The Failure of Sgt. Pepper

I love music. And I love the Beatles. I believe it is my God-given mission in life to help my children learn how to play every Beatles song. The girls have heard Revolver and Rubber Soul. Yesterday on the way to school, I introduced my girls to the Sgt. Pepper album. Normally the girls talk and play as they listen to different music. I play them all sorts of things: Sam Cooke, the Jackson 5, praise and worship music, Miles Davis, Muse, Handel, Weezer, etc. But when I put this album on, they stopped talking. Completely stopped.  For them, it was like pouring a painter’s pallette of colored music in their brain. I thought their little brains were gonna explode. I told them, “Some people think this album is the greatest album ever made.” My oldest daughter said, “Yeah, I think it may be.” Pretty astute observation for a 6 year old.

But I love this album for another reason: it’s a half-baked idea that was successful. When the idea for Sgt. Pepper was originally conceived, it was supposed to be a concept album. A few songs are – obviously the opening songs and the reprise. But much in the middle has little to do with the Sgt. Pepper concept. “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields Forever” were removed from the album for a double-sided single. Paul would later say that the album was “a complete thing that you could make what you liked of—just a little magical presentation.” Complete but a creation on its own.  It’s connected in its musicality if not in its inspiration.

To me, Sgt. Pepper represents a beautiful success that rises out of the failure of an idea. This is a great lesson for church leadership. The Beatles had no doubt that they could create a concept album. But what emerged was a collaborative effort that took on a life that was larger than Billy Shears. There’s a primal faith in that decision. Often times in church circles, we feel we must have everything ironed out before we put something into play. But if the Christian life is anything, it’s not neat and tidy. And in the same way, often times the most successful avenues of ministry are those that are concept-oriented but eventually take on a life of their own once handed over to individuals. Parts are successful while other parts fail. That’s really what relying on the Holy Spirit is all about. There’s something that seems right when you can release a project into the hands of a congregation and say, “This is where the Holy Spirit takes over.” At that point, we give God the freedom to weave his own revelation into the nuances of church life. And that’s when he creates “Sgt. Peppers” of his own.

 

Empowered Humility

My understanding of humility growing up was probably similar to yours. It involved shunning accolades, making sure I gave honor to God, declaring my unworthiness for salvation, and the like. I felt as though the compliments of others were poison darts filled with pride that would pierce my spiritual armor. The only way to defeat it? Deflect them with a good case of the “awww…shucks” and a hearty soli Deo gloria.

Now, I understand that perspective as a form of false humility – attempting to create within myself a facade of good-natured humility when really I craved the approval of others. I was not authentic. I said the correct things but relished in the attention/compliments of others. I now understand humility as something drastically different. Most people’s view of humility involves a resignation to some form of inactivity/timidity for the sake of “preferring others better than oneself.” And though that has a place in the Christian walk, it’s not the whole story. Empowered humility is really the defining mark of a Christian. In Romans 12, we find a recipe for Christian behavior. From the outset, Paul spends his time using action verbs – examples of behavior that are anything but idle. Even the verbs describing the willingness to put others’ interests in front of our own are intense, purposeful, and focused. It reminds me of the time-honored industrious phrase, “If you’re waiting on me, you’re backing up…” Verse 21 describes it best: “overcome evil by doing good.”  

You know, God is good, too. Tucked within the definition of “good” in any solid Greek lexicon is the idea of being productive. God’s actions are what ultimately declare his goodness. God looked at all he created and said it was good – it was active, dynamic, and teeming with life…just like him. We are made in his divine image – in Christ, we possess that same ability to be “good”: productive, active, constructive, energetic, and vigorous. But our common understanding of humility seems to state the opposite as if humility or meekness involves inactivity. To me, empowered humility involves taking the initiative under the direction of  God. Humble people see the desires and wishes of their Maker and move to make them a reality. Humility is not standing in a corner. It’s submitting ourselves to God and following him into active battle. It’s placing your life in the hands of another to fight for their cause with your life.

