Christians Seem Anti-Science
Jeremy MacDonald · Tidal Church Moncton · April 24, 2022 · I Can't Believe in God Because... series
Jeremy MacDonald takes on the idea that Christianity is anti-science, pointing to Jesus' call to love God with all our mind and love our neighbour, and to the Christians who helped build universities, hospitals and science. He invites honest questions and doubts.
More from Jeremy MacDonald · The I Can't Believe in God Because... series
Topics: Faith, Mission & Outreach, Discipleship
Transcript
[0:00] Well, in 1692, there were a couple of young girls who started acting a little bit strange. They started speaking out of turn, maybe yelling, crawling under furniture, kind of contorting themselves in weird positions. At least that's how the story goes. And all of a sudden, they had the spark for what became known as the Salem witch trials, this really unfortunate event where we're kind of the church and the Christians of the day. Sparked this deep distrust of their community in Salem, Massachusetts. Hundreds of people were thought to be these witches, and many of them were convicted, and some of them even executed for that particular crime.
[0:47] And then a number of years earlier than that, Galileo was doing scientific research and taking theories of the day and looking at the stars, and came to the conclusion that the universe actually revolves around our sun, and not that everything revolves around the earth. And so he was put on trial at some point because a number of the religious leaders of the day thought that was heresy, and he was convicted of heresy, the Inquisition of Galileo. Or how about the snake handlers? A group of very interesting pastors, very different than myself, hopefully, because I cannot imagine doing this, but they literally take snakes, hold onto them on a stage like this, maybe even happening this morning, crazy.
[1:36] And they believe, because they've misinterpreted a passage of Scripture in Mark, they believe that if these snakes bite them, that it will not harm them. And yet the snakes do bite, and when these pastors or Christians refuse the anti-venom, they often, they die. These situations, these stories that perhaps you've heard about, I mean, each of one of these, when you think about the Salem witch trials, when you think about that Inquisition of Galileo, when you think about the snake handlers, it leads us to this really, I think, authentic and rational conclusion, and that's that it really does seem clear that Christianity is just anti-science, that this Christian faith has to be anti-science when you consider the facts, and you consider the things that people have done in Jesus' name.
[2:32] And so it's no surprise, right? It's absolutely no surprise, it's no shock, that then when you Google around, you find people on the Internet, you read people like Bryn, who writes for the HuffPost, writes, and she says, "The faster conservative religion is overwhelmingly seen as mean, crazy, violent, hateful, misogynistic, and anti-science, the faster we as a society can move on." It just makes sense that somebody would think that, like, I can't fault Bryn in any way, shape, or form. Or Arthur C. Clarke, he wrote this a number of years ago, and his character in Childhood "Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets." Or my favorite is Bill Maher. Bill Maher has a lot of very colorful things to say about faith and religion. He says, "Religion, it stops people from thinking because they think all the answers are in that one book, the Bible or the Quran," and of course he references a number of religions, "if it's in that one book and it impedes progress, and it justifies crazy people," and there are crazy people.
[3:31] There really are crazy people, and there's crazy things that happen in the name of Jesus and in the name of all religions. And so, likely you're here thinking, yeah, this makes sense. Like that's my story. Like it doesn't really compute if you're a logical and reasonable person that you would buy into everything that the Christian faith has in store for you. And I mean, if that's your story, like I'm really glad that you're here. This is hopefully going to be a fun conversation. And maybe, honestly, maybe there's nothing that I say that is going to change or just anything that you think, but I hope, honestly, that if we have this unique kind of one-way conversation, that maybe you'd be open to a further conversation.
[4:17] You know, maybe you're here and you're sitting amongst the seats, and to be honest, most people would think that you are, of course, 100% sold out for this Jesus movement. Like you are a Christian, and yet, and not everybody really realizes this, but you have some serious doubts because you read and hear these kinds of stories, and you're not quite sure what to make of it all. And so you're nervous because you certainly don't want to be seen as unfaithful, and yet at the same time, you're not quite sure what you actually believe. And then maybe you're in this third category, and maybe you're somebody that's been following Jesus, you're kind of committed to it, you're all in, you believe it, and yet you know and recognize that there are lots of people in your life that have got serious, authentic questions and doubts. And maybe it's not even that they want to have a conversation about it, but they've put up a wall because of this assumption.
