Turtles all the way down

“A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.

“At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: ‘What you have told us is rubbish.

“‘The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.’

“The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, ‘What is the tortoise standing on?’

“‘You’re very clever, young man, very clever,’ said the old lady. ‘But it’s turtles all the way down!’”

(From Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time.)

The point: our narratives matter.

They–not facts–are our lenses for understanding life.

And because narratives matter so much, it’s good to make sure we have them right.

As Paul wrote, “Even if it was written in Scripture long ago, you can be sure it’s written for us. God wants the combination of his steady, constant calling and warm, personal counsel in Scripture to come to characterize us, keeping us alert for whatever he will do next” (Romans 15:4).