A Donkey, an Angel and Physics

If I’d taken physics in school, I would’ve enjoyed studying about the physical laws of nature more than I did biology and chemistry. I also would’ve known before today that the Pauli Exclusion Principle is what asserts that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. That intuitive principle occurred to me while reading Numbers 22, where Israel is waiting for God to lead them into Canaan. Let me explain.

With over 600,000 Israelites camped near his country, Balak, King of Moab, became very nervous. Unaware that he had no reason to fear, he thought that having a curse put upon them was the best course of action and knew of only one man up to that task—Balaam, a gifted man of prophecy. As it turns out, Balaam “knew” God but being also a diviner (a user of special powers to predict future events), he was not exactly a “man of” God.

Balaam’s reputation was reflected in his fees, but money was no object to king. Offering well above the going rate for ‘curse-making,’ Balak surely did not anticipate Balaam’s essential double-cross by bringing Israel’s God into the equation as he told the messengers, “Spend the night here, and I will bring word back to you as the Lord may speak to me” (22:8).

God did speak to Balaam that night, saying, “Do not go with them; you shall not curse the people, for they are blessed.” But when Balaam broke the news to the messengers, he basically told them, “God won’t let me go.”

Do you see what happened there? Balaam left out the reason God gave, that “they are blessed.” Conveniently omitting that left the door open for Balak’s ‘blank check’ counteroffer. Unbelievably, Balaam pushed back again telling the new messengers, “I could not do anything, either small or great, contrary to the command of the LORD my God” (22:18). That would have been a perfect “End of story!”, if it had been.

Instead, Balaam proves that his heart was for himself and not for God when he told the messengers to spend another night there while he consulted with the Lord. And except that we’d have to scrap the opening paragraph above, that could be the point—that it’s a bad idea to pray to God, get His answer, disobey it and then arrogantly ask Him for a different answer. But, God has His purposes and maybe what He did next was so that we could read about it here.

See, when Balaam retired to be alone with Him the second time, God gave a different answer. This time, Balaam could go with the messengers, but he could only speak the words that He gave him. Yet even though God changed His answer (not His mind), He was still angry with Balaam for disregarding His first answer and would have been more pleased had Balaam just turned back. He even sent an angel to stand in his way.

This angel… Balaam didn’t see him, but his donkey did. The donkey saw him three times, in fact, and each time it saved Balaam’s life, first by turning into a field, then by pushing up against a wall and finally by lying down. Each time the donkey balked, though, Balaam struck him to get him to move. And that’s when God struck, too:  

Then the LORD opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the LORD standing in the way with his drawn sword in his hand; and he bowed all the way to the ground. (Num. 22:31)

Why couldn’t Balaam see the angel at first? That’s the question that struck me (like Balaam struck his donkey and God struck Balaam), and it led me to that Pauli Exclusion Principle. He couldn’t see the angel because he was blinded by his own greed and self-worship. He could see those with crystal clarity, just like we can see the things we focus upon. But when we focus on the things we lust after, our hope is futile even though our endurance to keep reaching for them is strong.

More dangerous, though, is what we don’t see when we focus on ourselves. God stands between us and danger but if we can’t see Him, we miss His protection. That blindness leads us into a full conviction that we can, ourselves, affect our cause and end.

“Your hand is lifted up, yet they do not see it.” (Is. 26:11)

If we feel or sense that we do not, or cannot, see God, we should focus our vision even more diligently on what we do see so that we can erase it from our sight. Truth and lie cannot occupy in the same vision at the same time, don’t you see?