[5:06] And there's a few different ways we might phrase it, the assumption that if I believe in science, if I'm a rational human being, I can't believe in God. They just don't, they don't compute. Or maybe it's put it this way, that Christianity is anti-intellectual. You have to check your brain at the door before you ever show up in a church like this if you're going to believe what these people believe. Or lastly, that religious people, that they are subjective and irrational in their reason. And what's happening these days is that actually in the public discourse, Christians are becoming less and less trustworthy or looked on favorably by the rest of society and culture. There's this recent study even here in Canada where now more than ever before when people think about faithful people, religious people, Christian people, they assume that we're a net negative on society versus a net positive.
[5:59] And to be fair, we have to own the fact that Christians have done some awful terrible things in the name of Jesus. And yet, I do wonder if sometimes we've not remembered the full story. Because interestingly enough, if you do some digging, if you do some reading, if you do some discovery and even just some googling, you might find out that oftentimes this big dichotomy between science and religion, that it's actually kind of a recent invention or conversation. In fact, there's an author named Elaine Ecklund. And she's a fascinating follow. And she's a little bit strong in terms of how she approaches this as a topic. But she would write that the conflict perspective on science and religion is actually an invention of the West. And it's a recent one. This idea that historically, if you go back even hundreds or thousands of years, there hasn't necessarily been this kind of divide between science and religion.
[6:50] But at the end of the 19th century, there were a couple of books in particular that came out. And whether it was for political reasons or fundraising reasons, these books kind of sparked and kind of unpacked this idea that was new at the time, that religion and science would actually be at odds with one another. And so what she says, in terms of like digging into this whole topic, she'll actually say that much of what we believe about the faith lives of elite scientists today is actually wrong. That if we assume to follow the scientific method and to follow where the science leads, naturally leads away from any conversation about faith or God or religion, it's actually incorrect. Now, she's going to take a much stronger position on this than I would. But I want to read you her quote because it's, I don't know, it's kind of interesting.
[7:38] So she would say, the insurmountable hostility, right? The insurmountable hostility between science and religion. Well, it's actually a caricature. This could be a little overstated. But she says it's a thought cliche, perhaps useful as a satire on group things, but hardly representative of reality. And the reason that she is so strong in terms of talking about this is because if we actually take a full reading of history and we take a full reading of our faith and we take a full reading of where science is at today, you might actually come to a dramatically different conclusion, perhaps. Instead of thinking that all of these things are completely incompatible. And I think part of the reason for that is that at the core, at the very beginning, at the start of this Christian faith, is not something that is so ethereal as a belief in an invisible God that is impossible to see or experience.
[8:33] Interestingly, the beginning of the Christian faith is actually this historical event. If you go back to why do we gather in a building like this and sing these songs and celebrate when people get dunked into water, why is taking a bath all of a sudden something worth celebrating? Well, the reason is because 2,000 years ago, there were these first-century Jews that were tracking along with this rabbi who was kind of interesting. And He did some weird things and He said some odd things and they weren't quite expecting all that would transpire. And yet, as He gathered them around and predicted His death, His burial and His resurrection, they assumed He meant some kind of bigger picture ethereal thing that might happen down the line in the future.
[9:19] But something weird happened that we, of course, celebrate every year at Easter just last weekend. This weird thing happened. These first-century people that were witnesses to the life of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, they saw Him and they saw Him die and they saw Him go into the tomb and be buried and then they witnessed Him afterwards being resurrected. Now, in the first century, interestingly enough, when you died, you would stay dead. That's what happened. That's what happens now, too, right? Nobody expected dead people to come back to life even though in those days you might have the Caesars who would claim kind of deity. When they died, you assumed that they, of course, would stay dead, and they did. That's what happened when you die.
[10:04] And yet, here's this character, this Jesus, who would show up and walk around, actually be, like, touched by human hands, by these eyewitnesses, eat along with His friends once again and have conversation. They were witness to it and hundreds of people would witness Him. And then they would watch as He would ascend into the heavens and that group of people began sharing that story because it's crazy. Like, it's really ridiculous. And yet, that historical event, if true, changes everything. And so that's the impetus for this gathering that we have as Christians, as Jesus' followers. If you're a skeptic, which we're so happy that you're here, we're so happy that you might tune in and listen. No matter what brought you here, people, you know, bribed you to show up.
