Genesis 1:1-8, 26-28; John 1:1-9; Hebrews 11:1-7
Ever since Darwin suggested that life evolves upward from simpler forms, faith and science have butted heads … and a lot of folks have made monkeys out of themselves.
That’s too bad.
It’s an unnecessary conflict!
There is but one world, and one God, and one truth …
Truth in different forms … like colored lights on a Christmas Tree, or flowers in a garden … or like hands and feet, eyes and noses – a million varieties – but the green light isn’t better than the red; the tulip isn’t inferior to the rose … and the hand cannot say to the foot, “I have no need of you.”
Scientific truth … observation and experiment, verification and repeatability … I can prove to you that hot water burns the hand.
Stick your hand beneath a spigot of hot water and we’ll find out that hot water burns the hand … we can verify it; we can repeat the experiment.
But lots of things can’t be proved in a scientific way.
Can I prove to you that my father lived?
I could show you pictures, birth certificate, social security documents, and you could dismiss it all as an elaborate fabrication, or some kind of mistake.
Can I prove that Aristotle lived, or Plato?
There’s no verifiability for history … no repeating the lives of anyone …
History doesn’t yield to scientific examination.
Nor can I prove to you that I love my children …
Or they love me.
I know they love me, and I know that they know I love them, too.
And I know that whatever it is I feel for them, it’s love, deep and abiding love!
Yet such things are beyond the range of scientific tests … brain scans and other physiological measurements might scientifically indicate increased activity in the pleasure centers of the brain when I’m with my children – but what is love, and how can I prove it?
Nor can I prove to you that this world was created by a loving God. I confess and believe in a Creator, the God and Father of our LORD Jesus Christ, but I can’t prove the Creator’s existence; neither can I prove the hand of God in every ocean wave nor the love of God in a sunrise over the mountains!
Nor can anyone prove otherwise.
“Proof” for or against God doesn’t exist in the realm of scientific verifiability!
In recent years, however, some Christians have sought to establish a scientific basis for creation … called intelligent design or creationism.
Big money has been dumped into this project …
A multi-million dollar creation museum in Petersburg, Ky..
A lot of effort to establish a “creation science” that supports a literal reading of Genesis 1 & 2.
Law suits challenging text books.
Creationism folks elected to local school boards, forcing schools to teach creationism along side of evolution.
This is way beyond the boundary of faith … making faith say something that faith never intended to say … to force Genesis into a literal reading never intended by the poets who wrote it.
But if some Christians are way over the top, some scientists have gone over the top, as well.
Some have made a case against God …
Some say: “The universe has no meaning beyond itself. Human beings are a protoplasmic accident. That we’re here at all means nothing, and though we choose to love or hate, our choices mean nothing in any ultimate or moral sense.”
When scientists says such things, they’re no longer scientists … they’re human beings expressing a point of view – they’re making faith-statements.
To believe there is no God is not a fact of science, but a faith-statement of the heart.
A faith statement no different than my faith statement: I believe in God … God the Father Almighty creator of the heavens and the earth …
That’s a faith-statement.
If someone says: “I don’t believe in god,” that’s a faith-statement, too!
No one can prove their faith!
No one can prove there is a god, nor can anyone prove there isn’t!
Faith and science have natural boundaries beyond which they cannot pass … faith isn’t science, and science isn’t faith!
So, an impasse, if you will …
But such an impasse needn’t lead to conflict.
Let it be a delightful impasse …
Like two dance partners … each different, each with their own intelligence and passion … like waltz partners … the quick-changing lead of the waltz, “he goes, she goes” …
Science and faith … faith and science … mind and heart; heart and mind … “He goes; she goes.”
This weekend is Evolution Weekend …
Scientists and people of faith …
More than 750 congregations around the world celebrating the cooperation of science and faith …
Celebrating the waltz – two clever, determined, dance partners, dancing together … “he goes; she goes.”
And the dance is beautiful!
If I want to know how the universe came into being, I’ll read a science textbook.
If I want to know why I’m alive, what I should do when I get up in the morning, I’ll read the Bible.
Science tells me what.
Faith tells me why.
And I need both!
There is no conflict …
During my college days, I had the pleasure of some remarkable Bible teachers … one of whom introduced me to the term “theistic evolution.”
God-driven evolution …
Evolution the means; God the energy!
Theistic Evolution.
No conflict here.
No battle.
No need for Christians to huddle behind the walls of the church.
