When We Become the Creator
Rev. Diane Rollert
Unitarian Church of Montreal, September 17, 2023
You may recognize this…
When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
— Genesis 1:1-5
So begins the very first verse of the first chapter of the Torah—or the Bible, as you may know it. If you’ve heard me preach over the years, you know that I have a strong attachment to this chapter of the Hebrew Bible. I love Genesis. Not because I think it’s the word of God, or that it’s in any way the truth. I love it because it offers us a window into the thoughts and concerns of an ancient people trying to make sense of their reality.
I imagine that humans have always looked up into the skies and wondered, What created the sun? What created the stars and the moon? They looked down at the earth and the oceans, at the beings, the flora and the fauna around them, and wondered who or what could explain their existence. They looked for a creator, and some chose to name that creator “God.”
I’ve always left room in my faith for some conception of God. Not as a white-bearded man sitting in the clouds, but as a mysterious and holy force that somehow holds the whole universe together. I’ve always wanted to believe that there is a reason for us to be on this earth, a reason for us to be good and loving to each other. If there is the possibility of a god, a great spirit or a creator, I want that creator to be benevolent and loving, to rejoice in our happiness, to cry with us when we suffer, to want us to be our best human selves.
In the Jewish tradition, Rosh Hashanah is the birthday of the world, which is to say, the day that the God of the Torah creates the world. I wonder, is this supposed to be the day that the earth emerges out of chaos? Is that where it all begins? Or is it the sixth day, at the end of the first chapter, when God creates humans before resting on the seventh day, the sabbath? I really should ask one of my rabbi friends…
Of course, I accept the science that we are stardust, that the earth and the solar system we inhabit were created billions of years ago out of an explosion of intense denseness and heat. I believe in evolutionary science. But I remember one of my kids asking me when they were little, “If God created the matter that fills the universe, who created God?” I think I answered, “Go ask your father.” I hadn’t been to seminary yet.
These thoughts about creation have been swimming around my head since I saw the film Oppenheimer. Just in case you missed all the excitement this summer, or only went to see Barbie (which I loved), Oppenheimer is a blockbuster film about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. I’ve seen the film twice now, and I’m still not sure what to make of it.
I’m struggling with how much detail to offer you. It’s not that I need to provide a spoiler alert. I’m guessing that most of us know the end of the story. Oppenheimer, a brilliant physicist, was appointed by the US government to run the Manhattan Project in 1943. After two years and two billion dollars spent, Oppenheimer and some 4,000 scientists from around the world created the first two atomic bombs, which would then be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The US credited the bombings with ending the Second World War.
Years later, Oppenheimer would oppose the development of the hydrogen bomb. He imagined that he could convince the world that arms control was the only hope for the future. He was accused of being a communist during the Cold War. He went from being a national hero in the US to being disgraced and stripped of his government credentials. His reputation as a physicist was destroyed.
Although it’s a Hollywood production, the film doesn’t offer a neat resolution. There’s nothing triumphant about the ending. We’re not left feeling Oppenheimer was a bad guy. Nor are we left feeling he was a good guy. He was human, he was complicated.
I still do not understand how the scientists of the Manhattan Project used theoretical physics to do what they did. I don’t understand how Oppenheimer came to understand black holes or atoms through theory. It’s really incredible to me that there are human beings who are able to use their brains to unlock all the mysteries of the vast universe and all the mysteries of the smallest particles of existence.
When the project began, Oppenheimer argued that they had no choice. They had to create a bomb before the Nazis did. A caveat here: I’m not an expert on Oppenheimer. I didn’t read the book, and I don’t know just how much creative license director Christopher Nolan took to tell a story that would appeal to audiences.
I do know that the anti-communist “Red Scare” in the US was real. My young and idealistic parents had been active in the Communist Party in the 1940s and 50s after the war. They dreamed of making the world a more equal and just place, and they lived in fear for much of their lives that their past identities would be revealed. And I have friends whose parents worked for the Manhattan Project and later died of cancer.
Oppenheimer was a non-practicing Jew from a wealthy, assimilated Jewish German American family. The same was true of his nemesis in the film, Lewis Strauss, who desperately tried to distinguish himself as a “good Jew” by painting communists as “bad Jews.” Unfortunately, the film focuses too much on their individual personalities to clearly portray this significant social dynamic of the time.
Some critics say that Oppenheimer was naive. He thought that the threat of the bomb would bring peace. He believed that he could create a weapon of mass destruction and still maintain control over his creation. But as soon as the project was finished, the scientists were dismissed. They had no more say. They had done their duty.
There’s much missing from the film. We don’t see what happened to Hiroshima or Nagasaki. We aren’t told about the lands that were seized from the people of New Mexico by the US government to create Los Alamos, where the Manhattan Project was housed. We don’t learn about the effects of the nuclear tests on the people who lived downwind from them, who suffered from cancer for generations.
There’s a thread that runs through the film, bringing it to its conclusion. At a certain point, Oppenheimer and his core team realize that if and when they test the bomb for the first time, there is a possibility (near zero but not zero) that they could set off a nuclear chain reaction that could destroy the world.
Oppenheimer brings a scrap of paper with the calculations of that possibility to Albert Einstein, whom he has known for years. Einstein tells him to run the numbers again. If the results remain the same, he should share the information with the Nazis. (Perhaps, Einstein hopes that the prospect of destroying the earth with deter the Nazis from developing their own bomb.)
Oppenheimer ignores this advice, and the testing proceeds as planned. “You can lift the stone without being prepared for the snake beneath,” Oppenheimer says.
At the end of the film, years after the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer says to Einstein, “You know that day when I came to you with those calculations that we might start a chain reaction to destroy the world? I think we did.”
The creator has become the destroyer.
I’m thinking of that first chapter in the Book of Genesis: “When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep…”
I wonder if this creator God realized what they were unleashing through their creation. Each day, from the forming of the earth and the seas to the creation of human beings, the Torah says that God saw that it was good. You know the next part of the story. Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge and are banished from the Garden of Eden to then know human suffering.
I’m not trying to suggest that it’s all Eve’s fault. I’m thinking more about a parallel between scientists and their creations. The modern era is marked by an increasing loss of faith, as we humans have come to see ourselves as having power that we once thought was only the domain of gods. Oppenheimer’s creation is the existential crisis. Can we forgive him for having thought he could create peace through something so violently destructive?
Now, my job, as I see it, is to bring you hope. Which makes me think, why did I choose to talk about this film? But then I go back to where I always start. We have to confront reality. We have to learn together. We have to continually remind ourselves that love needs to be at the centre of all we do.
I think it’s good that the film has opened an important conversation, reminding us that we have this terrible power. The film has the potential to get whole new generations thinking and hopefully working toward peace. It’s a place to start.
Yes, there is much that is beyond our control. In that sense we need to find all the sweetness we can, each day, as the sun rises and the earth is reborn. The more we build loving community, the more that strength can ripple out into the universe.
I’m asking you not to despair. I’m asking you to find forgiveness in your heart for all that needs to be healed within yourself, and for all that needs to be healed within the world. This is where the new year begins, before the gates of repentance close.