The world has believed that marriage is for a man and a woman.  Men and women are different.  Viva la difference! They were made to complement one another and to be close, just like the positive and negative charges in physics. This was part of God’s created order.  From God’s creation comes order, predictability, productivity, and blessing. Seems simple, does it not?  At least for Christians, it does, but for the world it has become very complex.

I am not really a physicist but I did get a degree in mathematics and physics in college.  I had a teaching assistantship in mathematics at West Virginia University before I decided to go to Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia where I studied theology.  To complete my story, I later took accounting courses and became a Certified Public Accountant. I worked for civil government, and then with a private accounting firm before I started my own accounting business.  Oh yes, add to that about 50 years of preaching every Sunday.

I like to study electronics on the side.  Recently, while solving some problems relating to an electric circuit, it came to my mind that man really does not create power.  He only harnesses the power in creation that God put there in his mighty wisdom.  Whether it is the gravitational forces that keep us on earth, or the forces in the atom, God made them both. They are there by his decree.  He made them for us to study and to use for the purpose of subduing the earth. And looking at the world today, I would have to say that we have done well.

I love my LED light in the dark, my heat pump in the winter and summer, and I especially love my computer. We have come a long way since Adam and Eve.  We have come a long way in the last 100 years. It’s too bad that many people today do not have the experience of living in the days before modern conveniences.  They would not complain so much.

What do physics and theology have to do with one another?  Let me suggest something other than the fact that God created the world in six days.

The study of the atom teaches us that there are both positive and negative charges and that they attract each other. Charges with the same polarity repel each other.  Take two large magnets with north and south poles adhering together, and then try pulling them apart.  It is very difficult because God made them to attract each other.

At the same time try pushing together two magnets with two like north poles next to each other.  This is very difficult too because God did not make them to attract each other.  He made them to repel one another. To believe otherwise destroys the foundation of science. If the rules change then we cannot predict what will be true tomorrow, and then science dies. God created polarity and if you try to mess with it, you will only create frustration and chaos in science. It’s the same way in the world of people.

It seems like a giant leap, but with concepts of both electricity and theology jumping around in my head, it is almost impossible for me to separate these two different fields of study.  The obvious observation becomes important to me at the most unusual times, even though it may seem rather silly to others.  Like in magnetism, so in people, opposites attract.  Men have a strong and powerful attraction to women, and likewise women have a strong and powerful attraction to men. Like science, if you try to change the rules then the foundation of an ordered society crumbles.

When sin entered the world, things got all messed up.  Now we have men who are sexually attracted to men, and women who are sexually attracted to women. This has always been the case since the Fall, but now it is all out in the open.  We are told today that you can change your sex from one to the other.   The word nonbinary means you can be what you want to be, either male or female or both, or something else. Binary divides the world by twos like male and female, and non-binary divides the world into anything but twos.

Noah took the animals into the Ark in pairs, male and female. Non-binary today can be the attempt to replace God’s binary. However, it is a lie, and in the end, it will only bring chaos to the lives of individuals, to families, and to society as a whole. It is a result of sin and not a change in nature due to a constantly evolving world.  It is no more natural than the activity of positive and negative charges in physics.

I was recently in a Walmart and a young lady waited on me.  I could tell she was a female just by looking at her. However, her hair was cut short and she wore a tag with the name Andrew on it.  She was very nice and so was I, but it quickly came to my mind that this is silly.  It is like an electron trying to be a proton (only a theological physicist would think such thoughts).  I thought this is impossible.  She was lying to herself and she was lying to me. How sad.

Traditionally, the world has believed that marriage is for a man and a woman.  Men and women are different.  Viva la difference! They were made to complement one another and to be close, just like the positive and negative charges in physics. This was part of God’s created order.  From God’s creation comes order, predictability, productivity, and blessing. Seems simple, does it not?  At least for Christians, it does, but for the world it has become very complex.

So, what does a Christian physicist think about non-binary sexuality.  About the same as he thinks about the idea of like charges in an atom attracting one another. It’s not the way God make things.

Larry E. Ball is a retired minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is now a CPA. He lives in Kingsport, Tenn.