Switching the Labels

October 2024

Dear Friends

We’re now well into the new academic year and, in schools and universities, students are busy studying our world - everything from ants to whales, from the behaviour of electrons to the motion of stars, from the chemical processes in leaves to the shock waves of a thunderstorm. 

But what do they think they are looking at?  A fascinating and beautiful world shaped by mysterious and unchanging forces but without ultimate meaning?  Or the work of a craftsman who is outside his creation, and who has an eternal purpose for all he has made?

Does it matter? 

If there is no Creator then perhaps it doesn’t matter whether we realise that, or whether we take comfort in myths about God.  Everything will disappear one day anyway.

If there is a Creator then scrubbing him from our studies of his world is a big problem.  There is a basic injustice to removing or falsifying the artist labels in a gallery.  We’re also denying students the most valuable benefit of their studies in science, maths, geography, music or art: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.  Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge” (Psalm 19:1-2)  And this speech is not dry information about the ultimate power in our universe, it is a letter from the One who made us in love, who knows the purpose of our lives and who has entered his world in his Son to restore us to Himself.

When the Cavendish laboratory was built in Cambridge in 1874, a Bible verse was carved into the oak entrance doors.  In that building men would discover the electron, the neutron and the structure of DNA.  The second Cavendish lab was built in 1973 and the same verse was inscribed above its doors:
“The works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein”     (Psalm 111:2)

Cavendish III has just been built in Cambridge and will open next year.  I understand that Psalm 111:2 will once again be displayed - a reminder that everything that is studied is a work of the Lord, the great God who has revealed himself in his creation, through his son Jesus Christ, and in the pages of his eternal Word, the Bible.

Sincerely

Graham Burrows