[10:52] If you, you know, are kind of hungover and we're just scrolling through, you know, Instagram and stumbled onto something like this, like, hey, whatever got you here, it's great. But what we gather here for is so that we can kind of unpack this character that historically existed and really nobody reasonable at this point would refute that. This historical person had some interesting things to say, but more than that, it's interesting what He said because of what He actually really did. And so for 2,000 years, we track along with the stories and the writings of these eyewitness accounts to the events of Jesus' life. And there's this one in particular that I think is really, really critical and important to this particular conversation, because I think it has set in motion more than we might give Christians credit for.
[11:38] And it's this, Jesus is being asked about the most important commandment. And He quotes, perhaps kind of, you know, people would have anticipated this. He quotes from the Shema, which is this wonderful Jewish passage. If you go actually back online on our website, you can find our lead pastor Joel. He actually unpacked for a couple of weeks in early February What the Shema was all about. But it's this classic Jewish text from the book of Deuteronomy. And Jesus starts by saying that. And so this is what Jesus says when asked about, you know, the most important commandment. He says this. Jesus says, "You must love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all of your mind." Now, nobody in the first century would take that and assume that He was meaning different categories. That's kind of something that we might read into the text today and assume that Jesus is talking about loving Him with your emotional being or your whole being and, you know, your intellectual being.
[12:29] In those days, it would have, of course, just simply meant your whole being and trying to encapsulate what it means as a whole person to bring yourself in love for your heavenly Father. So that's the first commandment. But interestingly, He goes on to articulate, and what I think is actually one of the best ways that we can live this particular commandment out, He explains. He says this. "This is the first, and it's the greatest commandment. And the second is equally important." It's equally important because I think it actually gives us the direction on how we might live out that love for God. It's this. He says, "Love your neighbor as yourself." Love your neighbor as yourself, which to us now, I mean, we get this.
[13:16] But this kind of love is earth-shattering in the culture of the day. The implications for this is that you would live a dramatically different life than you would see your culture living out. Jesus would actually go on and say in a later verse, trying to understand and explain what love He's really calling us towards. And He would say, "By this, they will know your love, if you love one another as I have loved you." And of course, Jesus was willing to lay down His life for others. And so this love that He's calling us into is meant to actually cost us quite a bit. And so Jesus says, "Love your neighbor as yourself." These two commandments, the entire law and all the commands of the prophets, they're based on these two particular things. These two particular things sum it all up. And so for centuries, those that have followed Jesus have looked at this and said, "OK, if we're meant to love God with our entire being, this isn't just something that we do on a Sunday morning when we show up.
[14:09] This isn't just something that we do when we think about listening to a podcast that might be religious in nature. This is something that we're meant to bring our whole lives to." What does it mean to bring your whole life in love and service to God? Well, one of the ways that you could explain that is by loving your neighbor. And so over the centuries, what's happened is we've had Christians who take this command really seriously and bring their entire life, whatever their vocation is, whatever their work is, and they attempt to love the people around them in such a way that it would be clear that they love God so much. And what's actually happened is that from a scientific perspective is we've seen enormous progress, not in spite of Christians, but actually because of them.
[14:58] Now, you can Google all of this stuff, and you should. You should check it, and you should push back if you think that I'm taking a bit of a big step here. In fact, at any point, you feel free to email me. I would love to chat with you. My email is jeremy@youthworker.community, spelled as you would think it is. I would love, honestly, to hear from you. Maybe we can, if you're local, we can chat over coffee or something like that. Would love for you to push back because I know that you're thoughtful, and I know you've thought this through, and I know that when you're skeptical and you've got serious questions, that this is something that you have not just taken lightly. So I get that. But I want to walk you through a few ways that perhaps, at least for me, I've been surprised and pleasantly surprised at what Christians are actually capable of. Not to discredit the things that we've done wrong, but that there are also some incredible things that perhaps we've done really right.
