What Do You Expect?
What we think about the Bible, and what we get out of reading it, is largely dependent on expectations other people have instilled in us.
For instance, it’s commonly said the Bible is not a science text. That’s true. It’s also commonly said the Bible is not about science, or scientific things, but only things “spiritual” or “religious”, so we should not compare or evaluate one in terms of the other because they are about two different realities, one “natural” and one “supernatural”. That’s not true.
Much of what the Bible talks about, and tells us about, is that very same reality science is about. Social sciences and physical sciences! And while you might think that that stuff about God in the Bible is not at all what science is about, you need to look a bit closer at some of what physics and cosmology and astronomy are getting into nowadays. Small wonder so many scientists, especially in those sciences, believe in God, and are practicing Christians or Jews.
The Bible itself tells us that it is but one testimony about the truth and nature of God, and what He requires of us. The other, it says, is the creation itself. The Bible tells us that mankind’s study of the creation, the natural physical reality of the universe, is but another way to discover and understand God. And science, for most of it’s history, was almost universally thought of, by both scientists and churchmen, as just that. The schism, the development of the “culture war” between science and Christianity, began primarily over both sides’ misunderstanding of evolution and what it meant.
Even today many (myself included) do not think that the theory and established tenets of evolution need at all be a contradiction of the Bible, of Genesis, or belief in God or a Divine Creator. That said, from a Biblical point of view, science is just another way of “reading” about God, of discovering the truth and nature of God, and what He requires of us (i.e. what it takes to survive and prosper inside His creation). Some scientists, like some theologians, may try to use their endeavors to refute God and the Bible, and think that what they know about nature and natural processes, do refute the Bible. They are so wrong, but even then they are giving tacit acknowledgment that science and the Bible are both dealing with the same subject matter.
The first chapter of Romans makes exactly that point:
Romans 1:18-20. For God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, since what can be known about God is evident among them, because God has shown it to them. From the creation of the world His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what he has made. As a result, people are without excuse.
That is, even if one never heard of God, or the Bible, or anything of any Judeo-Christian religion, one should still know there is a God, and what He is like, and even that He requires righteous behavior of us. That we have no excuse, not anyone, for disrespecting our earth, or life, or our neighbors. That probably works for most people.
So scientists, searching farther and deeper into the “text and testimony” that nature offers about the truth and nature of God, and how we must behave if we are to survive and prosper in via the laws and principles of the natural creation, are doing much the same thing that biblical scholars and theologians are doing. They are looking for the same truths, the same principles and laws, in that same objective “reality” in which we exist!
In a sense, scientists are like forensic and engineering experts trying to understand how, say, a car is made and built in order to understand what it is and how it works in order get the best out of it. Theologians are more into reading the manual provided by the manufacturer in order to do the same.
Sometimes just reading the manual is the best way to meet our needs, even in scientific things. That’s especially true if we have not yet developed a scientific understanding of the subject. Like, if you have no engineers or factory technicians around, you better use the owner’s manual to work on your car. The Bible, many a Christian likes to say, is like an owner’s manual, written by the original manufacturer of the earth and life, for the folks who owned the 1500 BC model. It was very practical. Like Chilton’s manuals for cars, written to help you keep your car working, The Bible was a relatively untheoretical set of recipes and directions for keeping your life running … then. For instance, consider the “manual’s” instructions on how to deal with a corpse:
Num 19:14-21
14 ‘This is the law when a man dies in a tent: All who come into the tent and all who are in the tent shall be unclean seven days;
15 ‘and every open vessel, which has no cover fastened on it, is unclean.
16 ‘Whoever in the open field touches one who is slain by a sword or who has died, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be unclean seven days.
17 ‘And for an unclean person they shall take some of the ashes of the heifer burnt for purification from sin, and running water shall be put on them in a vessel.
18 ‘A clean person shall take hyssop and dip it in the water, sprinkle it on the tent, on all the vessels, on the persons who were there, or on the one who touched a bone, the slain, the dead, or a grave.
19 ‘The clean person shall sprinkle the unclean on the third day and on the seventh day; and on the seventh day he shall purify himself, wash his clothes, and bathe in water; and at evening he shall be clean.
