Werner Heisenberg is on the Loose!

In 1927, Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs, Charles Lindberg flew solo across the Atlantic, and movies talked. The decade of the 1920's was filled with those events that alter and illuminate our time. And, as someone said, "The past is present."

Werner Heisenberg is someone hardly anybody ever heard of, but the past is present. In 1927, Heisenberg came out with his new theory, alarming and repelling his fellow physicists. They call it, "Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle," a theory that says you can determine the position of an object or the object's momentum with 99% accuracy, but you can't measure both without losing a degree of precision. In other words, even science can't prove everything with 100% accuracy.

(If you're thoroughly bored by now, keep reading, it gets better.)

Academic theories don't stay in ivory towers; they have a way of getting out and eventually cavorting in the popular culture. Werner Heisenberg is on the loose. Just so, the Uncertainly Principal (UP) is no longer locked up in some German physics lab; it's here, alive and well, living and moving and having its being all over the place.

The UP holds that you can't be certain about anything, in fact, you may be wrong about everything. There are those who are now saying that the UP is our useful guide for living, and that, together, we should seek elusive truth. However, the ringer in the deal is that, according to the UP, ultimately, the truth is unknowable, since when you think you've found it, the UP says, "You can't be certain."

Now those who hold to the UP (such as writer Mary Tannen) admit that believing the truth is unknowable "doesn't help you get out of bed in the morning. It might drive you under the bed." Those who hold to Heisenberg's idea say, "The trick is to hold to the UP, but get up and brush your teeth anyway."

Mary Tannen is married, but, according to the UP, she might have married the wrong person. She says that she can't know if he's "Mister Right," so she considers him "Mr. Probable." So now the Heisenberg UP is starting to hit home. We can't know anything with certainty, marriage included.

There are problems with the UP - one is that you can't live it out. You have to live and act as if you are certain about some things - you have to act with certainty that it's 100% wrong to allow a two year old to play on I-75. You can't spend your time worrying over whether playing on I-75 is dangerous or safe, and you have to believe that it's dangerous with such certainty so no one can talk you out of it.

You have to live as if it taking strychnine instead of Excedrin is 100% lethal. You have to live on the basis that the house at your address is the house you drive home to every day after work. Mary Tannen has to write her novels on the basis of 100% certainty that her use of the rules of English grammar will communicate to the reader.

Furthermore, if we can't know anything for certain because we might be wrong about everything, then we can't trust the UP with any certainty. The theory defeats itself. The problem with these ideas is that we can't live them out.

Now, let's go one step farther. The biblical Christian can know many things with 100% accuracy. He can know that he has everlasting life (I John 5:13). God doesn't want us to be uncertain about it; He wants us to know with 100% accuracy that we're saved. The Bible echoes this in other passages.

Jesus tells His disciples that they can rejoice because their names are written in heaven (Luke 10:20). Paul could talk about his co-workers having their names written in the Book of Life (Philippians 4:3). To the Ephesian believers, Paul pointed out, "You were dead . . . you have been saved" (Ephesians 2:5, 8-9)

If they could know with certainty, why can't we? If God didn't want them to be worried about hell, why should He want us to fret over whether we're saved or not? God doesn't want us to be confused any more than He wanted Paul, Peter, John, or Paul's female co-workers from Philippi confused over such an important issue.

If we apply Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle to our salvation, what would happen? Play it out to the end of the line: it would seriously hamper or kill our testimony and witnessing for Christ. If we're not 100% sure God has saved us, it would make it difficult for us to bring such "good news" that, "I'm not sure if I'm saved and you can't be sure either." Not to know whether we're going to heaven or hell would in no way be the "abundant life" Jesus promised - it would be the confused and fearful life. But fear is exactly what we don't need to have, as Paul wrote to Timothy, "God has not given us [believers] the spirit of timidity."" (II Timothy 1:7)

Our certainty gives us confidence in living and boldness in witnessing, just what those early Christians had, and we can have it too. It's not bragging to know we're going to heaven. Rather than it being boasting, it's believing the promise that Jesus guarantees everlasting life to all who simply believe Him for it (John 6:40).

There's no biblical reason to say, "Ultimately only God knows who's saved." We can know with certainty, 100%. Heisenberg has nothing to say to us. Chisel this on a rock: if you believe Jesus guarantees everlasting life to all who simply believe in Him, you're in.

Dr. Mike Halsey,
Pastor, County Line Church

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