GOD IS OUR REFUGE AND HELP

 Reflection on the Word for the Sunday of November 20, 2022
GOD IS OUR REFUGE AND HELP -   (Psalm 46:1-3)
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; 46:3 though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.
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There is a famous quote from Albert Einstein, when he confessed that “I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.”  In brackets we may mention that Einstein regarded Spinoza as “one of the deepest and purests souls our Jewish people has produced.”  

We have to comment on his statement. Following the lifelong changes of his beliefs regarding God and spirituality, it looks like that he tended to be more and more agnostic in his later years, more pragmatic, and less contemplating on spirituality. He may have had some bitterness involved in his mind, as he expressed couple of times in his seventies that he is tired, he did his share, he would not mind to go, and especially that he wants to choose the time, and leave this world as he said elegantly.

On 17 April 1955, Einstein had an internal, abdominal bleeding and he refused the easy, one day surgery to fix it. He was hospitalized and treated for the same problem in 1948, but at this time he refused the operation, by allegedly saying that “It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share; it is time to go.”

Obviously, from his part it was not a bargain to choose life or death over losing mobility or long term unbearable pain or losing sight or limbs, it was just a simple, routine operation, and still he said that it was the time to go. This was obviously a kind of depression and the famous over-simplicity of his mind in addition, which had no problems with dealing complex issues of physics, but he confessed it is very far from him to understand philosophy, and he never really studied Spinoza.

In the so called Manhattan project, lead by Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard, thus in the creating of the atomic bombs, he was not directly involved, still it looks like that it continuously bothered him, that he signed a letter, originally worded by Leo Szilard and Jeno Wigner, which called upon the government of the United States, that be aware, that the regime of the Nazi Germany was ahead of the US regarding nuclear experimenting, and it was the time that the American government consider to advance to buil its own nuclear research facilities.

There is a legendary story, that during the second world war, President Roosevelt was eating his breakfast, his secretary brought a letter in saying that Sir, you are better to read this. Where is it from? asked the president. It was from Leo Szilard, a professor of Physics, at the Columbia University. All right, said the president, I have not ever heard his name, why should I read this letter?
Because it was co-signed by Albert Einstein, sir, answered the secretary. Ah, said the president, then indeed, we must.

The letter resulted in a presidential hearing, and three people were sitting in the waiting room of the White House to brief the president, as expert physicist about the how to establish American nuclear facilities in an urgent manner.

The three scientists were Leo Szilard, Jeno Wigner, Ede Teller, where Leo Szilard with Fermi led later the nuclear program of the Unites States, Jeno Wigner later received Nobel Price in physics, and Edward Teller is commonly known today as the father of the Hydrogen Bomb, which was invented in 1951.

Not only that all the three scientists were Hungarian Jews from Budapest, but Leo Szilard and Jeno Wigner attended even the same Lutheran high school in Budapest. At the presidential hearing in Washington Edward Teller served as the driver of the other two.
Armed with Albert Einstein’s letter, written on August 2, 1939, America became a nuclear power, about which later Albert Einstein said that if I would have known in advance that the Germans would have never succeeded with their nuclear efforts during the war, I would not have lifted a single finger to write that letter.

It looks like that after Nagasaki and Hiroshima and the proliferation of the nuclear arms still made him feel guilty and it also resulted, that his spiritual doubts became more and more petrified. That is why he may have said that “The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and science lies in the concept of a personal God,” and that God, if exists, not only not personal, but "God does not concern himself with the fate and the doings of mankind. "

That was an expression of his bitterness after the bloodshed of WWII and the the monstrosity of the Holocaust. As arguably the most intelligent person of his world, even he was not able to deal with the gap between the seemingly distant God and the suffering world. However. knowing some physics and math is not necessarily makes someone understand spirituality or even philosophy.

Most of the sentient scientist including Einstein did not deny that the Universe is well designed, better than a Swiss watch, and it exists not by chance. Its physical laws are so sublime and so complex that it is incomprehensibly mind blowing. We can also see that the moral laws are also very complex and they are also mind- blowingly working.

With Einstein simple mindedness, it could have been not easily perceived that as the universal God given laws govern everything so God is present in everything. God just looks distant like the King ruling over the Universe he made and he owns, but in the same time the Creator is also present in every piece of sand and in every heartbeat.

As the psalmist said, God is indeed our refuge and strength, however it is only so, until we break the Laws he made. In that instance God becomes rather wrath than refuge, as we brake the law, the law strikes back.

It is like removing your pressurized helmet in the outer place is not really good move, it was your choice. The Law says, you shall not do that, for if you do you will die. The same thing with the moral Laws. Moses said in the Book of Deuteronomy, that the choice of decay or prosperity is ours. If we keep the Law, the Law will save us a helmet and an armor, and makes the stirring community become a loving and caring family.
 
The community be a clan, a tribe, a nation or the community of the nations. We are all siblings, children of God, and we shall care about each other, and not a single one must be left behind. Through the Laws, the otherwise distant God, the Creator of the Universe, keeps intervening not only at the crossroads or at the milestones but in every moment.

Jesus, of course, is in line with this in the Gospel of John by saying that “If anyone listens to my sayings and doesn’t believe, I don’t judge him. For I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. He who rejects me, and doesn’t receive my sayings, has one who judges him. The word that I spoke will judge him in the last day.

The Word of the Lord is to be followed or else. It is that simple. There are some natural disasters of course, but most misery came upon us because of the human behavior. We have to choose the Lord, and with the Lord may we choose prosperity and life on Earth, and then in Heaven,

AMEN.