A little over 100 years ago, a very senior chemist, who was retiring after an honorable career of service, left a series of “fragments of chemistry” for whomever would pick up the gauntlet of examining that unexplained data.
Over half a century later, another senior chemist gave that data to a young seminarian (who had deep Bluegrass connections) to figure out why weird color changes, unexpected explosions, etc., were occurring in that reaction.
Trusting in God (and being a bit foolhardy) that seminarian accepted the task. He examined why a stable white powder hexachloro-ethane (C2Cl6) when added to a very strong base, a grey slurry of potassium amide (KNH2) in liquid ammonia, suddenly turned bright yellow and pulled all the elements off the molecule sending them in different directions.
Elemental nitrogen bubbled away, elemental carbon precipitated out (almost violently dropping to the bottom of the flask), and potassium chloride (a salt) was left.
It seemed like the hand of God was indeed pulling the atoms off of the molecule and sorting them out. However, the flask with the residue always exploded when anyone tried to clean it — almost as if God didn’t want people to find out what was happening.
Not believing in a God who would be that malicious, the seminarian employed other techniques to separate the residuals very clearly, using a vacuum line that isolates such materials from ordinary air and moisture.
It turns out that God was showing us something unexpected. The chlorine atoms were being pulled off as positive rather than the normal negative ions — which finally explained everything, including the explosions. Many of the intermediate partial products were very explosive, such as dichloro-acetylene (C2Cl2) and hydrazine (N2H4).
God’s love for us remains with us always, even when He sometimes presents (or leads us through) dangerous areas to find new and unexpected discoveries (human as well as chemical).
Perhaps this may help explain what “lead us not into temptation” might convey in the Lord’s Prayer. The common way theologians have examined that plea is as a parallel to “deliver us from evil,” just as many phrases in sacred Scripture are doublets (the same thing said in two different but parallel ways to enhance the meaning).
But is it not also possible to view that plea much like a challenge to overcome one’s fears in dangerous situations, trust more deeply in God and find ways of getting through a difficult temptation by understanding it and “pushing through it” rather than falling into it?
Indeed, sometimes we cannot avoid temptations; but God can lead us “through” them rather than “into” them.
For example, there are times when we have to work with someone we are tempted to disrespect, or we have to be in a place that would entice us toward gluttony, drunkenness or lust, and we have tried, but are not able, to avoid those circumstances. Could not asking God to “lead us not into temptation,” but help us get through them, get done those necessary tasks in those dangerous circumstances, and still be “delivered from evil” just might be a deeper nuance for what that ending of the Lord’s Prayer actually means?
As we sometimes find ourselves in very awkward and perhaps tempting situations, might this century-old conundrum from chemistry help us grow in our trust in and love for the God who created all things (even unexpected explosions in the laboratory), and who loves us more than we can ever imagine? Blessings to you as you do science in the Bluegrass.
Father Patrick Dolan, who holds doctoral degrees in chemistry and sacred theology, is a member of the Archdiocese of Louisville’s Faith & Science Dialogue Group.
