You are on the bridge of a starship. Red lights are flashing around you, and an alarm is sounding every three seconds. The captain is addressing the chief engineer in a tone of utmost urgency.
“Chen, what are we looking at?”
“It’s a cascading resonance loop, Captain. The incoming spatial wave generated by the alien ship has created an enormous phase difference that is collapsing our warp field.”
“If we increase the energy output of the deflector dish, will it rectify the phase variance?”
“Captain, the phase differential is increasing by 3 percent every second! The deflector dish cannot adjust that quickly, no matter how much power we send it.”
And so on. The dialogue sounds like something I have heard in a dozen different Star Trek shows. It does not need to make sense as long as it alerts viewers to the crew’s possible demise. But phase differences exist outside television studios and make a difference on earth in real life.
The terminology, “phase difference,” “phase variance,” and “phase differential” all come out of the physics of wave phenomena, sometimes referred to as “wave mechanics.” Wave function plays a role in the cosmological models of theoretical physics, but also in down-to-earth applications in optic and auditory sciences.
Phase differences in auditory applications may be most familiar. The noise cancelling headphones that so many of us own employ phase differences to “cancel” noise by generating a sound wave that is 180° out of phase with the incoming wave. The two waves effectively cancel each other out, and the result is silence. The company ZeroSound is trying to develop a large-scale application using this technology: electronic sound walls that reduce industrial noise in urban areas.
The Air Force’s stealth bomber is “invisible” to traditional radar because its design exploits phase differences to cancel out the radio microwaves that radar systems emit. Closer to home, the anti-reflective coating on your glasses makes use of a phase difference between the top and bottom surfaces of your lenses to eliminate reflected light.
I have been thinking that theology also knows something about phase differences. In this case, the difference does not lie in the light spectrum but in the spiritual spectrum. What theologians refer to as “The Fall” – the rebellion of the first humans against their creator – seems to have caused something like a phase shift between the Creator and his creatures. They are no longer in phase, and the result has been catastrophic.
When describing a natural world state in which waves (for example, radio waves) are out of phase, physicists use the term, “decoherence.” In reference to optical systems, decoherence can cause distortions in the visual field that degrade image quality. In auditory systems (for example, a PA system in a concert hall), decoherence causes the music the audience hears to sound “muddy” and unclear.
When phase difference occurs in the spiritual world, humans fail to perceive God’s image clearly, and for some it may be horribly distorted. A phase difference could be the reason “No one has seen God at any time” (John 1:18). It may also explain how people could look at the Messiah Jesus and fail to perceive the heavenly Father (John 14:9).
A spiritual phase difference may explain why humans can “be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding” (Mark 4:12, citing Isaiah 6:9). It helps us understand why Jesus, when debating with Jerusalem Jews at the Feast of Tabernacles, asked them, “Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say!” (John 8:43). His words and their ears/minds were out of phase, which left them “unable to hear.” A spiritual phase shift had effectively cancelled Jesus’s voice.
Of course, I am using the “phase” terminology metaphorically, but that does not mean it is merely an illustration. Something similar to phase differences in the natural order has occurred in the spiritual order. Its effects have been deleterious, inhibiting humans from hearing God and seeing him even when he came among them in the person of Jesus Christ.
I wrote above that the effects were deleterious, but the more appropriate word would be disastrous. The “phase shift” between humans and God, set in motion by Adam and continuing (perhaps even escalating) throughout history, has left humanity “separated from the life of God” (Ephesians 4:17). The result is a humanity that has “fallen short of the glory of God” – the glory of his living, loving images – and is searching (usually in the wrong places) for purpose and satisfaction.
There is more to this story than the threat that a spiritual phase shift represents to humanity. The Captain is on the bridge, and he knows how to respond to the threat, restore coherence, and set right everything that has gone wrong.
(More on “phase difference” and “phase coherence” next time.)
Leave a Reply