A Journey into a Christian Physicist's Mind

I go through nearly the same line of thinking every time I hear or sing "God of Wonders" in church. It goes something like this:

First, I wonder if other Christians expect this to be my favorite worship song. I am a physicist, and the song is about God reigning over the universe. It's a good song, I tell myself, but not necessarily my favorite. Should it be my favorite?

Then, I move on to think that no, it's not my favorite; it's not even about my line of physics, after all. I don't really know that much about astrophysics or cosmology.

This is sometimes followed by a distraction into thinking about my friends in grad school who studied astrophysics or cosmology, or a distraction into thinking about my own field of study, in which case Hamiltonians and conductances and double-quantum-dot diagrams float around in my head. This may be followed by a brief sense of panic---I did actually graduate, didn't I? My Ph.D. defense wasn't just a dream, right?

After that distraction, I return to my original distraction with a little bit of unrest: Why aren't there any worship songs about condensed matter physics? Why don't we sing about God reigning over atoms and quarks and wave functions and strings? I might even try thinking of a few lines for such a song.

This is sometimes followed by a distraction into thinking about how the indeterminate nature of quantum mechanics might harmonize with the notion of a sovereign God. This, of course, gets me nowhere.

I then return to my original distraction, chiding myself for being so petty. I shouldn't let myself be distracted during worship! This is a nice song. We used to sing it all the time at my church in grad school... until we sang it for five weeks in a row one time, and we never seemed to sing it again after that.

The last time we sang it there, I recall, was just after the Space Shuttle Columbia exploded. One of the astronauts on board was a Christian, and his family had requested this song as one of the crew's wake-up calls.

It's at this point that I'm a little teary and a little sobered about my petty distractions. Aren't there so many more serious things out there? All right God, I silently pray, I'm free of distractions, and ready to worship!

It's at that moment that the song ends.

Happy 50th blog entry!