Thought for Today
Genesis 30:35 But that day Laban removed the male goats that were striped and spotted, and all the female goats that were speckled and spotted, every one that had white on it, and every lamb that was black, and put them in charge of his sons;
Numbers 11:7 Now the manna was like coriander seed, and its color was like the color of gum resin.
Matthew 5:36 And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.
Revelation 9:17 And this was how I saw the horses in my vision: the riders wore breastplates the color of fire and of sapphire and of sulfur;
Why color? Why did God create Creation as a polychromatic system? Is it really necessary to have things the color of coriander seed or gum resin? Why did fire need to be red and sulfur yellow? Why are some parts of God’s Creation black and white and others many hued?
I spent many years working in an industry of mostly black, white and varying shades of gray. Concrete, steel and even crude petroleum are not multi-hued. We could build huge complexes without any need for all the colors in the Crayola box. Why colors?
One of my favorite themes is that science and the Bible are not fundamentally in conflict; they merely answer different questions. All of our physical sciences, all of the various -ologies, cannot answer why, they just tell us how. The suffix -ology is from the Greek word ὁ λόγος (logos), which my lexicon tells me means word or speech. Biology, words about living organisms, tells us that one of the primary purposes of color in nature is for plant life to attract pollinators. That certainly is one of the functions of color in nature. But, it seems to me, there might be much simpler ways to attract pollinators.
Science tells us about the rods and cones in our eyes. “Scientists estimate that humans can distinguish up to 10 million colors. When light hits an object, such as a lemon, the object absorbs some of that light and reflects the rest of it. That reflected light enters the human eye first through the cornea, the outermost part of the eye. . . Most of us have about 6 million cones, and 110 million rods. . . Cones contain photo pigments, or color-detecting molecules. Humans typically have three types of photo pigments—red, green and blue. Each type of cone is sensitive to different wavelengths of visible light.” (American Academy of Ophthalmology)
That sounds like a lot of complexity just so that I can refer to a color as ‘lemon yellow.’ Whether I understand Creation through astrophysics and evolutionary biology or through Genesis 1 – 3, why colors? Why so much complexity in one simple (?) part of our human anatomy?
When I was very young, movies were in black and white. Now we have technicolor. For me, none of today’s cinematic extravaganzas with all their many colors, with CGI and probably soon to have AI, none of those will ever come close to the magic of Casablanca or The Maltese Falcon.
In these Thoughts, I have previously waxed poetically about the beauty of the fields behind our home, about the varying shades of springtime foliage. I love to look at all the flowering shrubs, trees and bushes in our flower beds. I even love to watch all the pollinators flitting from one blossom to the next.
I see in all the multi-hued display all around us, the hand of our Creator God. Could God have created a universe in black and white, with only varying shades of gray? One of my favorite seminary professors repeatedly told us, “God can do anything except not be God.” I agree. But, I wonder, why color?
The questions about why God did what God did do, why God still does what God does do, are more the realm of metaphysics than of physics or astrophysics. “Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality. This includes the first principles of being or existence, identity, change, space and time, cause and effect, necessity, actuality, and possibility.” (Wikipedia) After all those years of science, mathematics and engineering, I loved seminary and pondering metaphysics.
But, I suspect than when I go through my Orientation to Heaven, God will make sure my mother is there to help me with all the questions and answers. I’m equally sure that when I ask “Why colors,” God’s answer will tell me that Mom’s stock answer of “Because I said so,” was a reflection of God’s answer. Creation is created the way God chose to create Creation.
Stay safe, relish God’s Creation, trust God,
Pastor Ray