parts humans can see depended on a force we cannot.
Here’s why this fact is so relevant to our faith today.
Is gravity caused by “insubstantial pixies”?
The law of gravity is not actually a law in the sense of a proven fact. Scientists demonstrate its existence by seeing gravity at work—objects fall, planets orbit, and so on. They can also measure the attraction between objects. The Theory of Gravity is the best explanation for these observations.
But scientific theories, by nature, are not “proven” in the way math is, as they are always subject to refinement by new evidence. And as Forbes notes, “There is no way to absolutely rule out the idea that gravity is caused by invisible, insubstantial pixies that have an obsession with everything having to be as close together as possible.”
In facing such a possibility, scientists rely on what is known as “Occam’s Razor,” a principle suggesting that if you have two competing ideas to explain the same phenomenon, you should choose the simpler one. In the case of gravity, if we can explain the phenomena without resorting to pixies, we should do so.
Here’s my point: what works for scientific endeavors works for spiritual truth as well.
“I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist”
Consider Jesus’s resurrection. A skeptic could claim that Jesus of Nazareth never existed, but they would then have to explain the plethora of non-biblical contemporary evidence showing that he did. They could claim that he didn’t really die on the cross, but then he would have to survive crucifixion, a spear that pierced the pericardial sac of his heart, and being mummified in an airtight shroud. He would then have to shove aside the burial stone in his emaciated condition, overpower the battle-hardened Roman guards, appear through locked doors to his disciples, and perform the greatest high jump in history at the Ascension.
Perhaps the disciples stole his body. But they had no reason to do so and did not even expect the resurrection, nor would they keep the secret without failure and then die in horrible ways for what—in this scenario—they knew to be a lie.
If the disciples went to the wrong tomb, its owner or the authorities would have pointed out the right tomb. If the Romans stole the corpse, they would then have produced it.
A skeptic might claim that the resurrection was a hallucination, but five hundred people don’t have the same hallucination (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:6). And there’s the matter of the changed lives of the disciples, who went from hiding behind locked doors to boldly preaching the gospel and sacrificing their lives to share the message of the risen Christ with the world.
As a former skeptic once said upon examining the evidence, “I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist.”
Of course, you can decide that miracles simply do not occur and that the resurrection thus could not have happened. But this is just as much a faith assertion as claiming that miracles do in fact happen. Neither can be proven scientifically or mathematically.
In fact, faith in the risen Christ is a relationship, and no relationship can be proven, only experienced. In this sense, trusting in the living Lord Jesus is like trusting in gravity—we know he is real because we experience what he does in and through our lives.
The paradox is that the more we try to prove him rather than experience him, the less we do either.
Zo s, yu[omh yjr eptfd
I say all of that to say this: The next time you wonder if Jesus is relevant to your problems and issues, remember a time in the past when he did what you hope he will do in the present. The Artemis II crew could stake their lives on gravity because countless people across human history have successfully done the same. You can stake your life on the risen Lord Jesus because countless Christians across Christian history have done the same.
Having sincere faith is not enough—it’s having faith in the right object that makes the difference.
If you place your fingers in the wrong position on your computer keyboard, you are sincerely attempting to type, but the result is gibberish. Here is an example: as I set my fingers one place to the right of “home” and type the words, “I am typing the words,” I produce “zo s, yu[omh yjr eptfd.”
Every time I trust someone or something to do what only Jesus can do, I produce spiritual gibberish as well.
In John 6, Jesus tells the crowds, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has set his seal” (v. 27). He changes metaphors in John 8, declaring, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (v. 12).
Jesus is the only “food that endures” and the only “light of the world.” Everything else I trust perishes in darkness.
The great poet, scientist, and statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe observed,
“The glory of life comes not from the things we can command but from the things that we can reverence.”
Whom or what will you “reverence” most today?
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