General Relativity and God's Law

  In 1666, Sir Isaac Newton developed the first laws of gravity based on his observations.  He hypothesized that all matter has a gravitation "flux" emanating from it outward to other matter and this "flux" was responsible for attracting other matter.  From this he was able to derive his basic Law of Gravitational Attraction

   Of course Newton could not prove the existence of this invisible flux but based on planetary motion and other experiments it all seemed to fit.   Newton's laws were also based on some basic fundamental foundations that seemed to make sense to the scientists of his time.  The first assumption is that all space can be described in a simple 3D (height,width,depth) Cartesian coordinate system and all observers would measure the same distances no matter their orientation or movement.  Second, all observers would measure the same amount of time to pass regardless of their location or movement.

   Both of these basic assumption all seemed to make sense.  Why wouldn't we all measure distances the same and all of our watches run the same?  No one could see a reason why not, and so for over 350 years those assumptions were never challenged.   That was until Albert Einstein came along.  His observations of light bending around the Sun revealed that Newton was not 100% correct in his assumptions.


   Therefore, because Newton's basic requirement was wrong, all the laws of motion, momentum , energy etc. all had to be re-evaluated leading to Einsteins greatest achievement: The General Laws of Relativity.   This paper showed that gravity is not some mysterious invisible "flux" but instead a bending of space-time by mass which causes objects moving in a straight-line to appear to be moving in a curved line to us.  Like marbles rolling on a large stretched sheet of rubber that has been indented by a large heavy bowling ball they appear to be changing their trajectory because of the curved rubber, but they are trying to stay on a straight line that has been changed by the bowling ball.

  
    So what is that to me?

    We are often like Newton and the scientists of his time.  We have basic assumptions of up,down,left,right and that all our watches are the same.  It all makes basic sense to us.  How we see the world and how we THINK it should work are not always correct.  For some of our decisions, like Newton's Law on Gravity, it works fine.  Newton wasn't 100% wrong but he wasn't 100% right either.  His law was "good enough" to get us to the moon and back but if we used it to get to a nearby star we would miss it by a billion or so miles.   We also, spiritually think we have it all figured out.  We know what is best and what is not.   Adultery?  That's just a new loving relationship being formed.    Pornography?  That's just extreme art.  Lying?  That's just an alternative form of the truth.   Stealing? That's just an individuals attempt to reapportion wealth from those who don't need it as much.

   But that is not how God sees it.   Like Newton thinking the world coordinate-system is all straight lines, what matters is how the universe sees the coordinate system.  So also, how we THINK the world should work and how God sees it are different, but in the end what matters is how God sees it and not you.

  Let's take sex outside of marriage for example.   To our "enlightened" world sex before marriage is perfectly okay.   We have been taught to not hold back our urges and that it is filling our basic needs for physical contact with other human beings.   Movies and TV shows promote endless examples of men and women having no-holds-barred sex and no-strings-attached either (just close the door when you leave!).  But now studies show that men who later decide to "settle down" cannot seem to "attach" themselves emotionally to their mate.  It's like the "glue" has all dried up in the bottle.  Could it be that we have gone against what God had designed us for?   Could it be that he knows how we operate?   Even when some try to have-their-cake-and-eat-too by living together it doesn't seem to workout.  Study after study shows that those who live together before marriage are 30% more likely to get divorced later.  Much of this is because while living-together, the men do not fully develop into men of substance.   They keep their childish ways (going out with the boys, watching porn, playing video games etc...) and those ways become more ingrained in their way of life.  So when it comes time to marry, those ways are "expected" to be put away to help in being a spouse and father, but now it's even harder to adjust because all those attitudes were thought to be acceptable to the other are now deemed unacceptable.

    God is not some irrational angry being.  He has reasons for his law and when we take the time to try to see things from HIS perspective we see that he is right.  Like Einstein seeing that space is really curved and not straight like how our brains feel it "should be" so also, we wee that God's law is really how things should be and not our interpretation.