I have long been interested in quantum physics. Please don’t
read that to say that I understand
quantum physics; I have only a rudimentary knowledge of the basics. It’s just
that since I was a little boy who loved A
Wrinkle in Time, 2001, and The Martian Chronicles, I hoped for and
sought something to prove, or at least explain, seeming mysteries. As an avid
reader of sci-fi and fantasy, I never needed
the scientific the scientific explanations for things I couldn’t grasp.
However, I find those a-ha moments very satisfying, when some theory or proof
emerges that supports something that I felt in my gut.
Sad to say, on the other hand, many with fundamentalist
worldviews don’t have much time for the scientific explanations of things. They
have their traditions, their scriptures, their holy leaders – and science be
damned. No wonder that there has been a longstanding and contentious rift
between religion and science.
There have always been some, however, who see their
compatibility. In the days of the Inquisition and the Counter-Reformation, this
would have been a dangerous philosophy to embrace. But I think we have happily
been seeing an increase in this outlook. Rob Bell posits that “science and
religion are long lost dance partners.” And scientists from Albert Einstein to
Stephen Hawking have written about the spiritual or mystical qualities of
theoretical physics. Case in point: the recently identified Higgs boson
particle, which is elemental in quantum theory, is often called “the God
Particle.”
So what does all this have to do with sin? Glad you asked!
Sin has long been a focus point in most religions. (That’s one of the sticking
points for many of us!) The definition of sin, though, is not always agreed
upon. We have the Pillars of Islam, the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the
Mount, Hinduism’s purusharthas, the
Path of Enlightenment, and a host of codes of ethics. It’s enough to make one’s
head spin! Looked at objectively, there is at the root of all of them a
separation. In fact, some religious teaching hints at this commonality. Murder,
to cite one example, cannot happen if the killer feels any connection to the
victim. I think the eastern religions (and some of the ancient indigenous
spirituality) have done a better job with this concept of oneness than the Big
Three monotheistic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). There is this
overarching idea of otherness that
seems to pervade them – both between the divine and creation and among people
and things.
Here’s where the quantum theory stuff is so interesting.
According to theoretical physics, there is a sub-atomic connection among
everything. Obviously, two warthogs born in the same litter in the Kenyan
desert are related. They share DNA. But how about these two warthogs and a Wall
Street trader? Are they related? They certainly don’t seem to be. But some
quantum theory suggests that they are. So what’s happening on the trading floor
on Wall Street can affect the desert in Kenya? Maybe. Ilia Delio of the Center
for Action and Contemplation says, “If reality is nonlocal, that is, if things
can affect one another despite distance or space-time coordinates, then nature
is not composed of material substances but deeply entangled fields of energy;
the nature of the universe is undivided wholeness.” Perhaps this hints at the
nature of prayer, or to the sending out of good thoughts into the universe.
If we can tap into this interconnectedness, this unity of
being, then we can move others – for better or for worse. Prayer, good
thoughts, an altruistic attitude – these could all have beneficial effects on
people that we may never see. On the other hand, hatred, ill will, and a
generally foul attitude may negatively affect others. So maybe that’s where sin
is rooted: the interruption or resistance of this intangible, quantum communion.
Etty Hillesum, a young imprisoned Jew in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, says it
pretty straightforwardly: “Each of us moves things along in the direction of war
every time we fail to love.”
So we have a choice: we can move things along the direction of love or along the direction of war. And the world has seen more than enough movement in the direction of war.
