Faith Works 7-14-23

Faith Works 7-14-23
Jeff Gill

Thinking about the unthinkable, unimaginably
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Jeff Goldblum played Dr. Ian Malcolm in "Jurassic Park," a theorist of science and philosophy who gets invited to the ill-fated soft opening of a theme park filled with dinosaurs, and says to the over-optimistic impresario of the facility: "Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should."

There's a level of metaphor I'd argue running through the whole "Jurassic" franchise about the role and use of nuclear technology, specifically weapons. If you find that a bit of a stretch, go back and watch that first one. On the side of one of the control room computer terminals is a classic photograph of J. Robert Oppenheimer, pipe in hand, formulas on a chalkboard behind him, gazing almost too calmly at the viewer.

On Sunday, July 16, we mark 78 years since the Trinity test in the deserts of New Mexico. What Oppenheimer and his team of Los Alamos scientists put together as the first atomic bomb went off hundreds of miles to the south, but the light visible even on that northerly mesa for those not on the scene in the south. Top secret to the rest of the world, but much debated among the nuclear scientists rushed into seclusion and work as the world war raged: what are we doing? Is it right? The fictional Dr. Malcolm challenges Jurassic Park's designers, "your scientists were so preoccupied… they didn't stop to think." Not so for Oppenheimer.

That's what makes the human and technological drama of the Manhattan Project so compelling. In fact, they did stop to think a great deal about whether they should. It tormented all of them to varying degrees. There's a movie coming out later this month which centers on Oppenheimer, brings in the Los Alamos community, and sweeps through American society and government into the 1950s, asking again "should we?"

Except of course we did. Convinced by threats from Nazi Germany & the Japanese Empire that it was an existential necessity, they decided to complete the work. After Trinity, two were used on Japan to end the war. A few key spies made sure enough details got to Soviet Russia that the USSR was able to set off their own effective replica atom bomb four years later. From 1949, the Cold War was off with a vengeance, and we live still with the reality of hundreds of nuclear weapons, and decisions to made about their use.

Oppenheimer later recounted how at the Trinity site, on seeing the first atom bomb go off, "we knew the world would not be the same; a few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent." And he recalled a line from Hindu scripture, where Vishnu says "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." His personal faith was obscure, inscrutable in many ways, but he thought deeply about the larger implications of the science he was engaged in. The name of the Trinity site he took from a poem by John Donne, and he requested at his funeral George Herbert's "The Collar."

Christian or any other religion, there are ultimate questions for the individual, and then there are individual questions with implications for our families, our communities, our nations, and today it can be said without exaggeration, for our world. Are we being Oppenheimers as we decide how to use resources, purchase goods and services, simply to interact in our technologically complex world?

And what if we are wrong, for all our well-intended thinking? I will be curious to see how this movie deals with that inevitable question.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has often thought about what Oppenheimer was thinking. Tell him your thoughts as you like at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.