{"id":4076,"date":"2024-10-09T06:41:33","date_gmt":"2024-10-09T10:41:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?page_id=4076"},"modified":"2024-10-09T06:41:33","modified_gmt":"2024-10-09T10:41:33","slug":"even-a-child-can-get-it-right","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/even-a-child-can-get-it-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Even a Child Can Get It Right"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

During the course of a single year (1905), a young man named Albert Einstein submitted several papers to a German physics journal.

This was surprising, since Einstein had no scientific pedigree, no university affiliation, and no laboratory to conduct experiments.

He was employed at the time in the Swiss national patent office in Bern, where he was a technical examiner third class.\u00a0He had recently sought a promotion to technical examiner second class, but his application had been rejected.

Social historian Bill Bryson summarizes the impact of three of the papers that Einstein submitted to Annalen der Physik:<\/em>

\u201cThe first won its author a Nobel Prize and explained the nature of light (and also helped to make television possible, among other things).\u00a0The second provided proof that atoms do exist \u2013 a fact that had, surprisingly, been in some doubt.

\u201cThe third merely changed the world.\u201d\u00a0

Einstein\u2019s special theory of relativity, the subject of the third paper, transformed humanity\u2019s understanding of the cosmos.\u00a0It was an extraordinary article in that it had no footnotes, no citations, no previous sources, and contained virtually no math.

It\u2019s almost as if he \u201chad reached the conclusions by pure thought, unaided, without listening to the opinions of others,\u201d writes historian C.P. Snow.\u00a0\u201cTo a surprisingly large extent, that is precisely what he had done.\u201d

As Einstein became internationally famous, the New York Times <\/em>decided to run a story.

Unfortunately they sent their golf correspondent, Henry Crouch, to do the interview.

Crouch knew considerably more about fairways and bunkers than theoretical physics.\u00a0The story was laughably inaccurate, and included the journalist\u2019s conjecture that only 12 people \u201cin all the world could comprehend\u201d the theory of relativity.\u00a0

With the passing of time, that number got smaller and smaller in the public imagination.

Bryson recounts:\u00a0\u201cWhen a journalist asked the British astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington if it was true that he was one of only three people in the world who could understand Einstein\u2019s relativity theories, Eddington considered deeply for a moment and replied, \u2018I am trying to think who the third person is.\u2019\u201d\u00a0

The theory of relativity is so remarkable and so far-reaching it just has<\/em> to be impossible for ordinary people to comprehend.\u00a0Right?<\/em>

Something similar happens when ordinary people try to wrap their heads around the essence of the Christian message.

There are so many Bible verses.\u00a0And so many theories about what really happened on the cross.\u00a0And so many different churches with all their different views of baptism, worship, and sacred rituals.

Who can make sense of it all?

Karl Barth, one of the 20th<\/sup> century\u2019s most celebrated theologians \u2013 who also happened to be a citizen of Switzerland \u2013 was a guest speaker at the University of Chicago in 1962. During the closing Q&A time, a student asked Barth if he could summarize his whole life\u2019s work of theological reflection in a single sentence.

Barth replied, \u201cYes, I can.\u00a0In the words of a song I learned at my mother\u2019s knee:\u00a0Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.<\/em>\u201d\u00a0

We may think that only the brightest people on earth can comprehend the meaning of the universe.

But you don\u2019t have to be an Einstein to grasp what really matters.

God has ensured that even a child can get it right.

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here During the course of a single year (1905), a young man named Albert Einstein submitted several papers to a German physics journal. This was surprising, since Einstein had no scientific pedigree, no university affiliation, and no laboratory to conduct experiments. He was employed at the time in the Swiss national patent… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4076","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4076"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4078,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4076\/revisions\/4078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}