“The God Who Did It That Way”

I hope our last few posts have opened your mind to the fact that Christians can approach science with a curiosity and a child-like wonder without giving up their faith.  Science and faith are not divorced parents who leave us in the spot of having to choose between one or the other.  Rather, they are like a strong marriage where disagreements arise, but eventually get worked out.  In a marriage, when two people are focused on the same goal, they usually find ways to work out their differences.  Likewise, my interest in science and my pursuit of faith have the same goal; seeking the truth.  The apparent differences between the two get worked out.

My advice to believers everywhere, and especially to young people, is do not be afraid of scientific discovery.  Do not be afraid to pursue a career in physics, biology, or chemistry.  Do not be afraid of the secular bias of your college professor.

Science, at its core, is about data, facts, and theories that are basically independent of a religious angle.  But scientists who do not believe in God will imply – or even forcefully require – that one interprets all science through a purely natural lens that excludes God.  I hope over these last few posts that I have whet your appetite to the idea that our latest discoveries in science actually make the most sense, have the least “something just happened”, when we include the Creator God in the picture.

Is the universe 13.8 billion years old?  I don’t know.  God has not specifically spoken on this subject.  But I find an order out of chaos, a beauty in the complexity of the Big Bang theory that could only have happened with God at the helm.  Going from the Big Bang to where we are today by only the natural march of time and chance is unfathomable.  It is literally impossible.

My friend Dr. Michael Guillen, former science editor of ABC News, has drawn the same conclusion.  As a young professor at Harvard University, he began to question how the incredible beauty and order and form of the universe from the smallest subatomic particle to the most massive galaxy could stay so consistently perfect without a creator.  Those questions inclined his heart and mind toward God.  Reading the Bible and believing the gospel took him the rest of the way.

So rather than fear scientific discovery, we should see the hand of God in all that we discover.  I like the way Professor John Lennox of the University of Oxford put it when I heard him speak at Park Street Church in Boston.  In the context of not fearing new discovery – whether in the fossil record, the Cosmic Microwave Background, or the human genome – he said, “The more we study and understand the universe, the more we recognize the genius of the God who did it that way.”

May you recognize and be encouraged by “the genius of the God who did it that way.”

One thought on ““The God Who Did It That Way””

  1. Almost every day I am amazed at what I observe. I do not understand how one can NOT believe in a Creator when they see the amazing “machine” of the human body, the natural systems of mathematics that one can observe in botany and chemistry, and so many other wonders of this amazing universe!

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