My breath seemed to add more clouds to the foggy
darkness as I went on my early-morning run. Coming out of the dorm, it had not
seemed too dark, and I had left my flashlight behind, but as I emerged from the
circles of light that glowed around lampposts and buildings, the darkness and
fog closed in thicker than I had anticipated. The paved path blended with the
wet ground; only the firmness of the cement assured me of the correct course. I
was just starting to pull out my phone to use as a flashlight, when the thumping
of my steps turned to crunching. Without even realizing it, I had gone off the
path. Quickly, I tapped on my flashlight app, and a bright beam of light showed
me my surroundings. Now I easily found my way back to my running rout.
Without
the light, I could not see the way, and I stepped off the path. Without Christ,
“the light of the world,”1 I can not see spiritually, and I will
step off His path. Throughout the Bible, Christ is referred to as the “light of
the world.”2 He brings spiritual sight and understanding to His
followers, just as light brings physical sight. He is the One who shows the way
to heaven.
Still,
the parallels between Christ and light go deeper. Christ has a dual nature. He
is fully human and fully divine. Visible light also has a dual nature: particle
and wave. Young’s double-slit experiment is an example of this. Young showed
that light has a wave-like nature by shining a single beam of light through a
screen containing two slits and on to another screen. When the light passed
through the slits it shone a pattern on the last screen. There were alternating
bands of light and dark on the screen; called an interference pattern. This can
be explained by the wave-like nature of light: where light waves meet
trough-to-trough and crest-to-crest when they hit the screen, they amplify each
other, but where troughs and crests meet, they cancel each other, causing the
dark bands on the screen.3 Yet, on closer examination, Young’s
experiment showed the particle nature of light as well.
Even
when only one photon of light at a time is shone at the double-slit screen,
over a period of time, the interference pattern still shows up, exemplifying
that light behaves as a wave. The only exception to this is when the slits are
closely observed to find out which slit each photon passes through. If each
photon is watched closely, light stops traveling like a wave and starts
traveling like single particles.4 The interference pattern
disappears, and only two bands of light show up on the final screen. Simply by
close observation, light’s particle properties can be observed, but at the same
time, its wave-like properties disappear. Somehow, light is both a wave and a
particle, but scientists still do not fully understand how this can be. The
whole picture can not be observed or understood all at once.
Christ’s
dual nature is something that we can not fully grasp now either. We can see
from His Word that He is fully God and fully man, but how He can be both at the
same time is beyond our understanding. As Ellen White says:
“Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty
unto perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? Deeper than hell; what canst thou know?” “My
thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways My ways,
saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than
your ways, and My thoughts than
your thoughts.” “I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from
the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done.” It is
impossible for the finite minds of men to fully comprehend the character or the
works of the Infinite One. To the keenest intellect,
to the most powerful and highly educated mind, that holy Being must ever remain
clothed in mystery.”5
“Now we see through a glass, darkly; but
then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am
known.”6 Right now, looking through finite eyes of faith, we can not
fully know God, but one day, when we see Him face to face, we will know Him
with the same depth that He knows us. Yet, even though we can not fully know
Him now, just as we do not fully understand light, He is still the only Light
that can illuminate our path in this dark world. He is, “the light of the
world.”7
Notes
1 John 8:12
(King James Version).
2 ibid
3 “Thomas
Young’s Double Slit Experiment,” Molecular Expressions, accessed November 3,
2013, http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/interference/doubleslit/
4 “Young Two-Slit Experiment,” University of Oregon
5 Ellen G. White, Testimonies to the Church
vol. 5, p. 698.2, accessed November 3, 2013, https://egwwritings.org/singleframe.php
6 1 Corinthians 13:12 (King James Version).
7 John 8:12 (King James Version).
An excellent parallelism! May we reflect His light! :)
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