The Bible & Science...Why the Conflict?

Okay, first of all. We pretty much broke a record in attendance last weekend so we really need you to come on Saturday or “Do the Shuttle” from down at Horton Group (east of Parkview on 183rd Street.) We will likely have more this weekend. And the Bears aren’t on until Sunday night! Please keep helping us park people so they can get to know God.

I’m talking about Science and God this weekend and “why” they seem to be so incompatible. The short answer is that they aren’t, but you should still come and hear the whole deal. For my research on this I read a fascinating book by Dr. Francis Collins, called “The Language of God.”

He is the man I quoted several times last week. He was the head of the Human Genome Project that finished mapping out DNA, which was one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs of the century. And he is a Christian. He started out Christian, and then in his scientific learning became an atheist, and then in more scientific learning – turned back to Jesus Christ. Now his views on the origin of the universe are still basically that God started evolution (he calls it BioLogos) and I disagree with him there. But from the place he is coming from, the book is very interesting. Especially as he gets down to the end and starts talking about what believing in God meant to him.

“After my conversion to belief in God, I spent considerable time trying to discern His characteristics. I concluded that He must be a God who cares about persons, or the argument about the Moral Laws would not make much sense. So deism wouldn’t do for me. I also concluded that God must be holy and righteous, since the Moral Laws calls me in that direction. But this still seemed awfully abstract. Just because God is good and loves his creatures, does not, for instance, require that we have the ability to communicate with Him, or to have some sort of relationship with Him. I found an increasing sense of longing for that, however, and I began to realize that this is what prayer is all about. Prayer is not, as some seem to suggest, an opportunity to manipulate God into doing what you want Him to. Prayer is instead our way of seeking fellowship with God, learning about Him, and attempting to perceive His perspective on the many issues around us that cause us puzzlement, wonder, or distress.

Yet I found it difficult to build that bridge toward God. The more I learned about Him, the more His purity and holiness seemed unapproachable, and the darker my own thoughts and actions seemed to be in that bright light.

I began to be increasingly aware of my own inability to do the right thing, even for a day. I could generate lots of excuses, but when I was really honest with myself, pride, apathy, and anger were regularly winning my internal battles. I had never really thought of applying the word “sinner” to myself before, but now it was painfully obvious that this old-fashioned word, one from which I had previously recoiled because it seemed coarse and judgmental, fit quite accurately.

I sought to engineer a cure by spending more time in self-examination and prayer. But those efforts proved largely dry and unrewarding, failing to carry me across the widening gap between my awareness of my imperfect nature and God’s perfection.

Into this deepening gloom came the person of Jesus Christ. During my boyhood years sitting in the choir loft of a Christian church, I really had no idea who Christ was. I thought of Him as a myth, a fairy tale, a superhero in a “just so” bedtime story. But as I read the actual account of His life for the first time in the four gospels, the eyewitness nature of the narratives and the enormity of Christ’s claims and their consequences gradually began to sink in. Here was a man who not only claimed to KNOW God, he claimed to BE God. No other figure I could find in any other fair made such an outrageous claim. He also claimed to be able to forgive sins, which seemed both exciting and utterly shocking. He was humble and loving, He spoke remarkable words of wisdom, and yet He was put to death on the cross by those who feared Him. He was man, so He knew the human condition that I was finding so burdensome, and yet He promised to relieve that burden. “Come unto me all yet that are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28)

The other scandalous thing that the New Testament eyewitnesses said about Him, and that Christians seemed to take as a central tenet of their faith, is that this good man rose from the dead. For a scientific mind, this was difficult stuff. But on the other hand, if Christ really was the son of God, as He explicitly claimed, then surely of all those who had ever walked the earth, He could suspend the laws of nature if He needed to do so to achieve a more important purpose.

But His resurrection had to be more than a demonstration of magical powers. What was the real point of it? Christians have puzzled over this question for two millennia.

After much searching, I could find no single answer – instead, there were several interlocking answers, all pointing to the idea of a bridge between our sinful selves and a holy God. Some commentators focus on the idea of substitution – Christ dying in the place of all of us who deserve God’s judgment for our wrongdoings. Others call it redemption – Christ paid the ultimate price to free us from the bondage of sin, so that we could find God and rest in the confidence that He no longer judges us by our actins, but sees us as having been washed clean.

Christians call this salvation by grace. But for me, the crucifixion and resurrection also provided something else. My desire to draw close to God was blocked by my own pride and sinfulness, which in turn was an inevitable consequence of my own selfish desire to be in control.

Faithfulness to God required a kind of death of self-will, in order to be reborn as a new creation.”

