by Mark Chatfield
Sentry Magazine, March 2001

Einstein said, "It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness."

With all his knowledge, he knew a simple truth that nothing can be seen when light is totally absent. Moreover, man could not exist at all except that God said, "Let there be light: and there was light." Light from the sun gives energy for life on Earth. Plants change the energy of sunlight into food energy. When light rays strike a green plant, some of their energy is changed to chemical energy, which the plant uses to make food out of air and minerals. Very nearly all living organisms on Earth depend directly or indirectly on this process of photosynthesis for their food energy. Without light, the world would not be.

"He shall be driven from light into darkness, and chased out of the world" (Job 18:18).

The earth's atmosphere or the earth itself absorbs some of the sunlight's energy. Much of this is then changed to heat energy, which helps warm the Earth, keeping it in the temperature range that living things have fashioned for.

"God saw the light, that it was good" (Genesis 1:4).

Our human perception of light is limited, however. We see light in the visible range of radiation frequencies we know as colors. Our eyes cannot see some infrared rays. Instead, we feel the heat. Some radiation is completely undetectable to us without special equipment like a radio or Geiger counter. The light is there, we just can't see it.

"For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, [even] his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse" (Romans 1:20).

"When his lamp shined upon my head, and by his light I walked through darkness" (Job 29:3).

People must have sight in order to learn. When people first used fire, the light provided at night may have been just as important to them as the heat because they could see what was around them rather than living through the darkness in fear of the unknown.

"Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and light unto my path" (Psalms 119:105).

There's a popular song with lyrics that say, "I can see clearly now ... " The clarity of our visual perception of an object depends on the amount of light that falls on it, how well it is illuminated. Since one of the properties of light is that it disperses outward in all directions, it spreads out to cover a larger area. The farther away from the light, the less clear objects appear. In fact, the amount of light drops off dramatically (by the inverse-square law). Interestingly, our eyes can compensate for this to some extent. Walking into a dark room can blind us and yet within a minute or so, our eyes have adjusted to permit us to see even in a very poorly illuminated place.

"Behold, he spreadeth his light around him; and he covereth the bottom of the sea" (Job 36:30).

"The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but Jehovah will be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory" (Isaiah 60:19).

Sometimes what we see depends a great deal on what happens to the light when it strikes a substance. You can see a toy boat that sank to the bottom of a filled bathtub, but unless you are directly above it, you will not see its real location because the light travels at a different speed through water than it does through the air and you see a refracted image. Where light goes right through the water, it simply reflects off a mirror. It is absorbed into a dark object but the energy doesn't vanish, it just changes into a different form, that of heat.

"He burneth part thereof in the fire; with part thereof he eateth flesh; he roasteth roast, and is satisfied; yea, he warmeth himself, and saith, Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire" (Isaiah 44:16).

One of the more fascinating properties of light is known as dispersion. When this occurs, white light separates into a spectrum of colors. You might cause this to happen with a glass prism. God does it with moisture in the atmosphere.

"I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth" (Genesis 9:13).

"And I saw another strong angel coming down out of heaven, arrayed with a cloud; and the rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire" (Revelation 10:1 ASV)

Sound does not exist unless there is something (such as air or water) for it to travel through. Light, however, can travel through nothing. Stars are easily visible on clear nights, though their light must travel for years through empty space before it reaches Earth. We can experiment with light and understand much about it, but it is not easy to explain just what light is.

"He stretcheth out the north over empty space, and hangeth the earth upon nothing" (Job 26:7).

One reason for this is that light cannot be seen until it interacts with something else. A beam of light is invisible unless it strikes an eye or unless there are particles that reflect parts of the beam to an eye. Also, light travels very fast -- so fast that for centuries people argued about whether it required any time at all for light to move from one point to another. The relationship between light and time is understood only dimly by even our most brilliant minds.

"And he said unto them, It is not for you to know times or seasons, which the Father hath set within His own authority" (Acts 1:7).

Galileo stationed two men on different hilltops, each with a shaded lantern. The first man was to uncover his lantern. As soon as the second man saw the light, he was to uncover his lantern. They decided that light might travel from one place to another in no time at all. In 1676, Olaus Roemer, a Danish astronomer, timed the eclipses of Jupiter's moons and figured out that light didn't travel instantaneously, but it was not until 1849 that a Frenchman named Armand Fizeau came up with a way to measure the speed of light. He used a notched rotating disk and a mirror to see how the interrupted light traveled through the notches. He came up with a speed of 194,000 miles per second. Considering the equipment and the fact that he was measuring the speed of light in air that was very close to what is now understood to be the speed of light in a vacuum, 186,282 miles per second. But light is so much more than radiation that travels at 186,282 miles per second. Light is not only fast, it is mysterious.

