Questions on Christianity

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow says it more eloquently than the above title does.  At times it does seem that this world is a lost cause.  It is only because we have “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1 ESV) that we strive to change ourselves and our world into the likeness of God.  It is only because of this faith that we can look with a positive gaze into the future.

Christmas Bells

I heard the bells on Christmas day, Their old familiar carols play, And wild and sweet the words repeat Of peace on earth, good will to men.

I thought how, as the day had come, The belfries of all Christendom Had rolled along th’unbroken song Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head:  “There is no peace on earth,” I said, “For hate is strong and mocks the song Of peace on earth, good will to men.”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:  “God is not dead, nor doth he sleep; The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, With peace on earth, good will to men.”

Till, ringing, singing, on its way, The world revolved from night to day, A voice, a chime, a chant sublime, Of peace on earth, good will to men! [1]

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[1]   Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Christmas Bells, 1807–1882.

When things go our way, we tend to think of ourselves as lucky.  When things do not go our way, we think of ourselves as unlucky.  A recent column in Flying magazine puts a different perspective on this issue.

Peter Garrison designed and built his airplane which he flew across the Pacific so it is obvious he is an accomplished aviator.  In 1982 as he was holding short of a runway, another propeller driven aircraft ran into his aircraft and proceeded to chew his airplane into pieces.  Fortunately, Mr. Garrison was able to escape.  When the news media arrived on the scene, one reporter asked Mr. Garrison if he felt lucky.  That seemed like an odd question to Mr. Garrison because he had just lost his aircraft into which he had invested so much of his life and he thought that was very unlucky.  However, Mr. Garrison recognized that from the reporter’s perspective, he had survived an airplane accident and to survive such an accident obviously one must be lucky. [1]

So was Mr. Garrison lucky or unlucky?  That all depends upon your perspective.  This particular event had aspects of both—Mr. Garrison was lucky he escaped with his life but he was unlucky he lost his airplane.

As Christians we can learn from this story.  While we are confident that ultimately “all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28, ESV), even in our present circumstances we should recognize that there are good and bad aspects to what we experience in our lives.  Whether we see the positive or negative is just a matter of our perspective.

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[1]   Peter Garrison.  Technicalities:  “Random Acts of Luckiness”.  Flying, December 2018, pp. 68-69.

I have been reading John Hick’s book Evil and the God of Love.  It is one of the better books I have read on the subject of human free will vs. God’s sovereignty and how a loving God can permit evil to exist.  However, I do have one problem with his book.  He states the fall of man as described in Genesis is “untenable in the light of modern science”. [1]  Why does modern science take precedence over the Bible?

Now I’ll be the first to admit that when it attempts to explain our natural world, Christianity has not always proved to be a reliable guide.  I agree with Christians that the Bible is accurate in the science it describes but the problem is in how we interpret what the Bible says when it discusses scientific issues.  The prime example of this is the argument that erupted between Galileo and the Christian faith when he proposed the theory that the earth revolves around the sun instead of the sun revolving around the earth.  At that time, Martin Luther stated:  “The fool will turn the whole science of Astronomy upside down.  But as Holy Writ [Joshua 10:12-13] declares, it was the Sun and not the Earth which Joshua commanded to stand still”  [2]  Luther was right in what the Bible said, but by interpreting what the Bible said to fit in with his limited scientific knowledge, he provided generations of critics of Christianity an opportunity to condemn it for its backward thinking.  Luther was not alone in his thinking; the Catholic Church also used its heavy hand to stifle this new scientific revolution.

Science does have has impressive credentials in explaining our natural world.  However, science is a human institution and like all human institutions, it is fallible.  One of the limitations of science is that it is a process of discovering how our physical world functions; it is not a set of facts.  Anyone who has studied science in college is taught this basic tenant of science.  This assertion is valid because the definition of inductive logic, upon which most of science is based, includes “certainty is attainable only if all possible instances have been examined”.  Scientists have not examined all possible instances in the past or future so they cannot be certain of our current scientific “facts”.  Also, if scientists believe science is an accumulation of facts, they close their mind to information that might challenge those facts.  The history of science teaches us the wisdom of this tenant of science because scientists once believed in all manner of ideas that we consider foolish today and undoubtedly future generations will look at some of our current scientific “facts” as humorous.  Scientists once believed that space was filled with ether.  Now we believe space to be a vacuum.  Scientists once believed that catastrophes had no part in shaping our earth (uniformitarianism).  Now scientists believe that meteorite impacts have caused the extinction of various species of animals at various points in time.  In the 1700s, scientist scoffed at the rural folks who told them that rocks fell from the sky and denied what we now know as meteorites existed.  Now scientists go to great lengths to find meteorites and study them.  If you read any science periodical, you will constantly find research that challenges what we know and understand.  Science, for the foreseeable future, will be constantly revising its beliefs as it discovers new evidence.  This is the way science works.  It is a fact that the further science goes from our current space and time, the less certain science is.

History teaches us both Christianity and science have not been a totally reliable guide to what is true in terms of our knowledge of events that occurred in the past.  The problem is we humans are finite and we make mistakes in interpreting the Bible and in interpreting the scientific evidence we have accumulated.  So I have learned to be more reserved in asserting one side or the other has the correct interpretation of a particular set of observations and data.

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[1]   John Hick.  Evil and the God of Love.  New York:  Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010, p. 222.

[2]   Colin A. Ronan.  Galileo.  New York:  G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1974, p. 29.