You probably remember Nicolaus Copernicus from your high school history classes—you know, the guy who dared to tell the world in the early sixteenth century that the earth revolves around the sun instead of the other way around. In the words of the philosopher Gordon H. Clark, Copernicus “made his great advance by turning the universe inside out.”1
In some circles Copernicus’s idea proved to be a tough sell. No less a luminary than Martin Luther, the famous Reformer, had trouble accepting what Copernicus was suggesting. “There is talk of a new astrologer who wanted to prove that the earth moves and revolves and not the firmament or the sky, not the sun and the moon. . . . Such are today human follies: whoever considers himself wise has to conceive something of his own. And that he does is supposedly the best. That fool wants to overthrow all the art of Astronomy!”2
Others mocked Copernicus openly, one writer casting him as a “Stupid Sage” in a play clearly designed to ridicule him.
Copernicus himself was not eager to publish his findings, knowing that people do not typically appreciate having their worldview upended. He was, after all, challenging the great Ptolemy, who plainly stated that the earth was stationary, at the center of the universe. Copernicus’s famous work De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres) finally came out in the year of his death. He had written it more than three decades earlier.
Today, it is hard to imagine why he was so nervous to share his work. After all, what he suggested seems so incredibly obvious now—of course the earth revolves around the sun!
paradigm shift
But there is another paradigm shift that is as hard for us to comprehend as the new heliocentric view of the heavens was for our ancestors. When most of us make our first appearance on this planet as infants, we are given the distinct impression that the world revolves around us. When we cry, someone feeds us or comes to hold us. Everybody jumps to attention. It’s an impression that lingers well into adulthood—I am the center of everything.
Of course we’d never say such a thing out loud, because it sounds so egotistical, but it’s true. And in some ways it makes sense. The only way for us to perceive the world is from our own perspective, and when we cease to be, so does our experience of the world. Most people struggle to wrap their minds around the idea that the world actually existed without them—and functioned just fine—before they were born. And it will go on functioning without you when you die. In fact, unless you are one of the rare few who achieve international recognition, the vast majority of the eight-billion-plus people now living on earth will never know you were here.
Intellectually we know this to be true, but emotionally it can be really hard to accept. After all, we all instinctively crave meaning; in fact, a sense of purpose may prove to be our deepest need.
It only seems natural that our hearts tend to place us at the center of the universe. There’s just one problem: it’s not at all true. When speaking to a group of philosophers in Athens, Paul tried to describe the nature of the universe to them. “For ‘ “In him we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said’ ” (Acts 17:28, ESV3).
In his letter to the Colossians, Paul wrote this about Jesus. “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16, 17, ESV).
Not only did Christ create the universe, but it wouldn’t continue to function without Him. So, if you think about it, Copernicus was sort of right. Yes, the earth revolves around the sun. (And it turns out that even that wasn’t the focal point for the universe; the sun also revolves around the core of the Milky Way galaxy, and it’s not even close to the center.) But according to Paul, there’s a more important center: Christ, the Creator.
Christ is the center
So how does that realization affect you? Well, if you’ve been designed in the image of God (as the book of Genesis indicates), you were made to reflect His goodness. You might think about it like this: Humanity was designed to orbit God. But sin changed our perception dramatically, displacing God from His rightful place on the throne of our hearts and replacing Him with self.
If it was hard for Martin Luther to wrap his head around the idea that the earth moves, it is even harder for you and I to wrap our hearts around the idea that we are not the center of everything. Again, we would never say it out loud, because it sounds pretty bad when we do, but we certainly live as if we are the center of everything.
And that’s where the work of the Holy Spirit comes into play. “When the Spirit of truth comes,” Jesus told His disciples, “he will guide you into all the truth. . . . He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:13, 14, ESV). One of the key roles of the Holy Spirit is to create conviction in our hearts—to help us realize that living with self at the center has disastrous consequences.
Of course with that realization comes a sense of guilt: You’ve been living as if you are more important than God and placing your will above His. That’s an idea that makes all of us squirm, and the squirming becomes unbearable when we see Christ on the cross. He is the center of everything, and yet He was willing to empty Himself to bear the penalty for our sins. The Center of All Things did not keep Himself at the center—He prioritized you.
don’t silence your conscience
The conviction that we all fall short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23) can be such a disturbing realization that we usually try to silence our conscience. Like Namaan spurning the muddy waters of the Jordan as the solution to his incurable leprosy, we look for a more noble, less self-effacing way to respond to the voice of the Spirit. Surely I can admit that there’s a problem in this world without admitting that the problem is me!
In our current culture some turn to the political arena as a way to make things right. Clearly the other side of the political spectrum is God’s enemy, and we can help God win the culture wars! Others try to tame their own sense of guilt by turning to conspiracy theories: There are dark secret forces ruining our lives, fighting against God Himself! I must help push these evildoers into the light so that the “sheeple” can see them!
There is no end to creativity when people start to look for something or someone else to blame. We point our finger at politicians, secularists, the entertainment industry, the other people at church—the list is nearly endless. But in every instance we have failed to comprehend just how radical the change in our perspective needs to be. When we point the finger elsewhere, we are still clinging to our place at the center.
“I die every day!” Paul wrote to the Corinthian church (1 Corinthians 15:31). It is a potent reminder that the only solution to the egocentric life is the God-centered life. It’s a change of perspective that proves harder to grasp than the sixteenth century’s struggle with Copernicus. You will not find the solution to your problem in the ideas of pundits, politicians, poets, or philosophers. All they have to offer was produced from the same egocentric perspective that you have.
But then you open the Bible to discover God’s call to live differently—to understand life differently: “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:5–8, ESV).
Maybe think about it like this: The moon landing would have never been possible if we had clung to Ptolemy’s universe, and there would be no rover on the surface of Mars. And if you cling to the old model of self-at-the-center, you will never break free of the gravity of sin. Freedom comes when we put Christ back where He belongs—at the center.
I know, everything around you suggests the old model. The entire culture encourages you—no, insists that you should live for yourself. But nobody, absolutely nobody, has ever found contentment there. Try replacing it with the new model, where every day is deliberately guided by what Scripture says about God’s desires for your life.
1. Gordon H. Clark, Thales to Dewey: A History of Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1957), 395.
2. Martin Luther quoted in Czesław Miłosz, The History of Polish Literature, 2nd ed. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983), 38, 39.