"And to make all men see what is the dispensation of the mystery which for ages hath been hid in God who created all things" (Ephesians 3:9).

When I drive around the Washington, D. C. beltway at the speed limit of 55 mph, everyone else is going faster. If they are going 65, they pass me going 10 mph faster than I. That is a measure of the speed of two cars. If an astronaut is launched to travel in space and was moving away from the sun at 1,000 miles per second, we might expect him to measure the speed of light from the sun at 186,000 minus 1,000 = 185,000 miles per second. But it doesn't work that way. No matter what speed or direction we might be traveling, the speed of light appears to be the same! The speed of light in a vacuum is constant. Einstein figured out that time might change and distance might change, but the speed of light doesn't change. The speed of light is called a fundamental constant in the universe.

"For I, Jehovah, change not" (Malachi 3:6).

People are so clever. We have experimented with light and have filled books with differential equations to calculate the properties of light, but we still don't know what it is. Some believe light is a wave. Some believe it is a particle. Neither of these alone explains why light bends or can be polarized. To explain this, physicists have concluded that light is a wave and a particle.

"The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but Jehovah will be unto thee an everlasting light. and thy God thy glory" (Isaiah 60:19).

"Give glory to Jehovah your God, before he cause darkness, and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains, and, while ye look for light, he turn it into the shadow of death, and make it gross darkness" (Jeremiah 13:16).

Albert Einstein's famous equation, E = MC², says some very interesting things about light. E means Energy; M means Mass, C means the Speed of Light which is a constant measured as distance divided by time 186,000 miles per second. If l remember my algebra correctly, the equation can be written this way as well: M = E/C. That means, in simple terms, that mass (matter, the universe as we know it) exists only in the presence of light. Furthermore, light is a constant. Matter might exist or not exist and energy might exist or not exist, but the speed of light and light itself exists eternally in timelessness.

"Until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ: which in its own times he shall show, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords; who only hath immortality, dwelling in light unapproachable; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom [be J honor and power eternal. Amen" (I Timothy 6:14-16).

When the Bible tells us God created light, it means that God created a universe in which the eternal Light that He is could be perceived in a new way. Through Christ, He made it possible for men to perceive that which always is because God is Light and He is eternal.

This all can be summarized with some quotes from a spiritually-minded physicist named Peter Russell,

"Both relativity and quantum physics, the two great paradigm shifts of modern physics, started from anomalies in the behavior of light, and both led to radical new understandings of the nature of light. For example, in relativity theory, at the speed of light time comes to a stop -- in effect, that means for light there is no time whatsoever. Furthermore, a photon can traverse the entire universe without using up any energy -- in effect, that means for light there is no space. ... Light, therefore, seems to occupy a very special place in the cosmic scheme; it is in some ways more fundamental than time, space, or matter. Although all we ever see is light, paradoxically, we never know light directly."

"No man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son. who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared [him]" (Joh 1: 18).

Physics, like Genesis, suggests that in the beginning there was light, or, rather, in the beginning, there is light, for light underlies every process in the present moment. Any exchange of energy between any two atoms in the universe involves the exchange of photons. Every interaction in the material world is mediated by light. In this way, light penetrates and interconnects the entire cosmos.

"But will God in very deed dwell on the earth? behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded!" (I Kings 8:27).

An oft-quoted phrase comes to mind: God is Light. God is said to be absolute -- and in physics, so is light. God lies beyond the manifest world of matter, shape, and form, beyond both space and time-so does light. God cannot be known directly - nor can light.

"Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is high as heaven; what canst thou do? Deeper than Sheol; What canst thou know? The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea" (Job 11:7-9).

The more I read about this inner light, the more I saw close parallels with the light of physics. Physical light has no mass, and is not part of the material world ... Light seems in some way fundamental to the universe, its values are absolute, universal constants.

"Again, a new commandment write I unto you, which thing is true in him and in you; because the darkness is passing away, and the true light already shineth" (I John 2:8).

"And this is the message which we have heard from him and announce unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all" (I John 1:5).