Over coffee I asked a cobber at our Men’s Shed whether he believed in God. He shrugged, pointed to his head and replied, “John, God exists only in our imagination!” I told him he was in for a rude shock. He’s got lots of mates who will be in for a rude shock too – because it’s so common these days to meet folk who put God in the same category as elves and goblins – or leprechauns if they’re Irish!
Not content to let him get away too easily with his trite dismissal of the Creator of the universe, I followed up with a second question. “So what’s your explanation for all the varying events of life... the ups and downs you face daily? He had obviously thought that through because he shot back, that all of the things that happen to us, are determined by the stars.
So there we were – two good friends at the Men’s Shed – but each with a vastly different world and life view. For one of us Jesus Christ is central to life, for the other – if anything controls the universe – it’s the zodiac signs.
What we’re talking about of course is Astrology: a method of predicting mundane events based upon the assumption that the celestial bodies – particularly the planets and the stars (in configurations called constellations) – in some way either determine or indicate changes in our human world. Astrologists will make predictions for you based on the movement of stars and constellations in relation to the particular star sign you were born under. I have two serious problems with that.
First – astrology is unscientific and superstitious. Okay, my cobber at the Men’s Shed would also accuse me of being unscientific and superstitious. At this point those who are into zodiac signs get very defensive. Pick up any book in the library on astrology and it will claim that astrology is scientific. Wrong: astronomy is scientific, astrology isn’t. We can observe heavenly bodies through telescopes, monitor their radio waves and analyse their colour spectrums. However, trying to analyse scientifically whether a Taurus is more likely to be impulsive than a Scorpio is fraught with difficulties. As a Christian I have far better evidential claims to truth than an astrologist. My truth claims focus on historical facts: Jesus was born, claimed to be Son of God, died on a cross for humanity’s sin and arose again on the third day. The point is that these objective truth claims can be checked out.
Second – astrology is fatalistic and impersonal. My friend believes everything that happens in life is determined by our relationship to the heavenly bodies in our solar system and beyond. It is all written in the stars. We can know how those bodies will impact our lives and we can then live in conformity with that knowledge. But there is a strong element of fatalism inherent in astrology. We’re told, for example, “A Gemini cannot help being a fidget. A Virgo cannot help being picky. A Sagittarian cannot help stepping on toes.” That raises two key issues for me.
On the one hand it absolves people from taking responsibility for what they are and do. At best we can learn to understand that we ARE picky or have long toes and try to minimize the problems that may result. However the astrologist is doomed to be stuck with his ‘Sagittarian’ personality. How different the Christian faith, which tells us that we can work at becoming more Christ-like.
On the other hand it also leaves one feeling helpless about what happens in life. An astrologist once claimed that Charles and Di’s marriage was doomed from the start since it was ‘astrologically’ unsound from the beginning (he, a Scorpio, and she, a Cancer). The strange thing is that today many non-Christians object to the idea of a Sovereign God who has decreed His purposes and makes all things happen in conformity with His plans. Yet many of those same people have no problem accepting the far more fatalistic idea – the deterministic influence of the planets on our lives. And the worst is that it is all so impersonal – just the impersonal forces of the universe. For the Christian there is always and in every situation a far more comforting reality – that the Sovereign God of the universe has, for the sake of Christ His Son, a Fatherly care for us. In fact He promises to make all things work together for our eternal wellbeing.
