Today’s Word from Pastor Jim…
Do you believe in God? Do you believe in gravity?
The oldest confession of faith is this; “In the beginning God created.” This a confession, nothing more. The story goes on to describe creation, but the details of this creation were not scientific in nature. The story was a faith story; it was never meant to be a part of a science textbook. It simply tells us, “who” created. It does not answer the question of “how.” If we use the book of Genesis as a literal description of creation, then we are being unfaithful to its original intent.
I was talking with a man last week; he said that his son was a scientist. His son believed in science, observation, theories that could be tested and ultimately proven. He did not believe in God. My response was quite simple saying, “It does not matter what he believes.” We do not have the power to change the truth, reality is not dependent upon our belief or denial. It is what it is.
Do you believe in God? Do you believe that this marvelous creation is nothing more than a cosmic accident, a billion years of synchronized, coincidental actions, the self-arrangement of elements from the periodic table? Can you look at a flower, a tree, the diverse birds of the air, or the inner workings of the human eye, and imagine that it all came about by chance? A Boeing engineer once said to me, “Believing that creation is just the coincidental coming together of material would be like throwing all the parts of a 737 in a field, and over a billion years it assembled itself into a plane that could take flight.”
In my view, it takes a lot more blind faith to believe that there is no higher intelligence than to believe that there is, in fact, a God. “In the beginning God created.” It is the oldest and most profound of human confessions.
I stand by that confession, and I am a firm believer in science. There is no need for religion and science to be in a contentious relationship. Anywhere we find truth, we have in fact found God. There is only one source of truth. The truth is not a threat to science or religion, rather it is a light that should inform the human journey.
Christianity is a mixture of truths, falsehoods, traditions, human constructs, and sometimes informed interpretations of scripture. We certainly do not have a corner on the market of truth. Time has proven both science and Christianity to be misguided and misinformed.
“My son is a scientist; he does not believe in God.” I suggested that the father would tell his son that he does not believe in gravity. Tell him that you refuse to believe in gravity and that you are going to jump out the window of the 10th floor of a building. It does not matter if we believe in gravity or God, the truth is not ours to change by our belief or denial.
God is a mystery. We see in a mirror dimly. God is beyond the grasp and comprehension of mere creatures, and that is what I am, a creature. I believe that God created; I believe that for three years humanity got a glimpse of God’s nature and intention. In Jesus, we have an infinitesimally small revelation of the Master of a universe that is so expansive that even science cannot imagine it.
A simple confession is all I need; “In the beginning God, in the end God, God described as love. Loved, forgiven and never alone.” That is enough, I can live and die with that.
One day closer,
Pastor Jim
