Ron Walters is the Senior Vice
President of Ministry Relations for KKLA had a great article this month and I
have included it below. He hits the nail right on the head.
In the years following the
Reformation, new controversies raged within the Church that Luther had left
behind. The most heated was, Where had God placed the earth in His cosmos? The
defining questions in this debate were, Are you geocentric? i.e., clinging to
the notion that earth was the orbital center of all God's creation. Or Are you
heliocentric? i.e., believing that the earth was just another planet taking its
daily spin around the sun.
To side with the geocentric
crowd was the safer choice; it was, after all, endorsed by the Church. Tradition
has always been a powerful force. What was good for Grandpa is good enough for
me!
On the flip side, those who
tossed their cap into the heliocentric camp did so at their own peril. The
Church of the 1500s did not encourage independent thinking. In fact,
cutting-edge thinking tended to have guillotine conclusions.
However, during that time,
one man had the correct answer to the geo/helio debate: Nicolaus Copernicus—but
he wasn't talking.
Although Copernicus was the
foremost astronomer of his day, he was also a cleric, a highly decorated member
of the Church--the same church that fumed over Luther's earlier rebellion. And
though his mathematical model of a heliocentric system was spot on, Copernicus
just couldn't bring himself to expose the errors of the past and tell the world
what he had discovered.
Copernicus worried. How can I
tell people that Plato and Aristotle were nuts? How can I explain that Ptolemy
didn't know what he was talking about? How do I say you're wrong to
conventional thinking?"
For a thousand years the
theories of these oft-quoted philosophers held the world's thinking in a
stranglehold. Theirs was a science based purely upon observation. What they saw
was what we got. The sun rose in the east and set in the west; therefore, they
concluded, the sun revolves around the earth.
To compound their flawed
thinking, the Church leadership liked the sound of those theories. They liked
the idea that God staged His prized creation in the center of everything, not
on some isolated, nondescript, obscure planet. Being the center of the universe
appealed to the Church. That doctrine would preach!
The geocentric thinkers
backed their claims with absurdity upon absurdity:
Every dropped object always
falls to the earth. That is proof that the earth is the center of everything.
If the earth was not the universal core, every dropped object would fall toward
another true focal point.
Wind is a natural result of
movement. Therefore, if the earth is in motion circling the sun, there would be
an extraordinary display of wind. Where is that wind?
Who could argue with logic
like that?
Certainly not Copernicus. For
thirty years he kept the truth to himself. Not until his deathbed did he allow
his work to be published and the truth to be known. What a waste! He chose to
conceal the light from those who lived in the darkness.
On the flip side, many
students of truth could not hold in what they knew.
The prophets. Even when the
tide of public opinion turned against them, they wouldn't forsake their message—or
the God who sent them.
The apostles. Their message
was vigorously attacked by well-educated, well-funded and well-dressed
opponents. Yet each proclaimer was willing to die for the truth.
The magi. Tradition says they
had fame, fortune, and position. But what they wanted most were directions.
"Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in
the east, and have come to worship Him."
The gospel has always been
good news, too good in fact to hide. There's a world of people in search of
that truth. And, no doubt, they'll be dropping by during Christmas to hear it
again.
