I was listening to an audio recording of Luke Chapter 8, and I got to one of the stories about Jesus calming a storm at sea, and a question occurred to me: what about the tornadoes in China?
There is a principle (I guess it's actually a theory, because it is 100% untestable unless you have a time machine) called the "butterfly effect" which basically says that anything that changes the movement of air anywhere, including the movement of a butterfly's wings, drastically changes the weather everywhere forever. Careful, don't sneeze... you could cause the hurricane that wipes out the whole eastern seaboard! Yikes, what a responsibility!
Anyone who sits in front of The Weather Channel for more than five minutes knows that the weather "here" and the weather "there" definitely have something to do with each other, no matter where "here" and "there" are. So here's the question: when Jesus quieted a storm, did He know what the ramifications of doing that might have been and know that it would be OK? What if quieting that storm was going to cause a storm somewhere else... would He have done something different (just give the boat safe passage through the storm or something, for example)? Did He do it without bothering to deal with those kinds of ramifications? Or did he supernaturally enclose that weather pattern somehow so other parts of the world were not affected?
Maybe Jesus the Son just messed with weather willy-nilly and God the Father sorted it out later. Or maybe Jesus wasn't only dealing with that one storm, but with all related weather patterns all at once... although it does seem like He specifically address the weather directly around Him.
Or maybe the butterfly effect theory is the stuff of science fiction and doesn't apply to anything outside of computer models of the weather, and maybe God is outside of time itself and already knows all the details of everything that is going to happen and it's all going to turn out OK in the end. But it is interesting to think about, isn't it?
There is a principle (I guess it's actually a theory, because it is 100% untestable unless you have a time machine) called the "butterfly effect" which basically says that anything that changes the movement of air anywhere, including the movement of a butterfly's wings, drastically changes the weather everywhere forever. Careful, don't sneeze... you could cause the hurricane that wipes out the whole eastern seaboard! Yikes, what a responsibility!
Anyone who sits in front of The Weather Channel for more than five minutes knows that the weather "here" and the weather "there" definitely have something to do with each other, no matter where "here" and "there" are. So here's the question: when Jesus quieted a storm, did He know what the ramifications of doing that might have been and know that it would be OK? What if quieting that storm was going to cause a storm somewhere else... would He have done something different (just give the boat safe passage through the storm or something, for example)? Did He do it without bothering to deal with those kinds of ramifications? Or did he supernaturally enclose that weather pattern somehow so other parts of the world were not affected?Maybe Jesus the Son just messed with weather willy-nilly and God the Father sorted it out later. Or maybe Jesus wasn't only dealing with that one storm, but with all related weather patterns all at once... although it does seem like He specifically address the weather directly around Him.
Or maybe the butterfly effect theory is the stuff of science fiction and doesn't apply to anything outside of computer models of the weather, and maybe God is outside of time itself and already knows all the details of everything that is going to happen and it's all going to turn out OK in the end. But it is interesting to think about, isn't it?
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