Why I feel sorry for Einstein.

One of CNN’s headlines this morning caught my eye: “Einstein Letter: God a Sign of Weakness”.  Naturally, I clicked and read on, learning of Einstein’s “God Letter”, a correspondence he wrote to his friend, Eric B. Gutkind, in response to Gutkind’s book, Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt.  The letter was written the year before Einstein’s death and some claim it to be his final thoughts on God, revealing a true atheism despite being raised Jewish.  Here is an excerpt:

“The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends. No interpretation, no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.”

Here he is, Albert Einstein, scientist, inventor, father of the Theory of Relativity, Nobel Prize Winner, Princeton University Professor and I pity him.  I feel sorry for a man who was so brilliant, he couldn’t think beyond a concrete explanation to a Divine dimension without reason.  He wouldn’t allow his heart to enter the picture and consider that there was a God out there who might love him personally.  He was unable to reason to an answer without an equal sign.  Try to put God in a box and you’ll come up with an empty box.  That’s what I believe happened to Einstein.

If you have to spend your life arguing for or against God, you’ve missed the point.  He’s there for us.  Christ died for us.  You’ve also missed all the goodness a life of faith can offer.  Peace, patience, kindness, hope, goodness.  Look to Ephesians 5 and you’ll find ample reasons why believing is for one’s good.  Faith is not a burden, it is a gift.

For some, to look to Einstein and find fault would seem obtuse.  But for me, I see a man who was required to make the leap of faith and wouldn’t jump.  I feel sorry for him.

Because sometimes to live we need to blindly trust and fall back on a Creator who will catch us no matter what.