"You did it for Me"

“We are all members of each other” (Ephesians 4:25)

 M1 (Crab Nebula) Supernova Remnant - Hubble Space Telescope Image

     Among the most fascinating aspects of the history of science is the role that incorrect notions and discredited theories have played in the advancement of knowledge in general. Indeed, many of the most fundamental things we now know about the universe may never have been discovered, or at the least would have been learned years later and with much greater difficulty. The very observations necessary to discovering the heliocentric (Sun-centered) nature of our solar system were made in the first place in vain attempts to overcome difficulties with the long believed Earth-centered Ptolemaic model. 

     More recently, the vital role played by supernovae in the creation of heavy elements was first discovered by astronomers trying to build an observational basis for the now defunct Steady State cosmological model of creation, long championed by the great British astronomer, cosmologist, and coiner of the term “Big Bang” (used derisively to insult what he then regarded as a false model), Sir Frederick Hoyle. In the early 20th Century, proponents of what we now know as the Big Bang rather lazily assumed that all the elements currently found in the universe were created in the first moments of existence. Sir Hoyle, who at the time disbelieved in a First Instant, needed to explain their presence in some other way. It was thus that he was motivated to explore the innermost workings of stars prone to blow up. He correctly deduced that in the last stages of life inside a soon-to-explode star, the nuclear furnace within its core became so unimaginably hot that lighter elements such as Helium and Lithium were fused into far heavier ones, such as Oxygen, Carbon, and Iron (and all the others as well). The subsequent supernova explosion hurled these heavy elements (known to astronomers as “metals”) into interstellar space, where they would eventually re-coalesce into a new generation of stars which then began their lives with a significant amount of these heavy elements. Each subsequent stellar generation would thus tend to be composed of stars with higher and higher percentages of metals.

     These processes have an enormous effect on ourselves here on planet Earth. First of all, our world could not exist at all without there having been available in the protostellar nebula (from which the planets in our solar system formed) vast quantities of the heavier elements essential to forming rocks, water, and life itself. This means that a majority of the atoms making up our planet and indeed our very bodies was formed deep within some long-vanished exploding star. As Joni Mitchell sang in the song Woodstock, “We are stardust” – literally.

 

     But it doesn’t end there. It gets far more personal.

     Some years ago, I was almost literally stunned by what a doctor was telling me about my own body. Some of the things he told me I sort of already knew, but had never really thought about. Others I was hearing for the first time. But what floored me were the implications of all of it together. What he explained to me was that every single moment of every single day, our bodies are gradually renewing themselves in an unending process. After about 8 to 10 years, the only things still around from before that length of time were our teeth. Absolutely everything else had been replaced – cell by cell, atom by atom. We were a completely new creature. I am not the same person (physically) as that guy who was running around ten years ago using my name. (I’d like to see someone try that as a legal defense!) And it gets worse. That discarded old self is recycled, going back into the environment as raw material for the next round of living material. 

In fact, every breath you exhale carries with it millions upon millions of atoms of discarded body mass. If you’re in a crowded room, you can be sure that those atoms are being breathed in by others sharing the same air, who then incorporate those particles into their own bodies through their bloodstream. Fantastic! What was “me” in one minute is now someone else the next. I am quite certain that at least some portion of that carrot I ate just before dinner was at some time part of another person, or of many persons at various times, before I decided to make it part of me.

     This realization, I don’t need to tell you, is No Small Deal. It has huge implications for the command to “love your neighbor as yourself,” because that neighbor (at least in part) is yourself. We have no call to draw a line around ourselves and say “This is me!” It turns out there is no clear line of demarcation between us. We cannot separate how we treat others from how we treat ourselves. That act of small kindness you did for some stranger you’ll never meet again – you did it for yourself. That time you snubbed someone or treated them rudely – you did that to yourself. That time you failed to offer a helping hand to a person in need – you failed to help yourself.

     It’s small wonder then that The Lord’s Prayer contains the lines, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” That’s just the way the world works.