The Stars Up Above

Dion asked the ageless question, "Why must I be a teenager in love?", and I, in my annoying style, have to try to figure it out. "It's a song. Leave it alone!" I can't. So, Dion, are you asking why you have to be a teenager or why you have to be in love, or is there something particularly different between being a teenager and in love from being, say, an adult and in love? And, seriously, man, why ask the stars?

Yes, it's a song, but you get the idea, right? The poor kid is suffering from love and is asking, "Why?!" like so many of us do. And, I think, you can find answers in the stars up above.

If you were to offer the question to a materialist, he would have to say, "No reason." The stars are inanimate objects without intelligence. The materialist universe offers no answers to suffering or pleasure, life or death, purpose or meaning. For this group, "Why must I be a teenager in love?" (or any other suffering question) would necessarily be answered from the stars, "They say that your suffering is random, mindless, purposeless and without any meaning. Why? Because. That's all you get."

If you were to offer the question to a spiritualist, her answer would be different, of course. "I see an answer in the stars." The answer would, by necessity, be without logic and without reason. It would be from the alignment of spiritual forces and birth dates and ... well, you get the idea. And the final answer would be ... varied. "Too bad; you lose" to "It's all a deeper meaning." A guru says something like "It's like the sound of one hand clapping" and people think it's deep thinking, and like that you might come away thinking, "Oooo, that was deep ... but it didn't mean anything."

If you were to ask the theist, oddly enough, you would get a genuine, useful answer. From the "stars" -- creation -- we learn that the Creator is Omnipotent. He possesses all power. We learn that He is Omniscient. He possesses all knowledge. Beyond the power to make everything and the knowledge of how, He is All Wise. Paul says He is "the only wise God" (Rom 16:27), putting Him in a wisdom category all His own. He can make everything, knows how to make everything, but also knows best how to make everything fit together. The beauty of creation tells us that He is beautiful. The care put into creation tells us that He is love. The orderliness of creation tells us that He is Sovereign. And so it goes. So what do "the stars up above" tell us about our problems below? God is in control. He has the power, the intellect, the wisdom, the love, and the Sovereignty to handle it. He allows what He intends for good and only that.

The materialist offers us nihilism. Nothing matters. The spiritualist offers us wise-sounding foolishness. It matters, but you can't really know how or why. God's Word offers answers. What do "the stars up above" tell us? "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork" (Psa 19:1). Yes, I overthink things. I admit it. Dion wasn't looking for real answers. But ... they're there. "His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made" (Rom 1:20). I'm happy with that answer.