Amazingly, this very smart scientist has hit the nail on the head. There is a God, He is holy, and we can’t get there on our own. WE NEED JESUS.

If you don’t have Him, let’s talk,

Tim

Comments

[We Are...Penn State]

Tim,

Thank you so much for this weekend's sermon. Christians who don't make any attempt to reconcile faith and science (or worse, take a stance AGAINST scientific inquiry) make it very difficult for me to witness to my curious, but non-believing, friends who pride themselves on being rational beings. Such Christians misinterpret the Bible in such a way as to make my non-believing friends think that all Christians are whacky and out of touch with reality.

Another excellent book on this subject is Gerald Schroeder's "The Science of God". Mr. Schroeder is an Israeli physicist and scholar of Genesis. His book delves into many of the same issues you talked about this weekend, including our perspective of time vs. God's perspective of time, the origin of life, and evolution. The epilogue is titled "Well, What About Dinosaurs?"

[Ken]

I was at Sundays (23 Sept.) 11am. service.

I took from it that Pastor Tim believes in the possibility that Evolution (Ape to human) may be true, and if it is, it was designed and guided by God.

Sound about right?

[Maryann]

I took a breath of fresh air after hearing Tim speak on Sunday. I had always been uneasy with the whole garden of Eden, talking snake and apple thing. It seemed a little silly and I hoped for a more realistic if not scientific explanation to the beginning of human life. As Christians, I'm glad Tim opened us to the possibility that evolution is certainly possible if not probable. Now, when addressing this subject, we can speak to each other honestly and not pretend that we completely discount Darwin's theory.
As long as we know that God started the ball rolling, it really doesn't matter where the ball started or where it stops.

Thank you Tim, for a very up to date message.

[Pastor Tim]

No, Ken...I don’t believe there is any chance that humans evolved from Apes. I believe that when God says that He created everyone “according to their kind” that means what it says. That's why I wrote in my blog that I disagree with Frances Collins viewpoint on theistic evolution.

What I was saying was that if a person wants to believe that God used the evolutionary process to create man and somehow, someway gave us a soul along the way – I’m not going to waste my time arguing with them about it. It’s not a salvation issue. I’m not going to allow my personal views on this issue get in the way of them having a relationship with God.

I’m not seeing any chance of anyone proving or disproving evolution in the next few years and I don’t want to perpetuate the divide.

tim

[We Are...Penn State]

Pastor Tim: "If a person wants to believe that God used the evolutionary process to create man and somehow, someway gave us a soul along the way--I’m not going to waste my time arguing with them about it. It’s not a salvation issue. I’m not going to allow my personal views on this issue get in the way of them having a relationship with God."

It's so easy to become distracted by issues not related to salvation. I'm glad you're going to "keep your eye on the ball" and encouraged us to do the same thing.

Maryann, I have always considered the most important words in Genesis to be "In the beginning God created..." It wasn't some cosmic accident, it wasn't a random and lucky gathering of molecules, there IS a Creator.

My take on Genesis is allegorical rather than literal. But as Tim pointed out, this isn't a salvation issue, so I don't spend a whole lot of time (or any at all!) arguing with fellow believers who insist that the creation story took place over the course of 144 hours. That is time and energy that can be better spent working on my ministry involvements and helping to bring The Word to the people of the Southwest Suburbs.

[Sheri]

Speaking of God's creation of humans...

Please spread the word about three pro-life events: the 40 Days for Life occurring Sept 24 - Nov 4(www.40daysforlife.com), the Life Chain occurring on October 7th(lifeChain.net), and the Celebrate for Life on October 11th (PASS pregnancy care center's benefit dinner).

[We Are...Penn State]

Ken: "I took from it that Pastor Tim believes in the possibility that Evolution (Ape to human) may be true, and if it is, it was designed and guided by God."

Maryann: "As Christians, I'm glad Tim opened us to the possibility that evolution is certainly possible if not probable. Now, when addressing this subject, we can speak to each other honestly and not pretend that we completely discount Darwin's theory."

A couple things to consider regarding Darwinian evolution:

1) No matter what we do to a fruit fly embryo, the only possible outcomes are a normal fruit fly, a defective fruit fly, or a dead fruit fly; no Darwinian evolution.

2) No one has ever observed the origin of even one species by Darwin’s process of variation and selection.

[Paula]

I am a proponent of the Big Bang Theory:

That's when GOD said 'Let There be Light...and There WAS LIGHT'

Hey, if He can do That (and we know that He can do anything)it's just one big circle from us not understanding anything to maybe understanding a whole bunch...either way it brings us back to the same place. Peace!

[Eric]

Exactly, the Big Bang Theory: God spoke, and BANG! creation happened.