Opus 2026-306: Sometimes Simple

I am enjoying an approaching dawn which is being announced by driving rain, lightening and thunder.  As the rolling and rumbling thunder passed over my house I found myself thinking about the cause.  Does Thor cause the thunder with his hammer?  Ancient religions seemed to need to divide up the chambers of nature among many gods.  We Christians have one God who is understood to be big enough to handle it all.  

God causes the thunder, but how?  I dipped into my memory and came up with explanations tying it to lightening and air pressure.  I have no idea if my theory is accurate.  It was passed on to me as scientific but so has global warming and evolution.  Just because someone says it is scientific doesn’t mean it is.

For many things in life a simple explanation is all we need even if it isn’t accurate.  Recently I worked with the statement, “Water freezes at 32̊.”  I pointed out that a more accurate statement would be “Pure water freezes at 32̊ F at sea level.”  You do not need to know the second statement to know how to make ice cubes or let you water drip on a cold winter night.  You could go into the miracle of ice floating because of the expansion during phase change.  You could examine the difference in energy needed to move the needle one degree and make that phase change happen and how that energy transfer makes refrigeration possible.  If you don’t have a clue to what that means then rest assured that your freezer will still make ice.

In our theology we have the same kind of practical vagueness.  I refer here to the statement found in Ephesians 2:8 that we are saved by grace through faith.  That is enough of a summary to get a seeker into heaven.  A more accurate statement would be that God extends His saving grace to those who have faith in the shed blood of Jesus as adequate to cancel their sin.  From there you can move on to explaining what grace is, or trying to agree on a definition.  Good luck.  You can look into the meaning of faith and what it is you are believing.  You can write books about it.

Or you can simply say “Water freezes at 32̊.”

Sometimes the simple statements are more than enough to achieve the goal.

homo unius libri