The Holiness of God and Nuclear Energy

 

I have just finished reading a book called The General and the Genius by James Kunetka that chronicles the relationship between General Leslie Groves and Robert Oppenheimer all the way to the development of the Atomic Bomb. When I saw the book in a list of recommendations for myself, I decided to read it because I have always been fascinated by the wildness that is nuclear energy.  

 

The power that is released by fission is something that has the ability to either fuel the electrical grid for entire regions or decimate entire cities. It is truly something to consider and I think many people have experienced the breath-taking moment that occurs when we realize what it is to live in a world where nuclear weapons exist.

 

The Manhattan project itself was a race to develop nuclear weapons based on intelligence gathered by the military that Nazi Germany was exploring what could be possible if the process of fission was weaponized to make a giant bomb. Reacting to this our government tasked a team of our most prominent scientists to work with the military to create workable atomic bombs.

 

This process was arduous, lasting multiple years with conflicts between the greatest minds of that day, coupled with pressures to produce a weapon that could rival or even surpass the bomb that Germany was designing. Secrecy was a high priority and the billions of dollars invested into the project added an even heavier burden of expectation on all those involved.

 

Playing with Fire

 

In addition to this crucible of pressure there was also the danger of the project itself. There is a certain mystique that comes with experimenting with unknown entities. What would it have been like to be the man who first discovered how to start a fire? Imagine the wonder he felt as he warmed his hands around the flame and then the horror he felt as he burned himself when he got too close. He would come to learn that while he could start a fire at will, he couldn’t actually control it but rather only seek to harness and contain it.

 

A similar thing happened in the Manhattan project with 2 men who were testing the critical levels of plutonium and uranium.  The first of these was Harry Daghlian, who Kunetka writes was conducting an experiment that involved “carefully building a wall, brick by brick, around the plutonium to a height and mass just before it went critical.  As a precaution, each brick was slid into place from the outside, not put down one on the top of the other.  Sweating in the enclosed room, Daghlian reached over to pick up the last brick from a nearby table, but as he brought the brick over the pile to insert on the other side, it slipped out of his hand and fell into the center.  The additional brick provided just enough neutron reflection to make the assembly supercritical, and for an instant an ethereal blue glow burst uniformly in all directions from the center of the pile before dying out.  Daghlian quickly pushed the brick off with his hand, stopping the reaction, but it was too late for him – he was effectively a dead man.”

 

The author goes on to say that “second degree burns covered his hands and abdomen where the radiation had been most intense.  The burns festered and his flesh began to dissolve.  He ran a high fever and lost his hair.  Daghlian lived twenty-eight days, although he was comatose the last week. It was a sobering reminder that experiments at Los Alamos could be lethal.”

 

A similar thing happened around a year later with Louis Slotin who, as Kunetka describes, also experienced the same “piercing blue flash” because his screwdriver slipped during an experiment and after absorbing over nine hundreds units of gamma radiation died after 9 days.

 

When I was reading this I couldn’t help but to think about Nadab and Abihu – the sons of Aaron who offered strange fire before the Lord in Leviticus 10:1-3.  And after reading the accounts of Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin I couldn’t help but to see the parallel between the two instances.  

 

Harry Daghlian died because he got careless.  His hands were sweaty and rather than taking a break, cooling down a little and toweling off he decided to press on thinking he was ok and the brick slipped from his hands.  He didn’t respect the gravity of what he was dealing with to realize that one mistake would cost him his life and sadly it did.

 

The Fear of the Lord is the Beginning of Wisdom

 

Nadab and Abihu were similar.  They had been instructed to offer a certain type of sacrificial fire before God and rather than taking the time to do as the Lord had commanded them they were careless and went ahead and offered “strange fire before the Lord”.  Like Daghlian and Slotin they thought that what they were doing was good enough and that they would be ok.  And sadly, like Daghlian and Slotin they didn’t realize what they were dealing with.

 

In our world today God is often only spoken of in positive terms.  We like to quote 1 John 4:8 which reads that “God is love”, we post John 3:16 which reads “for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but will have everlasting life” on billboards for all to see as they drive down the highway.  We celebrate God as our Father (Matthew 6:9) and our Friend (John 15:15).  All of this is true and its true in the same sense that the power from atomic energy can be beneficial to mankind through powerplants but like nuclear energy there is an uncontrollable wildness to God that we need to learn to live in respect of.

 

Proverbs 1:7 says “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” and it is the wisest thing in the world to have a healthy fear of God.  When the scientists at Los Alamos approached plutonium, they understood that they were dealing with something that had the power to destroy them and it is something that Israel learned about God in the wilderness as well.  After Nadab and Abihu’s death Moses said that it was the holiness of God that caused their death.  They didn’t regard Him in the way that He should be regarded and as such paid the price.

 

Nothing should scare us more than the holiness of God.  Jesus repeats this sentiment in Matthew 10:28 where He says “do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”  If the death of the body is painful what then is the death of the soul?  And if we understand what it means to be afraid of losing our natural lives what then does it mean to suffer the destruction of your soul?

 

In God we have a perfect moral Judge.  One who has set Himself to exact payment from or bestow reward to every person for the things that he/she has done in this life (2 Corinthians 5:10). He is all-knowing, impartial, and inescapable.  You will one day meet with God.  We will all have our day in court with Him.

 

And anyone who really knows himself knows that this is bad news.  You know the drill as well as I do.  We all have support systems around ourselves where we vent about our struggles and interpersonal conflicts to our friends, and they are quick to say how right we were for doing what we did and how deep down we are good people.  As nice as it is to have friends who care about us we are deluding ourselves if we actually believe all of what they are saying.  God doesn’t take into account any of this and it doesn’t matter what we think of ourselves or what people who like us think of us.  He pierces through all of that and sees the real.

 

“It is appointed unto men once to die and after this comes the Judgment.”

  -Hebrews 9:27

 

You will one day stand before God.  Are you ready?

 

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