[15:46] So if you survey, for example, Nobel Prize winners for about 100 years, kind of for the whole 20th century, and you survey all the different Nobel Prize winners, you discover that 65% of them had a Christian faith. About 20% of them were actually Jewish. That the biggest advancements in science and the other categories are oftentimes happening because of Christians. Now, interestingly enough, continue on, if you think about the university as a concept, the university as a concept was actually started as, well, started by Christians and then started as a response to this great commandment to love the Lord your God with all of your mind. There was not like a sense that if we explored and expanded our intellectual capabilities, that that would be anti-religion. No, it was because of our love for God that it would be worth discovering more of this creation, this world that God has made, that we could dissect and celebrate the mapping of the human genome because if we did, we would be able to see the complexities of perhaps what God has created.
[16:47] And so we don't let our faith get in the way of scientific progress, but scientific progress might actually happen because of faith. And so if you actually go and you look at the university, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Oxford, all began as Christian institutions. That's not to say all universities at this point are that, but as a concept, that's what happened. And then if you look even at schools generally and hospitals and hospice and orphanages and all of these different places where we would say are wonderful places of progress in our society, oftentimes there's the mark of Christians at the beginning. So let me read you a few quotes. This first book is an interesting one. If you want to check it out, John Ortberg wrote, Who Is This Man? He writes a couple of examples and stories that, you know, in the earliest centuries of the church, a church father named Basil had an idea.
[17:35] What if we build a place to love and care for lepers? They don't have money. They don't even have to pay for it. We'll raise the money. Now, again, in the fourth century, this is not something that you would just do naturally. We kind of assume at this point that when we go to the grocery store, it makes sense that somebody would ask if we want to donate to the IWK, like that's just our local hospital. And so local children's hospital, that's something that, you know, doesn't really register. But in this day, this was earth-shattering. This was different. And so one of the most famous sermons in that century was by his brother Gregory. And he was also a church father and it was to raise money for this place to take care of leprosy. And that was the beginning of what would become known as hospitals. If you work in the medical field today, you should know that the field that you work in is here because of, not in spite of, but because of the commitment of Christians over the centuries.
[18:23] Another story. Another follower of Jesus named Jean Henry. Couldn't stand, I don't know if that's how he pronounces it, but it sounds good. He couldn't stand the sound of soldiers crying out on a battlefield after they had been wounded. And so this Swiss philanthropist, he said he would devote his life to helping them in Jesus' name. And that started an organization in the 1860s that became known as the Red Cross. So while this awful thing is happening in Salem, Massachusetts, there's also on the other side of the Atlantic, the significant thing going on where the Red Cross is being birthed and all of the good that has happened. And certainly, I'm not saying that all the good that the Red Cross has done has been because of Christians. All sorts of other people have jumped on board and celebrated the mission of this organization. But you should know that it got its start all the way back here. Here's another one.
[19:09] A British politician named William Wilberforce, he was converted. He fought slavery, and he fought slavery because of his faith, not in spite of it. Interestingly enough, if you go all the way back to that fourth century, character of Basil and his brother Greg, they actually were railing against slavery even back then. And so for sure we lament when Christians have been on the wrong side of this issue, but at the same time, you need to at least know that at the core of our faith is this commitment to love our neighbor and to do anything else is very counter what Jesus has called us to. And there have been Christians that have rightly found themselves in a place where they might be able to cause us to change our culture for the sake of our neighbor. Now, more on the scientific endeavors. There's an interesting author named Rebecca.
[19:56] She wrote Confronting Christianity, and she uses a couple examples that, again, were interesting to me. Maybe they're interesting to you. To hear new atheists today, one would scarcely think that modern science was first developed by Christians. Two Franciscan friars, Roger Bacon and William of Occam, they laid the empirical and methodological foundations for the scientific method. Francis Bacon established and popularized it, and in his essay Of Atheism, he wrote, "It is true that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." Now, that's one man's opinion, and I know you've thought it through much more perhaps than he has, but I think it's interesting to note that if we look at some of the origins of even the scientific method, we find Christians living out their faith in a real and practical and tangible way that has dramatically influenced our world.
[20:51] Now, how about this one? A Belgian Roman Catholic priest named Georges was the first, he was the first to propose the crazy sounding idea that the universe had begun as an incredibly hot, incredibly dense point, a cosmic egg, all right? Like any scientific paradigm shift, the theory met with resistance. In this instance, some of the pushback was motivated by atheism because of Stephen Hawking. You guys remember Stephen Hawking? Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant man, observed many people do not like the idea that time actually has a beginning, probably because it smacks of divine intervention. And so people of the day assumed more of a steady state theory of the universe. And here's this Christian calling out a different approach. Now, what do I know about the Big Bang? Really not much, whatever I read. I mean, I went to a divinity school.
