How much do you weigh? That’s rhetorical; I don’t really want to know. What I mean is, why do you weigh that much? No, I don’t mean the fast food and donuts, I mean why do we have any weight at all? The simple answer, of course, is that the earth’s gravitational force pulls on the mass of our body, giving it a specific weight. Your weight would be different on another planet because the gravity there would be different. But the fact is, the more mass we have, the more weight we have. Why am I writing to you about gravity and weight? Because I’m convinced that there is a vital lesson for our spiritual life in all this physics!
Of all the forces in our created world, we probably feel the effects of gravity more than any other. Surprisingly, if you do a little research on gravity, you’ll find we don’t understand how it works, just that it does! The most basic definition of gravity is “the attractive force between any two objects with non-zero mass, separated by a distance.” It’s the pull that both we and the moon feel towards the earth, and the earth toward the sun.
Just as the mass of our body creates a downward trend, so each object we pick up, that has any mass at all, adds to this downward direction. The more we carry the heavier it feels, and the harder it is to move. I’m sure you’ve experienced that glorious feeling of taking off some cumbersome backpack you’ve carried for hours. You don’t just feel released of that burden, you feel even lighter than you normally do.
Physicists would tell you that some things have no mass at all and thus, no weight either. But I’m convinced that everything has some mass, even if its only mental mass. And everything we carry of this earth, in our hands or in our hearts, adds to our weight. There is a downward tendency to every earthly thing.
We are creatures of desire. The gravitational pull our bodies feel is similar to the draw our hearts experience. Our hearts are ever moving toward something. We feel the constant pull. And being, as Paul says, of the earth, our hearts are drawn like a magnet to the stuff of this world. There is an attractive force between us and the things that can be seen and touched. The more stuff we possess, the more mass of earthly things, the more weight we bear. Increasing the mass of earthly things creates a greater downward pull.
But when God in His mercy raised us to new life, a new principle of attraction was implanted within, a desire for that which is unseen. The things above have weight too, and the eternal weight of glory pulls on us like the sun on the planets. The tension between these two forces is an incessant strain, and at times it feels it would tear us apart. Sanctification is the painful process of exchanging the weight of one world for another.
But the Moralists and the Eastern mystics find no relief from their burden, for they have no other principle within. Denying themselves the weight of earthly pleasures, they still exist within the system that is moving swiftly downstream. They are like people casting weights out of a canoe that is rushing toward a waterfall. They may have “an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh” (Col. 2:23) Nature abhors a vacuum, and as creatures of desire, we can’t exist without objects of attraction. We will always be loving something.
Thomas Chalmers, a Scottish preacher from the 1800s preached a sermon with the descriptive title “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection.” In it, he states that there are two different approaches to displacing the love of the world from the human heart – either by demonstrating the world’s vanity or by setting forth another object, namely God, as more worthy of our affections. He then goes on to prove that it is the latter alone that is effective.
And here we see Chalmers and physics agree. As the Apostle Paul teaches us, “If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.” (Col. 3:1-2) It is as we set our minds on things above that their mass begins to have a greater pull on our hearts. Yes, we are to “lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us,” and to “run with endurance the race that is set before us,” but it is only as we are “looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith” (Heb. 12:1-2) that we can run. Otherwise, the burden would be too great. Daily coming to Him in His word and warmly meditating on what we find there is the path our feet must tread if we would increase the pull of that other world. “The entrance of Your words gives light,” (Psa. 119:130) said the Psalmist, and being filled with His light, we become lighter.
