Saturday, January 19, 2013
Fringe, S5:E9, "Black Blotter"
I was just hearing the quoting of Robert Oppenheimer:
"I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."
It struck me as rather arrogant, for any man or group of men to think they have the power to destroy worlds ... so I dug further online to find that, just as most modern quotations are misattributed to recently famous people, this one actually comes from chapter 11 of the Bhagavad Gita.
But I think what's more important is that even if one allows for a broader definition of the word "worlds" inc. nations, cities, &c., it's still an arrogant thought/statement/assertion.
Psalm 86:9:
"All the nations which Thou hast made shall come and bow down before Thee, O Lord, and they shall glorify Thy name"
I think the writer didn't bother specifying all the nations in existence because he knew no one in their right mind would think any nations were made by any other than the Lord. The preceding verse, however, helps clarify the matter (based in part on the healthy assumption that no man alone can create a nation & all men act in their own interests so no group can truly act in concert to create a nation without external intervention):
"There is none like Thee among the gods, O Lord, nor are there any works like Thine."
To me, this says firstly that there is none that comes close enough in power to God to have the ability to create a nation, and secondly that if there should be any doubt of this fact, even a nation created by a lesser spirit cannot compare to any created by the Lord of lords.
Even in the midst of sorrow over making the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer failed to see (perhaps because he, as all fallen humanity, craved to shut out the truth of God's sovereignty over all life) that though he might help create something that could destroy temporal flesh, neither he nor any other human (or humans collectively) could destroy souls -- nor could any spirit other than God. Even God does not annihilate souls, for that would defeat His original purpose in creating them and render Him less potent that He is.
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