In debate, conflicts and contradictions between theologians and scientists relate to numerous topics. Perhaps the creation/evolution conflict is the best known. A thoughtful learner may be tempted to call down judgment on both houses. The in-between person has a feeling that the Christian analyst needs a bit more of the scientists’ methods and extensions, and the scientists need a bit more of the understandings and logics of human experience with its projections, to account for meaning. For example, how does the theory of evolution fit into God’s works, or vice versa? How is love accounted for in science? What is scientific about life, or war, or ethics? Who decides what is right or wrong in a world without God? Scientists working on the atomic bomb were troubled about what they were doing. Why? Even Einstein mused that it might have been better had he retained his old desk job in a clerk’s office than to have become a leading scientist theorizing about the atom and universe. Did his genius advance society? The question may not be answered with what is available to us. What is the long term benefit of harnessing the atom?
What of religion, religion that seems often to be a toy for sinners and saints? The sinner religionist cloaks himself in religion, as the Apostle Paul noted to Timothy. Why do so many believers in the various religions, including Christianity, my beloved faith, violate the tenets they may vigorously defend? Righteousness is a major matter for Christians, but many, even some well-schooled in the faith, fail righteousness in that faith. Their faith was touted as strong enough to remake them in a born again experience, but their families may perceive little change. Righteousness is a more serious issue for Christians than contradictions between creationists and evolutionists. Christianity changes context, venue, interpretations, and values for adherents.
What if the various persuasions were to go to the well of intellectual humility, there to drink the waters of learning which reveal truth and fiction? There the person unschooled in physical sciences, but motivated by true faith, asks non-judgmental questions that include any, perhaps all, of the evidences of life meaning. Attitudes would be something like Rebecca’s response in Ivanhoe, in which she, as pure as chivalric love and her faith could make her, felt humbled before the public court in any defense of her beliefs as a Jewess.
I am reluctant to become a combatant in the lists of fields outside my expertise. I have read considerably in various fields, even taken courses in biological evolution, but remain an amateur (as most other persons are) on those issues that demand more time than I have available to garner adequate pertinent information. I believe firmly in some form of divine creation couched in the language of Scripture. If God did it through a process, that is just fine with me. He can do whatever he pleases. I am not going to scramble truth by human arrogance. I do want to know what I will need to have learned when I draw my last breath. What extends beyond me? I have given my first attention to the human soul. It gave me rising hope. It gave me reason for living. It gave me decency. It gave me whole meaning. My life has been warmed by both the life of Christian faith and disciplines of the mind. If they are incompatible, I did not discover it to be so. Each has its venue. There is limited vision for mankind. There is nothing that could take away from me the faith of the forever with Christ. In Christ there is addressed all the matters that really count for mankind and society, and that includes progress with values. Mankind proceeds to rejection or elevation as advocated by Scripture – in our faith choosing. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020