[21:36] Like, I'm a pastor. So the fact of, like, the science-based conversations, I'm sure again, you could school me on where they come from and how it works and all that kind of stuff. My point is that, for centuries, Christians haven't been nervous to engage in thoughtful conversation about even the deepest questions about how the earth has begun. For centuries, Christians haven't been nervous to talk about the sciences and instead have been very much motivated by this call of Christ to love their God and to love their neighbor and to bring their faith, their whole self, to explore the sciences. And so what I think, what I want to kind of propose is that maybe for you, and hopefully this might be new if you're here and you're a skeptic, science should actually lead you to explore Christianity.
[22:27] Science should actually lead you to take a step towards this exploration of who this God actually is and why do so many people believe Him and why perhaps His belief in this God transforms the universe, society, in such a significant kind of way. And likewise, likewise, Christianity should lead you to explore science. That you should not be ever nervous about some of the deep questions about our world today. Now, interestingly enough, if you do a little bit of digging, you discover again that some of the most high-profile scientists out there are actually people who care deeply about their faith. So somebody that you might recognize from the last couple of years during the pandemic is Francis Collins. Francis is, or was, the director of the NIH in the U.S., and so a lot of the pandemic response, he was involved with that.
[23:16] Significant character in that scientific community, is known for leading the charge and mapping the human genome. This character who, honestly, has lived out his faith in an incredibly public way, in a field that he's also received quite a bit of backlash for. And so he's written books specifically about living faith out in the midst of the scientific community. But in some ways, no matter what you think about Francis and how he's dealt with everything over the last couple of years, he's certainly garnered an enormous amount of respect on all sides of the issue. The late Christopher Hitchens, who some of you may know, as one of the four horsemen of atheism from back in the day, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, I always forget the fourth one. But Christopher Hitchens, the late Christopher Hitchens, on an interview, I watched this on YouTube, it's fascinating, and they were asking how he was doing, and he actually referenced his friend, Francis Collins, who Christopher Hitchens would describe as one of the most devout people that he knows and also one of the greatest Americans out there.
[24:15] And so for Francis Collins, if you've done the Alpha Course, you've actually seen his story, because he explains a little bit as a part of the Alpha Course, which is fascinating. We have this wonderful example of Christian faith continuing to allow somebody to explore the sciences. Now, we should say that there is a worthwhile pause if you're here and maybe just a little bit of pushback, if you've got some pretty healthy skepticism, but you've actually created a religion out of your skepticism, or you've created a religion out of your own scientific belief. And so there's this word, it's a little bit disparaging, but a group of thinkers and philosophers, they've kind of described this as scientism. And scientism is this, it's a matter of putting too high a value on natural science in comparison with other branches of learning or culture.
[25:01] And what ends up happening is that sometimes people assume that their own rational thoughts and their own scientific method could actually determine what's actually true and right in the world, and that's all you really need. And if you kind of follow that out, you discover you're swimming in a little bit of philosophy and maybe some logical positivism, and there's a lot too that's really worth chatting about. Again, we'd love to hang out and talk. But the unfortunate thing is that sometimes you can get caught building yourself up a platform that is not worth standing on. And you just have to look at history to realize that if you put too much faith and trust in the scientific system, you might end up believing that, gosh, we need to get those leeches so we can let out some blood because that's the way that we cure diseases. That was scientific consensus at some point, or that if you got a mental illness, surely you need a lobotomy because that's gonna fix you up.
[25:51] Or even today, there's this kind of movement to take a number of scientific research and try to replicate it, because if we do research well and follow the scientific method well, that we all should be able to replicate it no matter what. We've got the correct methodology, and yet there's this reproducibility project that's discovering sometimes it's really difficult to reproduce some of the things that we hold dear and near to our hearts about how the world works. And so we just need to be cautious, I guess, is the bottom line, that we don't elevate our pursuit of science into a place that it was never meant to be, it was never really meant to be. And so there's this thinker and theologian named Keith Ward. He says this about it, he says, "No statements are true unless they can be proven scientifically." Right, that's kind of the thought that lots of people have. "Unless they can be proven scientifically or logically.
