The Universe Doesn't Care About You

This isn't all that new but it seems to be pervasive: people ascribing things to the universe.  People say we need to ask the universe for what we desire or they claim that the universe brought them together.

Let me give you a specific and popular example.  Nearly two years ago actor and comedian Jim Carrey graduated from Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa and was asked to give the commencement address.  Carrey gave an inspirational address befitting the school known for its "conscience based education" that has been viewed on the school's YouTube page over 10 million times and many more times on other YouTube pages.

In his speech Carrey said, "What we really want seems impossibly out of reach and ridiculous to expect, so we never dare ask the universe for it.  I'm saying: I'm the proof that you can ask the universe for it, please, and if it doesn't happen for you right away, it's only because the universe is so busy fulfilling my order... party size!"

Jim Carrey's speech is very inspirational.  His address to the other graduates does make you want to go out there and give it a shot and perhaps the courage to take a chance will help people achieve more than they thought possible.  Jim Carrey has some interesting insights in his commencement address, some inspiration that is actually useful, but his ideas of the universe are wrong.

The universe doesn't care about you.

The universe is not some agent taking our requests and then fulfilling them.  The universe, despite many celebrity and new age claims, does not act on our behalf in a conscious way.  The universe, despite what physicist Bernard Haisch says in his book The God Theory, is not God nor did God become the universe.  The universe, rather, is a creation of God.

I'm not writing this to have you forward this to your friends who believe that the universe is working for them.  I write this to warn fellow Christians not to use this type of language in our lexicon because I've heard Christians begin to work this type of thinking into our speech.

Christians, ascribing things to the universe is at best foolish and at worst pagan idolatry.  Even if we don't believe it ourselves we may be contributing to the problem at large.

"They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator... who is forever praised.  Amen."  Romans 1:25

We must remove language that ascribes to the universe what is God's.

The universe is not a god-like intervening agent.  Rather, the universe is itself in need of an intervention.

"The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.  For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.  We know that the whole of creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time."  Romans 8:19-22

So, let's take this whole "ask the universe" or "the universe worked for me" stuff out of our lexicon, Christians.  The words we use matter.  So, let's stop asking the universe and knocking on wood and let's start ascribing to God what is God's and asking God for what only He can do and His creation can't today.