And Elijah came near to all the people and said, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” And the people did not answer him a word.
1 Kings 18:21
The world of quantum physics is a strange one. One of the most intriguing phenomena in that world is showcased by the famous double-slit experiment. This experiment demonstrates what scientists call wave-particle duality. When quantum particles like electrons or photons are fired through two narrow slits, they behave like spreading waves and create a striped interference pattern on a back screen. However, introducing a detector to observe which slit a particle passes through completely alters the result. The physical measurement collapses the particle’s wave function, destroying the superposition of states. The interference pattern vanishes, and the particles behave like solid matter, traveling through either one slit or the other to form two simple lines on the screen. If we don’t look to see which slit the particles pass through, they act like waves. If we do look, they act like particles.
In 1935 Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger proposed a thought experiment to underscore the weirdness of quantum theory. In the experiment, known as Schrödinger’s Cat, a cat is sealed in a box with a radioactive atom, a Geiger counter, and a vial of poison. If the atom decays, the poison is released, killing the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation (developed in the 1920s by Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg) holds that this atom does not have a set state or place until we measure it. Instead, it exists in superposition—a mix of all possible states. In this case, the unobserved atom exists in two states at once: decayed and not decayed. Consequently, until someone opens the box and looks, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. It is only when we peek that the possibilities collapse into a single reality. According to quantum rules, curiosity might very well kill the cat.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. If you want to keep the cat alive, you must never check to see if it is.
Many of us keep our God alive the same way. We store him in a box made of Sunday school lessons, cheerful sermons, a few favorite Bible verses, some fuzzy theology, and a gentle disinterest. Our God is Schrödinger’s God, a Cheshire God who is there and not there, the great I am and am not. He is a worry stone in our pocket, inert and rubbed smooth, a totem for spiritual practice, a mild chakra to center us, a hazy approving smile. We dare not peek inside the box for fear that this God might collapse into something unpalatable, terrible, or even into nothing at all. The unexamined God is the only safe one.
Our faith, too, is held in superposition. As long as we don’t look, we are able both to believe and not believe at the same time. This spiritual ambiguity enables us to live in the real world without abandoning belief altogether. It dims the glare of the God’s hard implications that would otherwise be stumbling blocks to our pursuit of the good life. God himself may live in unapproachable light, but we prefer a twilight kingdom.
But faith held in superposition is cowardly. Better to collapse the possibilities sustained by deliberate ignorance and let the chips fall where they may. Better to provoke into being the one inescapable reality—whether or not God or faith survives. Better to ask, as did the untested Elisha, “Where is the Lord God of Elijah?” and slam the inherited cloak of scripture and belief upon the hard waters. Better to put the God to the test—risking wrath or deafening silence—than to hide within the aura of an indeterminate deity.
That we may know that you are gods,
do something, whether good or bad.
But you are less than nothing
and your works are utterly worthless.
Is the God in the box the one presented in the scriptures or something else? Does he actually give you whatever you ask for in prayer? Does he keep all his promises? Does the God in the box demand obedience? Will he judge Christians? Will he really punish with everlasting destruction those who do not know Jesus? Has the God in the box changed his mind about some things? Can the God of the Bible survive honest scrutiny or will he collapse into a collection of bumper sticker proclamations? Is he truly real or, like so many insist, a product of wishful thinking? Does our faith depend on our not pressing for answers? Could curiosity kill the God?
Perhaps it’s time to open the box and take a look.
