Thursday, October 1, 2009

HOW LITTLE SCIENCE CAN WE ACCEPT IN ORDER TO KEEP OUR FAITH?

I can only answer that question for myself. But it is something I wonder about regarding the greater family of God. I'm not speaking of fringe groups of radical people, I mean my people. You know, you the chosen of God, the true body of the Living Lord.

The question is framed poetically for the title but the true question goes a little something like this: Is there a point at which you would disregard faith for science? Or, are science and faith mutually exclusive to each other? Do you think science and faith having nothing to do with each other?

Your answer may be defined by how your faith grows, or not, in Christ. Now of course the question of science and faith is not the only definer of your faith. One's personal experiences, the way one was raised, the environment one grew up in, the way one chooses to believe based on current/past traumatic or blessed experiences-- all these help shape one's faith, too.

Just as meaningful to the base code of our faith is our fundamental belief in the place of science and faith. Jesus said we need only faith the size of a mustard seed to move mountains, to heal the sick, make the blind see, lame walk...and so on. But I'm not reaching for so lofty a position of faith. I'm talking about the faith that keeps one in faith to God instead of slipping away because of unbelief.

I recently read an article in one of the country's oldest and largest newspapers. The title (though I can't remember it now) was something relating to God and science so I took a gander. It describes why science GREAT and AWESOME as it is, does away with the notion of God a Supreme Intellect in favor of the PURITY OF RANDOMNESS within our universe. How by cosmic accident we are all here. But the most telling aspect of the article was its chief reason for the disbelief in GOD. I found it quite telling, not just about those who believe there is no God, but about the writer herself.

First the superficial reason: Randomness, cosmic accident, evolution, proof of the theory of evolution like cells turning into fish and fish into monkeys and monkeys into humanoids and humanoids into human beings, Added in are all scientific terminologies and presto change-o after a 5 billion years humans. But even with all this "proof" the main reason comes down to something only humans can experience in so profound a way. And that is human loss.

As I got the end of the article, the writer described that if you have gone on this journey with her and come away feeling the way she does, others will most certainly call you an atheist, and they would be right. She did a magnificent job cloaked in science, pushing her belief. So then the point of the article was finally revealed only at the very end.

But greatest portion of her theoretical proof was, why if the God "WE" created was so kind and benevolent, why wars, why murders, why senseless violence? Randomness puts this neatly in a box. But God cannot fit, she surmised.

A benevolent Benefactor would not... indeed - could not - allow such horrors to befell humans. It sounds like someone needs a hug and an education in the spirit by the Spirit. I'm not playing this for a joke. I really felt the pain of the writer attempting to; with only the world's knowledge to come up with a reason for why God isn't... couldn't be. How could He let such things happen? Who hasn't been there? I felt she was truly searching for someone to overcome her and her staunchly held beliefs and to please tell me where He is and how may I find and have peace in Him?

Scientist or not, she fully reveals she's no pure scientist. A scientist cannot tell you there is no God because there is no proof of the absence of God by a long shot! For scientists this must be thoroughly proven before any such a prognostication can be made.

In fact they would tell you through their work at the LHC or Large Hadron Collider in France they are looking for the "God particle" the smallest particle in all of life so full of energy and power that when split it would have causes such a massive and magnificent explosion it would have created the very universe we currently live in today. In other words the source for the Big Bang! Einstein's Theory and the closest of all science related explanations to what the word says did actually happened - In the beginning.

Could an intelligent Being have used such knowledge to make the Heavens, scientists wonder? Or was by accident? But more questions arise when you leave it to chaos. Less when you begin to put an intelligent Designer at the end of it all. Or should I say at the beginning of it all? How about both?

Scientists do not presuppose. They question. Some scientists at large, and at the LHC have found Christ because of their research. Some still have no idea. But here is the point I've been heading toward. While reading the writer's article (before I found out she was an atheist), did her revelations shudder my faith? No. And here is why.

My faith in God is not based on what the world finds out or not through science. I do not fear science. Faith and science can belong together if you have enough faith in what you believe. My faith is based on GOD's Word through the Spirit of the Living Lord. It is by grace I receive the ability to have faith and through that faith I believe and confess Jesus as my Lord, Savior the Son of God sent by ABBA for remission of mine and all peoples sins.

Science is merely man's way of figuring out how God did and does - what he did and does. The two; faith and science are not mutually exclusive. Science is a word. God created all things but, how do you suppose He did that? By what means or method? Is science a dirty word or is it just a word to try and describe God's means and method? Is it wrong to try figure that out? I do not believe so. Our Father gave us dominion over all life here - and by union with Christ over all life itself.

So, I do not believe it is wrong to be inquisitive. Even with our greatest understanding we will still only know in part. For He that lives is the One and Only to give perfect knowledge of all things because only He is perfect.

I do believe that letting science be exclusively in the hands of those without faith is dangerous. We must be everywhere. But if the phobia of faith precludes us from learning in the sciences we hurt ourselves and our offspring.

Preach the gospel in ALL THE WORLD. That most certainly includes the area of science. No matter what revelations there are to be found none will rock my faith because my faith is planted in the Rock who is the Christ, Son of the Living God who is all and through whom all things are held together. Amen! Not even the most noble of human wanderings of inquisitiveness can scale that Rock. But that's my faith.

The word says there are many universes existing all at once. When the world finds this to be true, if we have not understood the word, a fight will breakout between those whose faith will be shattered by this knowledge and those in the world who wish to further denounce God. But it's already in the word! And the word goes on to say that God is God of them all. And that Christ is Lord of them all!

But when it is finally revealed to be in the word if we aren't out in front of this, many will then say "oh, they're just trying to shape the word to fit their silly belief." And we will have given them the right to say so, by being absent from this area of humanity. Worse, many saints will fall away because of a lack of faith.

Science is the understanding of some of our faith. We should not dismiss it. Neither should we let atheists have a realm they can operate peacefully, where we do not oppose them with truth. Using the exact same knowledge but with greater eternal understand through our faith. Remember Galileo was a Christian.

But yet even he was ridiculed by those whose faith was lacking and held captive as a heretic for saying that the Earth was not the center of the universe. But the word of God that gave birth to his and his captors' faith already said thousands of years earlier, when I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, what you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?

Do not place your faith in a box, to be held neatly there. The word says "test the spirits," "come let us reason together." Go and where you go "I will be there also, even to the end of the age."