Black holes are formed when stars die. They become like Dyson vacuums, sucking up all the mass and matter around them, exhibiting a gravitational pull so strong that even light particles cannot escape. A black hole’s existence is dependent upon the consumption of everything around it. Likewise, humanity’s selfish heart sucks up everything God created good in and around it and uses these created goods to sustain its life. But what the heart usually fails to see is that this insatiable hunger is precisely what will kill it.

We see then that the two cities were created by two kinds of love: the earthly city was created by self-love reaching the point of contempt for God, the Heavenly City by the love of God carried as far as contempt of self. In fact, the earthly city glories in itself, the Heavenly City glories in the Lord.¹

The past forty years have seen a few writers—from philosopher Charles Taylor to historian Carl Trueman—declaring that people in the Western world answer the question Who am I? in fundamentally distinct ways compared to history past.² Christians have been caught up in this shift as well, often unwittingly, and have found themselves together with the rest of the West in the midst of an identity crisis.

The claim of Jesus that no one can be his disciple unless he hates his own life (Luke 14:26), and his call to deny oneself, shoulder a cross, and lose one’s life to find it truly (Matt 16:24–25) descend on clogged ears. We hear him, but only as though muffled by our passions, dreams, and desires for this life, which still functionally serve as determinative of our sense of who we are and where we are going. Lulled into lethargy, we would do well to shake ourselves awake to the call of Christ—or find someone who will do it for us.

Created as Stars

The church fathers give good shakings.³ Ignatius’ Letter to the Romans, which is too often dismissed due to his uncomfortable-to-us desire for martyrdom, is typical of how the Fathers thought about true discipleship:⁴

Neither the ends of the earth nor the kingdoms of this age are any use to me. It is better for me to die for Jesus Christ than to rule over the ends of the earth. Him I seek, who died on our behalf; him I long for, who rose again for our sake. The pains of birth are upon me. Bear with me, brothers and sisters: do not keep me from living; do not desire my death. . . . Let me receive pure light, for when I arrive there I will be a human being. Allow me to be an imitator of the suffering of my God.⁵

Ignatius sees the call of Jesus in Matthew 16 as turning inside-out the world’s view of life and self. To find our life here is to build our homes in death; true life, rather, comes through death.

The patristic theologians are always trying to get Christians to see that to be truly human—a human being who images God well—is to follow the God-man, Jesus, the true image of the invisible God (Col 1:15), in self-sacrificial death for the love of God and neighbor. God’s design for the human being is to live like a star, lighting and blessing the people and creation around us in representation of the love and glory of God.

The Lord promised to make Abraham’s offspring like the stars in the heavens (Gen 15:3). Jesus called his people to be salt and light, to shine like stars in the world in their obedience to him.⁶ And throughout the Bible, stars function as symbols of, among other things, earthly rulers and the people of God.⁷ Humanity is, like the sun and stars, to radiate as patterns of God’s glory and sovereign rule through their loving, beautiful dominion over the earth. But, since the fall in the garden, human beings have become like black holes instead.⁸

On Black Holes

Black holes are formed when stars die. They become like Dyson vacuums, sucking up all the mass and matter around them, exhibiting a gravitational pull so strong that even light particles cannot escape. A black hole’s existence is dependent upon the consumption of everything around it.

Likewise, humanity’s selfish heart sucks up everything God created good in and around it and uses these created goods to sustain its life. But what the heart usually fails to see is that this insatiable hunger is precisely what will kill it.

Recent quantum research, pioneered by Stephen Hawking, has shown something previously thought to be unlikely—black holes die.⁹ The prior consensus was that black holes may exist into eternity as they gobble up more mass, but with the progress of quantum physics and its insight into matter and anti-matter particles, the scientific community has changed its mind.

Even the blackness of space is teeming with life. If we could see into the quantum realm, we would see particles popping in and out of existence. These particles come into being as matter/anti-matter pairs (positively and negatively charged, respectively), which then are annihilated instantly as the matter and anti-matter particles cancel each other out.

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