Fields of Reality: Peter at 15

My son Peter would be fifteen today, December 11, 2020. What would he be like at fifteen? What joy would he bring? What trouble and heartache? What strange thoughts would he be sharing? When Peter was ten, we had a long conversation about nothing. I mean literally about nothing. It was one of his favorite topics.

“How could there be nothing?” He would say. “If you’re thinking about nothing, then it isn’t nothing. And if you mean empty space, then there is something around it that isn’t empty. And if you mean no space then that just doesn’t make sense. So there can’t be nothing.”

It wasn’t the first time we had talked about nothing, so I said, “You’ve been thinking about nothing for a long time, haven’t you Peter?”

“Since I was born!” he insisted.

I just discovered the book Nothing: A Very Short Introduction. Obviously, I had to read it. The book, which is written by a particle physicist, dives right into the science of nothing. Is a vacuum (empty space) nothing? If all objects are removed from the universe, does space still exist? Would that space still be expanding? Expanding into what? If there was no space, time, or matter – say before the Big Bang – is that nothing, or were there some quantum principles at work that constitute something rather than nothing? These are exactly the kinds of questions Peter found so delightful. He was playful, but serious in discussing and expressing his opinions about them. When I think about nothing I think about Peter.

Nothing: A Very Short Introduction explores vacuums; gravitational, electric and magnetic fields; electromagnetic waves, including light; and the speed of light, which, amazingly, Einstein found to be a link between matter and energy (E=mc², where c² is the square of the speed of light). A book supposedly about nothing is filled with a lot of somethings. These concepts revived faint memories from an AP chemistry course I took 25 years ago, when I thought I would go into science. I still find scientific descriptions of how the universe works fascinating. Like Peter, contemplating nothing fills me with wonder at the something that exists. Contemplating nothing is really a way of contemplating the nature of reality. What is matter? What is energy? Where does it come from? Is the existence of a life-sustaining universe a cosmic jackpot, or is there a mind and a purpose behind it?

Like Peter, the author of the book, Frank Close, thought about nothing from the time he was a child. “I discovered then what philosophers have known throughout the ages: it is very hard to think about the void.” Nothing is difficult to imagine. Strangely enough, the something that exists is also difficult to imagine. Scientists have constructed models to help us visualize things like atoms, but as Close says, “The fundamental structure of the atom is beyond real imagination, and its emptiness is profound.” The individual pieces of the atom (protons, electrons, and neutrons) surprise us even further: “The electron, which we think of as a particle, is really a quantum bundle of an ‘electron-field’ which acts with wave-like properties.” So imagine a single quantum bundle of an electron-field waving around a bundle of quarks at a rate of a million billion times per second. That is hydrogen, the simplest atomic element. The nature of the world is at once profoundly simple and complex. We can understand it and yet in the end it is completely incomprehensible.

Conversations with Peter could switch gears quickly. Let me do that here. The book of Revelation records a scene of worship in heaven. God is worshiped simply because the universe exists: “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being” (Revelation 4:11). Surely John was not thinking of protons, photons, and electromagnetic fields, some of the invisible things that make up the visible world. No one knew these things existed. Now we do, and many people have the idea that the science that revealed them makes wonder and worship unnecessary, irrelevant, or foolish. I don’t find that to be the case at all. The more science reveals the simplicity and complexity of things, the more I feel inclined to worship. Peter was endlessly curious about the world. His wonder and delight in the world were a form of worship of God, by whose will all things were created and have their being. In the world we find order and chaos, simplicity and complexity, power and beauty, predictability and surprises, comprehensibility and incomprehensibility – what must its Creator be like? What sort of posture do we take towards the world and the one who upholds it by his will?

Let’s add one more layer of wonder to this picture of the world. According to the witness of the book of Revelation and the rest of the New Testament, the one by whom all things were created, the Son, entered into that which was created. He became incarnate. This is marvel of Christmas. When John saw him, “I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.” (Revelation 1:17-18). He entered the world in order to die for the world. The world exists because God wills it to exist. Jesus who died continues to exist. In fact the marks of his suffering and death are still visible on his glorified body.

Jesus told John in his overwhelming state of death-like fear, “Do not be afraid.” Through Peter’s illness and for many long months afterwards, I was overwhelmed with fears. I was never concerned about Peter’s well-being, though. He is with the First and the Last, the Living One, who was dead but lives forever and ever.

Science peers into the atom and finds things we cannot imagine. It looks outwards and finds distances we cannot comprehend. It looks backwards to a beginning so ancient and so inexplicable we are left in awe. Science suggests other dimensions that are beyond our ability to observe and measure. How many layers, how many fields of reality are there? Peter loved to ponder such things. Pondering them leaves us in wonder and worship. Our wonder and worship will endure past death, because the one through whom all things were created is the one through whom they are created anew.