"God created the world!  End of story!"  I once heard someone say.  Right?    Wrong.  For the Bible, that is just the beginning of the story.  In scripture God is not an absent factory that churned out a universe, but rather a present gardener who nurtures his garden, a present parent who watches his children, a brooding hen who casts a caring eye over the chicks. God rested on the seventh day, the Bible explains.  We sometimes get the idea that that seventh day, stretched into a long term vacation.  God’s work was done, he had created the world and now he could rest on a beach in cosmic Tahiti.

Au contraire!  Here are my four points.
1)  God is still at work in his world (yes, yawn… typical sermon).
2)  We know this, and we know about God, from what we learn in the Bible (yes, yawn).
3)  We know this, and we know about God, from what we learn in science (what!?).
4)  With both the Bible and Science faith will determine our belief that God cares for us.

Gen. 1:1-3.  God created.  This is the beginning of our faith.  We aren’t here by accident. We have been, for whatever reason (for we are never explicitly told why in the Bible) created by God.  This is something essential and non-negotiable to our faith.  We are creatures, not just accidental by products of a universe out of control.

There are two "Jesus principles" that are the basis of my third and fourth "controversial" points.  These are essential to understand if you want to think about God and this relationship with nature. One principle is found in  Matt. 6  "Look at the birds…, study the fields" - and in another part in the same sermon on the Mount., Jesus says "see that it rains on the just and the unjust."  The two principles are these:  1) we can learn about the Creator, from his creation &  2) the Creator is still involved in his creation.  He is still working, providing for you as for the ravens.  Giving you rain, as the unjust.  There is an intimate relationship between the God of scripture, and his nature.  This is not pantheism (God is nature),  nor panentheism (God is in every branch and leaf), but it is a realization that God undergirds everything as the one in whom we live, move, and have our being, as Paul says in Acts 17.

It is sometimes said that science and religion are two separate domains.  There is the "how" question of science, where one studies the technical questions of how a thing operates, and then the "why" question of religion, where one ponders the essential questions of existence.

It is of course true, that science has a focus on the how it happens, and religion on the why it happens.  It is true that Science has a focus on little questions (i.e., how and why a quark acts both like a wave and a particle) AND that religion in contrast has a focus on big questions - i.e., Truth, as opposed to little scientific truths.   Religion and science are clearly different domains of human activity.

It is also true that there has been a sort of war between the two ever since Darwin published his work on the origin of the species.  In truth the war was even fought earlier, but here it reached its ugly peak.  Besides the obvious issue of evolution, scientists began to find that our world wasn’t as "humanly" perfect as was thought.  It was bad enough to find that the earth was not the center of the universe, but then to find out that time and space were relative?!  That the orbits are not symmetrically perfect?!  Would science ever stop seeming to chip away at our faith?  How could it be that God would act in such a non-human fashion?!  Maybe there is no God, some thought.  Or maybe he just does things differently than we previously believed, others thought.

In the last 100 years many scientists have indeed stated that belief in God was no longer viable in the new world picture, and that reasonable people were atheists or agnostics.  Knowing this, and sometimes fearing worldly influence, at times Christians have condemned and or ignored science.  Sometimes Christians have sought to bolster the Bible by finding evidence which supports their particular biblical interpretations and so war against secular scientists - often doing so in a most unscientific way.

This war is beginning to reach a détente.  There are still pockets of fighting among fundamentalist Christians, and by atheistic left-wing scientists, but a growing number of scientists and Christians are seeing that faith and science are not as opposed as they once seemed.   While one might be able to draw nice academic divisions between science and religion, and while they have often been at war in the past, we should NOT draw hard and fast lines between science and our Christian faith.  It might be possible to separate religion from science.  Religion is one thing, our faith is another.  Religion can be cold, abstract, and a set of creeds to which one gives mental ascent.  Religion can be, and often is, nothing more than a set of periodic rituals (church on Sunday, services at Christmas).  Christian Faith, however, is not so inert, nor is it so confined.  It is an active relationship with a real Person.  Moreover it touches every aspect of our existence, not just our Sunday morning.  As Austin Farrar said:  "If God is anywhere, God must be everywhere."

Dry and dusty creeds may be hermetically sealed against the implications of science, but not a living faith in a living God of a living universe.  "Look at the birds." Know nature, understand the world in which you live.

Here are three headlines from the International Herald Tribune, from the last 5 weeks:
April 29, 2000:  Scientists Gather Images of an Infant Universe  "[the images]  support a once-outlandish hypothesis that when the universe was only a billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second old, it underwent an explosive accelerating expansion."
May 4, 2000:  DNA is Helping Draw a Human Family Tree  - Genetic Adam and Eve are Traced
May 29, 2000:  Science, Guided by Ethics, Can Lift up the Poor  "Science and religion should work together to abolish the gross inequalities that prevail in the modern world."