[26:36] And no statements are true unless they can be shown empirically to be true." And some people kind of think that's the scientific way, but of course he says, you can't prove those statements scientifically, biologically, or empirically, so we have to hold this appropriately. So in light of all of these things, in light of all these things, I want to suggest that it might be worth thinking about faith in one of a number of different ways. And I've got four suggestions, and yours is going to be just one. And so if you can pick one of these and it's helpful, that would be, you know, my time would be well spent and maybe your time is well spent to be here. I want to suggest one of four different actions that you might take as you process what it means to take faith and science and the complexities that are trying to bring them together for your own world.
[27:25] And so my first idea is simply this: ask yourself the question, especially if you're a skeptic, of course, if you're nervous about this or if you're not quite sure that you could ever follow into faith, like, honestly, ask yourself this: what do I have to believe or what do I have to not believe in order to actually explore faith, not commit to faith, right, like buy all in and like set up shop and be here every day of the week? What do you have to do just to explore it? What's the thing that kind of keeps you a little bit hesitant from it all? What's the thing that you're like, "This is the issue for me, this is the big one"? And you should know that, like you should be honest about that. And once you know specifically what that issue is, like you should actually bring it up or talk to somebody about it. Maybe there's maybe there's a reasonable answer for it. It's kind of why we've been doing this series, and you'll stick around hopefully for the next number of weeks as we try to unpack these big questions that oftentimes people hold up as reasons why they don't want to follow Jesus.
[28:21] Because what we discover is oftentimes the reasons that we have aren't actually good reasons, because there's helpful, reasonable answers. There's this fascinating philosopher, Alvin Plantinga. You should check him out, but he's done such a thoughtful job of kind of philosophically and rationally explaining why people would follow into this kind of religious sphere and bring their whole mind to it. And it's caused ripples in the academy because he's convincing more and more people that it's actually a reasonable, rational thing to kind of do. And so when you bring your whole mind to the conversation and you honestly dig, you might discover something that's a little bit shocking for yourself. Secondly, be honest about your doubts with multiple people, because I know that for somebody here, you know, you've been here and you've been bought in and you're a part of things, but you do have these doubts and you're kind of nervous about them.
[29:12] And so you don't talk about them and you don't bring them up, but I want to tell you, you should actually bring them up. You know, if you're a high school student and you're sitting in classes and you're really wondering, like, gosh, is what I'm hearing at church really congruent with what I'm hearing here? And like, how do you bring these things together? You should be open and transparent about the things that cause you to have a little bit of pause. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, we need to do that. We need to do that for each other, and we need to make space for that kind of doubt. And so when somebody brings up a doubt, we don't belittle them for that, but we celebrate the fact that there might be honesty in the conversation and we chase down answers together. Number three, and maybe this is you, if you're called to find a vocation in the sciences, you should bring your faith with you. And it might be challenging to do that. It might be difficult to really understand how that works. But when you move something forward in the scientific realm, we want to celebrate that as Jesus' followers.
[30:03] And so don't be nervous about the fact that you might have a faith that inspires you in your work. Instead, meld those things together, bring them and allow that to be something that we all can celebrate. And Francis Collins is an interesting and wonderful example of doing, I think, just that, bringing those things together. Lastly, number four, ask more questions when somebody disagrees with you. When somebody brings something up and you're like, gosh, that's, I don't know. Ask some questions. Try and learn a little bit. Be okay with the tension that that might create. And be okay with being wrong. Be okay with being off on a topic. There's nothing wrong with that. I think for us, as Jesus' followers in today's day and age, we have to be much more willing than perhaps we're seen in culture to be having the conversations that folks actually want to have about what we believe or how the science leads us in certain directions.
[30:59] And so ask more questions. Now for you, four ideas, one of these perhaps is kind of like your next step, one of your ideas. One of these four things could be the thing that you want to tackle. And whatever one of the four, these things are, it's worth kind of maybe bringing it up to the person that you're with or that you came here with or you're watching with. Like, if there was something here, if you were to take a next step, which one of these four would make sense for you? And again, I'm hopeful that if you've got a number of really serious questions and concerns when it comes to religion and science, that you would be willing to have that conversation. Because obviously, in a span of 30, 40 minutes together, I can't necessarily cover the thing that you are thinking and processing. But I promise you, I promise you, if you have been thinking about it, that many other people have.
