*** Updated with some thoughts at bottom
Girlfriend’s rockstar: Is Jesus a nice man?
Girlfriend: Yes
Girlfriend’s rockstar: Will He buy me a Ferrari? (As in the little toy cars)
So I tell Rockstar what his schoolmate said…
Rockstar: God makes sheep, He doesn’t make cars.
God made whales? Not Lego? What about Lego Whales? (Ruining another pic by keeping his eyes closed)
For some time, I’ve been wondering how to reconcile science and faith, for when Rockstar undoubtedly asks… Science, taught in schools, covers things like Theory of Evolution, how amoeba became shrimp and fish became other animals became apes became humans… The Bible (and Sunday school) tells us God made the world, people and all. (Yes, sheep too.)
Science, the way theories are tested, proven or disproved, is a form of learning, and necessary for further “man-made” discovery. In the process, you learn to discover other things. You learn to erm, un-discover others. The process enriches you, the journey as much as the destination – just as a width and breadth in one language allows you to take on others and formal study is required in technical fields like physics and statistics. It is part of formal education. To know all the theories, what has been tested, what remains missing.
Religion however, is about Faith. (It would not BE religion, by definition, without faith.) Jesus stands at the door and knocks – it is you who have to let Him in. If you don’t accept that He died for your sins, you wouldn’t BE a Christian. The journey of discovery without the initial first step of faith is a very different one than that of someone who has already accepted. Faith is, to me, all the difference.
As a former unbeliever born to staunch Buddhists/ Taoists, no one could talk me into accepting Jesus, despite even an active Girls & Boys Brigade in my early childhood in Sandakan. This is because delivery of a message is in a sense only as effective as the ability of the deliverer. And there are none so blind.
But because of how my faith happened to me – one minute I’m sitting at the back of a huge service only as an obligation to a well-respected co-worker, the next I have felt something so powerful if I never feel it again for as long as I live I will still know there is a God – I understand how you have to let Him in. Then you believe what He tells you, because you already know irrevocably He is God.
This is because delivery of a message is in a sense only as effective as the ability of the deliverer.
Thanks for writing your thoughts about faith vs science. Currently I am reading the “Purpose Driven Life” by Dr. Rick Warren but at the same time I am also reading the book – The God Delusion. Still can’t get my head around how to put the two together.
At church mass where there were 3 priests that day, my lil girl asked, ‘Today, we have 3 Gods?”
hahahahaha how did you explain that one?
I’m afraid that I may not have given a good answer. Just told her that the priests help us to understand and tell us about God.
She goes for Sunday School and enjoys the lessons very much. Even my older kids remember their preschool Sunday School lessons and say they missed the art and craft sessions, goodies that the volunteer teachers give etc.
Just the other day, I asked her, ‘Where is God?”
Answer : God is everywhere and in our hearts. 🙂