Jesus said in John 8:32 "you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free."  What truth was he talking about?  He was talking about himself.  If you would be my disciple, then… There is a clear and undeniable teaching in scripture that one must have faith into order to see.  This is exactly the opposite of science.  Science, that is good science (because there is bad science which masquerades as the real thing), works to "see" (test, verify, experiment) before believing.  It would be a poor scientist who never sought to test his hypothesis.  It is also a poor scientist who doesn’t admit he could be wrong, and that another better theory might be just around the corner.

So indeed science and faith are very different, and our only hope of freedom is in Truth which science doesn't deliver.  AND YET, why does Jesus tell us to "consider" (inductively - as a scientist might) the birds of the air, and the flowers of the field?  Why indeed does a scientist believe a hypothesis before it is tested?  Science is built on this initial faith. Maybe these two areas of inquiry are two sides of the same coin of human knowledge.  A coin which is spent for expensive things (the state of your soul) or inexpensive things (how cells reproduce).  I mean, that on a fairly fundamental level, both faith and reason are essential to healthy Christian living.

Studies in recent years confirm that science progresses by human "hunches, guesses, and what could be called elemental faith."  And it is also true that many people become Christians by a quasi-scientific process.  That is, they gather evidence (mostly from other Christian’s lives) and eventually by the work of the Spirit, they come to faith which is partly based on the inductive inference from this evidence.

I don’t mean, of course, that masses of scientists are converting to Christianity, or that Christians are unified on HOW the earth (and human beings) were created.  Some are evolutionists and some are 7 day creationist.  BUT what I mean is that there is a growing awareness that it is not unreasonable to believe in a creative God & that there are many scientists who are helping us learn about God’s very complex and amazing world.

At least one other time I have mentioned the anthropic principle.  This is what cosmologists are calling the fact that the universe seems to be built to sustain life.  If just a few physical factors were changed our universe would be so radically different, life would be impossible.  There are two ways to account for this.  One is by intelligent design.  The other is by chance.  This second option seems impossible, unless you postulate the existence of multiple universes, in which we just happen to be in the right one.

The french mathematician, Lecompte de Nouy, examined the laws of probability for a single molecule of high dissymmetry to be formed by the action of chance.  De Nouy found that, on an average, the time needed to form one such molecule of our terrestrial globe would be about 10 to the 243 power billions of years.    "But," continued de Nouy ironically, "let us admit that no matter how small the chance it could happen, one molecule could be created by such astronomical odds of chance.  However, one molecule is of no use. Hundreds of millions of identical ones are necessary.  Thus we either admit the miracle or doubt the absolute truth of science."
 

What does this mean for you?

1) Every major decision has an element of faith.  Even with proof of the existence of intelligent design, you must have faith to follow a God who cares.  You must have faith in your spouse to marry and faith in your car to drive, and faith in the metro to ride, etc.  We don’t live without faith.  Faith in God, is a matter of the deepest levels of the heart, and only you and God know if you have it.  It is unreasonable to not open your mind, to not open the door of your heart to that faith.

2) Science and reason can be a wonderful aid to faith, not just a frustrating hindrance. There are difficult issues, upon which I haven’t even touched, but that isn’t the whole story.  Be grateful for all that we are learning about our world.  Be hopeful that we will use this knowledge for good - be prayerful to that end.

A little girl climbed up on the lap of great-grandmother and looked at her white hair and wrinkles, she studied her glasses, and dentures, and then asked, "Did God make you?"  "Yes," she said.    Then she asked, "Did God make me, too?"    Grandma said, "Yes."
 "Well," said the little girl, "Don't you think He's improved things a bit?"

Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I wonder why God couldn’t have worked a little harder on me.  The edging hairline, the pale skin, the red beard with gray streaks  - it’s not as if you could get me confused with Cary Grant or Tom Cruise.  But usually when I have these thoughts, I’m reminded by some voice that God is still working on me. The problem is God works inside out.  God never has time to get to the outside.

And what an amazing inside it all is.  Think of how many things have to work, just for me to stand in front of you today.  Think of the fingers which had to type, the brain which had to think, the eyes which had to see, the heart which had to pump, the feet which had to walk, the arms which had to move - and all of that is on a very shallow level. We could talk about capillaries and enzymes if we wanted.   It is all beyond our imagination, but not beyond the grasp of faith, to say thank you to our Creator, Father, and Friend.