No need to be afraid of science … no need to manufacture pseudo-science.
The Bible says it well:
“By faith, we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command” (Hebrews 11:3).
By faith we believe what science can never prove or disprove.
By faith we believe these things!
Good faith is reasonable, thoughtful and coherent, but faith can’t be proven like I can prove hot water burns the hand.
So where so we go from here?
I have some concerns.
If a child is exposed to nothing but scientific materialism, and if some teachers happen to be angry atheists, it’s possible that a young student would acquire certain ideas:
- Life has no inherent meaning other than what I give to it.
- Death is the final fact.
- The universe is eternal, just a series of expansions and contractions – without purpose, without destiny, without moral underpinning or divine reference point.
- Morality is a human invention.
- Life belongs to survivors.
- And only the fittest survive.
That’s called nihilism … nothing-ism …
All that exists is me and you and the material world, and look out if you get in my way.
Some Christians have responded with home schooling …
I recently saw the documentary, “Jesus Camp,” and it’s frightening how some Christians manipulate the minds of their children with trumped up claims and fearful preaching.
But they have a point …
I know that some school districts are doing well when it comes to matters of faith and science …
But it’s been tough in America the last 40 years.
Religion has been leached out of our textbooks … as if one could teach history without reference to religion, or teach about the Pilgrims as if they were only political refugees rather than a religious community.
I remember when the Shah of Iran fell, 1979, displaced by radical Islamic rule.
Everyone was caught by surprise.
But one wise diplomat offered sage insight: “We were caught by surprise because we don’t have the tools any longer to understand the roll of religion in history.”
To remove religion from history is dishonest … about as dishonest as a homeschool parent filtering out science and telling the child that the world was created in six 24-hour days.
I was privileged to attend a Christian high school in Grand Rapids, Michigan … a school without scientific or faith prejudice … teachers who simply and easily taught the glory of God in everything … from a small stone in the ocean to a butterfly’s wing, from a majestic mountains to a child’s small hand … from the intricacies of molecular structure to a novel by Upton Sinclair … the glory of God everywhere.
Some months ago, George Burr said at staff meeting, “It’s my job to find God in the music.”
Because God is there in the music …
And we can find God in the music, too.
We have to redouble our efforts in the church, and we have to reinvent our public school curricula – there are some excellent curricula, and we can do a better job on all fronts to help our schools deal with religion, because religion is a huge part of the human story.
But let’s not rely on our schools for the moral and spiritual orientation of our children.
Most vitally, in the home – to give our children the eyes of faith … to see the world as God’s world … “this is my Father’s world” is one of the great confessions of faith … a confession of comfort and hope.
To give our children the heart of a poet … to see beyond the mere outlines of the material world … to see in all molecules and binary systems the intricacy of God’s love.
To hear Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, to see a sunset glimmering on the waves … to see the hand of God!
To live with one another well, to see one another as children of God.
And that makes us “our brother’s keeper,” and life is filled with meaning … eternal meaning – life filled with grace, filled with the glory of God … and death doesn’t have the last word … because Christ is risen from the dead.
One of my favorite poets, W.H. Auden, wrote to a seven-year old boy on his birthday:
So I wish you first a
Sense of theatre: only
Those who love illusion
And know it will go far:
Otherwise we spend our
Lives in a confusion
Of what we say and do with
Who we really are.
“Many Happy Returns”
A sense of theater … a poet’s heart … the eyes of faith … if all we see is what we can see, we’re blind … if all we know is what we know then we know nothing.
I choose to live by faith!
I wouldn’t have it any other way … and I’m no dummy, and I’m not naïve.
It’s all about love and kindness, grace and mercy … it’s all about God, in and through the material universe … God’s love in all things: our joys, our tears … our victories, our tragedies … a great and loving God moving this universe along its appointed course, getting us to the right place.
I choose to live by faith … it makes sense to me.
Faith isn’t stupid or weak … to the contrary, faith opens doors and stimulates the mind … faith can go places no other human faculty can venture … when the road comes to end, faith travels on … when we can no longer see with our physical eyes, the eyes of faith have it … when the heart stops beating, the heartbeat of faith remains forever strong!
I live by faith.
But I also choose to honor the thousands of scientists who labor in laboratories and teach in universities, striving to understand the material world – how it works, and how it came to be.
There is no conflict between faith and science.
No greater joy when these two realities shake hands and embrace … and the dance begins.
Both - servants of the Most High God! Amen!
