BLOGGING TOWARD SUNDAY…

I learned this morning that the Church of England has issued a formal apology to Charles Darwin. The apology reads, in part: Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try to practice the old virtues of “faith seeking understanding” and hope that makes some amends.

The Church admits that “opposition to evolutionary theories” is still a litmus test in many Christian circles, and that such attitudes often stem from a perceived threat to Christianity. Here’s what I tell my Disciple classes as we begin to study the Genesis accounts (yes, there are more than one) of creation: There are no conflicts between science and the Bible. They do not address the same subjects. The Bible is not a scientific textbook. It was written thousands of years ago by authors who were inspired by God to tell their faith story…how our predecessors understood and interpreted their world, how they made sense of life, how they thought about God.

Science is about observable, demonstrable, verifiable, facts…totally unconcerned with the realm of faith. Science does not care about who God is or what God expects of us. When science proves a fact, as it has done with evolution (evolution has not been a “theory” in a long time), it should never threaten our faith. It should, instead, enhance it, realizing that whatever processes have been and are at work in the universe, those processes were begun and continue under the watchful guidance of the One who hung the stars and laid the earth’s foundation. Rest in that.

Filed under: Blogging Toward Sunday