[31:46] And many other people have, in particular, when you think about like the faith community, that conversation has happened inside of a faith community. And it's just a matter of discovering where the resources are or where the articles are or where the thinkers are. And so again, I would love to chat with you or chat with the person that brought you and think through honestly what conversations are worth continuing to have. As we wrap up our time today, I want to leave you with, I want to leave you with the passage of Scripture, because when we think about all of these things, It can be, it can be maybe challenging to continue to bring it back to this faith that we've been called to, or at least that I've been called to, and following Christ. And obviously, some of your questions, it's not like there's a Bible verse that explains the answer.
[32:33] And yet, there's this passage of Scripture, it's in the Gospel of John. John's one of the authors that have walked us through the life of Jesus. And John was writing probably after everybody else had kind of shared their stories about the life of Jesus. John lived a longer life than most of his friends that were also the disciples of the apostles. And so he kind of has this unique perspective of kind of seeing the birth of the church, the birth of the Christian movement spreading around the Mediterranean rim a little bit there. And so as he describes and is trying to write out who is this Jesus, this person that people are willing to die for, he starts off his biography of Jesus in a way that the other three certainly don't. And it's a little bit theological and a little bit trying to process and wrap your head around what is actually happening here when we look at this character of Jesus.
[33:23] And I want to leave you with it because I think it might be, it might be helpful or it might be encouraging. John 1, in the beginning, in like the very, very beginning, the Word, or the logos, the Greek word, referencing Jesus Himself, this person that he knew and was interacting with and yet claimed deity, this Word, Jesus was all, He already existed and the Word was with God and the Word was God. So this person that we talk about, this Jesus of Nazareth, He really was equal with God. He existed in the beginning with God and God created everything through Him.
[34:10] The most small detail that we look through the microscope to see, the far away stars that we can see in our telescope, everything has been created according to John. Everything was through Jesus and nothing was created except through Him. The Word gave life to everything that was created and His life brought light to everyone. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness, well, the darkness can never extinguish it. And the fascinating thing is that for hundreds of years, people rise up and they assume this is the generation that this Jesus movement will be over because surely once we discover the next scientific breakthrough, this will be the end.
[34:57] Surely once we figure out this next thing, there's no reason for people to follow Jesus. And yet, for some reason, the light of Christ that shines through those that call Him King continues to light up the world year after year after year. And if you're a Christian here, you're meant to carry that light into your world in such a way that our world is transformed because of it. And the commitment, the commitment from John himself, knowing Jesus and knowing the story and knowing how it all works, he says that light, it shines in the darkness and because of Jesus, Jesus' light through us will never be extinguished. There's no darkness that can overcome it. And so would we be willing to take that light into whatever this week brings and be the kinds of people that would love God but be known that our love for God is spurring us on to this incredible love for the people around us.
[35:55] Let me pray. Heavenly Father, it's always an honor to open the Scriptures and to read words that Your Son Jesus would have said so long ago. And yet, these folks had the foresight to retell that story, to write it down, to make sure that generations and generations would know the truth of this wild story from 2,000 years ago. And we recognize that because of this, we are so happy that our world continues to be a better place for those that are sick, that our world is a better place for those that want to learn, that our world is a better place for those that would struggle in the world.
[36:41] God, could it be a better place not in spite of religion but because of it? And so we ask that You would guide us in such a way that that would be the story of our lifetime. That our culture would look and celebrate the fact that Christians continue to be a part of our culture. And yet, Lord, we repent of the fact that so often it may not be the case. And so often we get it wrong and we muddle Your name in our culture. And so for the Jesus followers in the room today, Lord, I pray that we would carry this responsibility well. That we would be willing to be open and invite the kinds of feedback that we need so that we could represent You appropriately. And then God, for those that are in the room and are nervous about all things faith, I pray that they might be willing to explore and that they might be willing to take a step towards You and that You might celebrate the fact that even though, gosh, even though there's so much in the realm of the sciences that can cause us to be pausing, that in the midst of it all, if we keep digging, that we know and trust that we'll discover You as the Creator of all things.
[37:50] We pray these things in Jesus' name.