Not God Enough: Why Your Small God Leads to Big Problems

by J.D. Greear

Miles away from the nearest electric light, with no light pollution to obstruct our vision, it felt like we were seeing millions of stars. Astronomers tell us, however, that it’s only 9,096. That’s how many stars are visible to the naked eye—about 1/100,000,000,000,000,000,000 of what’s actually out there. They estimate the number of stars right now to be about three septilion, and that number is constantly expanding. That’s a three with twenty-four zeros after it, or a number that looks like this: 3,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 If you’re like me, numbers like million, billion, trillion, or a septillion tend to sound all the same after a while. Most of us are satisfied if we open our bank account and see a number with two digits. The magnitude of a number followed by twenty-four zeros exceeds our comprehension. It’s what I experience when I hear someone talk about the national debt, or when I look at the amount my mortgage statement says I will actually pay on my house over thirty years. See if this helps: one million seconds ago takes you back about eleven days. Can you remember what you were doing eleven days ago? What about a billion seconds ago? Do you remember what you were doing a billion seconds ago? That’s thirty-one years and eight months ago.1 Sometime in the 1980s. The compact disc player had just been released. Rambo was saving our world from certain destruction. The Jedi were returning for the first time. Some of you, of course, can’t remember what you were...