Personal Blogs

"... who believes in Him may have eternal life."

John 3:15

I Don't Belong

I’ve never quite belonged. Not because I’ve turned my back on God or on Jesus — far from it — but because I cannot, in good conscience, accept doctrines and ideas I do not find in the pages of the Bible. “Independent thinking” is an expression I would often hear, but I saw that as a loaded statement  designed to manipulate and alienate.

It’s a strange place to stand; in the love of God and Christ, but at odds with the structures and traditions of those who claim to speak for Him. I think often of the Bereans in Acts 17:11, who examined the Scriptures daily “to see if these things were so.” Their loyalty was not to a teacher or an organisation, but to the truth God had already given them.

For years I wondered if I was alone in this. But slowly, I noticed others, scattered like seeds on the wind, who quietly live the same way. We’re not members of any denomination. Some call themselves Bible Christians, some just “followers of Jesus.” Some don’t wear a label at all. They meet in homes, cafés, on walks by the shore, and sometimes only in brief, chance conversations. We share no membership rolls, no central authority other than God and Christ and a shared hunger to live in the light of God’s Word without compromise. However, this has been at considerable cost; the forfeiture of other’s trust. I find that structural religion distances itself from me and see me as a threat, not because I evangelise my thoughts, but just because of who I am and how I read the scriptures.

It can be lonely. The unity Jesus prayed for in John 17 is still my longing, but unity must be built on truth, not the uneasy truce of conformity. So, I walk my faith quietly, trusting the Shepherd knows where His sheep are, even when they wander far from the pen, wherever that pen may be. Don’t get me wrong, in some respects, I see God’s blessing on others, Missionaries, social ministries and spiritual people within organised religions. I think of the Widow's Might whose service was recognised within a crumbling religious structure, but I also think of the man that was performing miracles in Jesus' name and Jesus reassured the disciples that the person "For whoever is not against us is for us".  And that’s where it all becomes confusing, really confusing. I love the worldwide brotherhood whether institutional or singular. That’s not the issue. The issue is personal conscience and experience.

Lately, though, I’ve been thinking about something else, something that came to me not from a Bible study or a sermon, but from a corner of physics I’d never really looked at before. Oddly enough, it’s given me a fresh way of seeing both faith and connection.

It’s called proton entanglement.

Now, if that phrase already makes your eyes glaze over, stay with me. A proton is one of the tiny building blocks inside atoms — and atoms are the bricks from which everything is made: mountains, oak trees, a child’s laughter, even you and me. When two protons meet in just the right way, they can become entangled. That’s a fancy way of saying they become linked so deeply that whatever happens to one instantly shapes the other, no matter how far apart they are.

I don’t mean they send a signal back and forth. It’s stranger than that. It’s as though the two protons remain part of one whole, a single shared existence, even if they are on opposite sides of the universe.

Scientists have known for years that particles of light — photons — can do this. But photons are nimble and easy to work with. Protons are massive by comparison, stubborn little things. Entangling them is much harder. Yet, in laboratories, researchers have done it. They’ve set up experiments, measured the “spin” of each proton in random directions, and found that the results match in ways no ordinary physics can explain.

And here’s where I pause.

If you’re a Christian like me, you might hear in this a faint echo of those words in Colossians: “In Him all things hold together.” If you’re an agnostic, perhaps it’s simply another reason to marvel at how wonderfully strange the universe is. Either way, entanglement says something profound — that separation does not always mean disconnection, and that unity can exist in places we never thought to look.

The best picture I can give you is this: imagine two perfectly synchronized clocks. You place one in your living room and take the other across the world. There’s no Wi-Fi, no radio, no cables. Yet whenever one strikes the hour, the other does too — instantly. That’s what entanglement is like, only with protons instead of clocks, and reality itself as the stage.

And as I thought about that, I realised something. This strange property of matter speaks to my own journey of not belonging to a congregation. Even when I feel far from the familiar structures, I am still connected — to Christ, and to others who love Him — in ways that don’t depend on physical proximity or organisational ties. We may be scattered across the globe, unseen to one another, but like those entangled protons, there is a unity we carry that distance cannot break with evidence that God and Christ live in us.

For me, proton entanglement is more than physics. It’s a reminder that there’s an order beneath the surface, a connectedness that stretches from the tiniest particle to the farthest galaxy. Some see that order as the handiwork of God, others as the elegance of nature itself. But either way, the deeper we look, the clearer it becomes: the universe is not dull or random. It is rich. It is full of mystery. And it holds its secrets with a kind of quiet poetry.

I think of the psalmist’s words: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands.” Perhaps today we could also say: “The protons declare the wonder of the universe; the quantum world proclaims its mystery.”

And so I return to where I began — that place of not quite belonging in the visible, formal structures of congregation life. Yes, it can feel like exile. But discoveries like proton entanglement remind me that belonging is not always something you can see. Sometimes it is invisible, woven into the fabric of reality itself.

Maybe the real challenge is to live as though that connection is true — to nurture it, to recognise it in others, and to trust that in the end, the One who made the stars, the mountains, and the protons has also made a place for each of us.

Even for those of us who, for now, don’t feel they belong.

"Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me, put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you." Philippians 4.

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Verse quoted from the Berean Standard Bible