20 ‘But the man who is unclean and does not purify himself, that person shall be cut off from among the assembly, because he has defiled the sanctuary of the LORD. The water of purification has not been sprinkled on him; he is unclean.
21 ‘It shall be a perpetual statute for them. He who sprinkles the water of purification shall wash his clothes; and he who touches the water of purification shall be unclean until evening.
(NKJ)
(Note: “running water” is essentially fresh water; “sprinkle” would be better rendered “douse”; “washing” of clothing refers to major laundering, by thrashing or stomping on it in water)
Now, some people are offended by a passage like this, objecting to God “commanding” a bunch of onerous rules. Well, do you think a Chilton’s book on fixing your Ford is any less imperious? Are you offended because it doesn’t say, “If you’d like, tighten the bolts that hold the A-frame of the front wheel to the vehicle frame”? Hey, it’s your life at stake here! And if you’ll look closely, the rules in this “manufacturer’s manual” regarding corpses are pretty much equivalent to our modern scientific hazmat procedures.
The Hebrew scribe (Moses?) was surely completely unaware of germs and viruses and the hazards of exposure to dead bodies. No such scientific knowledge existed then. So the benefits of that reality were given him by another process, several thousand years before science could lead my government to prescribe hazmat rules for me to follow to protect myself and my community.
I read Numbers 19 years ago. Probably at least two times. But I didn’t really get it at all until a few months ago when a man committed suicide in an apartment building I run. He shot himself in the head while lying in his bed. The city medical examiner removed the corpse, but left the bloody bed and furniture and carpet there.
The man’s brother came up from Mexico to take care of the body and estate. He simply covered the messy bed with a blanket and slept on it! While I might have been a bit off-put by the gore, to him it was pretty practical. And I assume he was ignorant of Numbers 19. So was I. But our law required I call a hazmat company to clean and sterilize the apartment before I could begin to restore it for renting again. Talking to the workers in their spacesuit-like garb, I was advised how risky it had been for me to even go in earlier to clean out some of the junk.
When I recently reread Numbers 19, I immediately recognized the scientific sense and wisdom captured there. In this case the same truth of nature, of God’s creation, was involved. Two approaches, same result, though one of the approaches to knowledge got there at least 3000 plus years sooner. Lucky them!
As this blog goes on, this is going to be a theme repeated many times. The creation account of Genesis 1 and 2 is about all the same stuff modern science is about now. When science started some centuries ago the scientists, the fathers of science we revere today, knew that. Believing that the creation was the handiwork and design and esthetics of the Creator, they were excited that they would both get to know and understand the way the stuff was designed and created and made to work, as well as the mind and heart of the Creator. Many scientists still do. And, I’m happy to say, so do many Christians, especially the scientists among them.
The idea that the record, or description, of creation in Genesis 1 & 2 is any less likely to be a reasonable record or explanation, appropriate to someone living 3500 years ago is naive at best. It’s somewhat justifiable, I suppose, to think that because it was written so long ago, so long before any knowledge of, let alone science or language referring to, or descriptive of, such things as the planet, or galaxies, or space-time, or atoms and genes, etc., it would not really have any real meat or substance in it. Most people, I think, think of it, with its curious, more or less picturesque and poetic language, as most likely a fluff piece with no objective scientific reality or underpinnings. No relevence. No comparability with what we know today. But that’s not true!
Just like the hazmat instructions of Numbers 19, the Creation Account of Genesis 1 & 2 is serious, and talking about the very same reality that science is about. The problem is the language. It needs a better rendition, in terms and language of today, with relevence and comparability to the jargon and theory that we all have acquired from modern science. It needs translating. And modern science, having dug so deeply and discovered so much about the history and processes of creation, is actually a big help in the art and forensics of translating that 3500 year-old, “for the general public” text!
So what do you expect? Stick around and follow what goes on here. We will translate and analyse and interpret Genesis 1 and 2, even some of 3. And more. Other verses that help us understand Genesis, and the creation by God, as the Bible tells it, and even as science tells it! We will look at, and translate and interpret things that science discovers, or theorizes about, or has to say, from both the Biblical and scientific perspectives. I think I can promise you that what you’ll learn, no matter what you expect, will pretty much blow you away!
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on Sunday, March 1st, 2009 at 8:18 pm and is filed under Bible & Science, What We're About.
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