Empowered humility also involves attentiveness to the Holy Spirit and a willingness to put aside our own agendas and live an active life under guidance of the Spirit. There are countless examples of this in the Bible – active heroes and heroines who caught the vision of their Maker and moved forward to advance God’s vision: Noah, Abraham, Deborah, David, Nathan, Daniel, Hosea, the Apostles, Priscilla and Aquilla, Phoebe…the list goes on and on. And don’t forget the certainty and strength of Jesus – humble resolve in the face of persecution, need, and death. We know these names because they acted with the certainty of God, not because they were “shrinking violets” and emotional “doormats.” They were not weak. They were strong. But they weren’t strong for their own purposes. They were strong for God.  Forward-motion humility, empowered by the Holy Spirit. If you’ve been waiting for God to move, you’re backing up…

Three Phrases Worth Saying

Or at least I hope that I can say them over my lifetime. 

I’m still in self-reflection mode from last year. I know. I should be done by now. I’m not. Sorry to disappoint. Two phrases deal with people and the other deals with God.

“I want to like him/her.”   I was asked this past year what I thought about a mutual acquaintance. Honestly, everything I had heard about the person was less than desirable. But the truth of the matter is that perception is not always reality. It rarely is. I heard these words come out of my mouth and couldn’t believe that I had said them. I want to like that person. Regardless of whether or not I have reason to do so, I always want to be open to the Holy Spirit giving me the desire to show God’s love when it’s least reasonable. There’s a subtle nuance here. We can’t always get along with everyone. But we can always desire to get along with everyone. Maybe that’s shooting for the moon or something. It certainly doesn’t come  natural to anyone. I suppose that’s why it has to be a point of supernatural surrender.

“There’s a lot you can learn underneath the bus.“   I heard this phrase on some podcast in the last six months. Don’t ask me which one – I can’t remember. But that phrase stuck with me. People will throw you under the bus with little reservation. And the image here is that others who get thrown under the bus often write their words of wisdom on the underside. And there’s a lot to learn there. Sometimes it helps to stay there for a while and reflect. But as you tell your story under the bus, others will tell you theirs. And you’d be amazed at how similar they are sometimes. I’m not a fan of betrayal, hurt, pain, or broken relationships…but I’m beginning to figure out that there are few ways faster to learn about people and about life. It’s like going from dial-up to a T1. Everyone has been under the bus before. And there’s a lot to learn there.

“Either way you and I are still good.”   Our church has spent a tremendous amount of time talking about prayer this past year. We’ve shared joy over answered prayers and disappointment with unanswered ones. Somewhere along the way, I started praying this phrase to God…and it’s been my anchor in a few situations. Often times, we don’t start praying for things until they get serious. There are all sorts of reasons for this…I’ll let you figure those out. But whether I start praying early or late, adding this phrase makes all the difference for me personally. Now, people love to pull the ol’ “if it be thy will” out of the hat when they know things could very well be disastrous. As if we’re hedging our bet in some way. But those are not the words of intimate friendship with God. They are the words of someone who doesn’t want to be disappointed. So, now I pray this phrase: “God please heal, help, protect, rescue this that or the other…but either way you and I are still good.” I believe he can do all those things…you aren’t gonna be able to convince me otherwise. But regardless of the outcome, our relationship remains. No matter what happens, God is still my best friend.

So, there you go. I invite you to say these phrases with me in the coming year. Particularly that last one…

“Everything’s a Sign of my Astrology…”

Christians can come across as self-absorbed. I’m certainly capable of that. We seem to easily forget the people around us, theologizing life’s occurrences into something more than they are. You can hear it every day: “I got stuck in a traffic jam today for three hours. I just looked to heaven and said, ‘Lord, I know I’m here for a reason – what are you trying to teach me through this?’” Or this one: “The lady in the check-out line in front of me took forever! I just prayed under my breath: God, I know you’re trying to teach me patience through this.”

Though some of you scholars out there may be interested in the absorption of the Hellenistic concept of paideia into our Christian understanding of natural theology’s use of secondary causes, the larger issue here is our inability as Americanized Christians to look past our own predicament. We forget that there are others in the same traffic jam or check-out line experiencing the same inconvenience as us. For some reason we feel that placing those other people (many of whom may be Christians as well) in a divinely-inspired traffic jam so we can have a little extra “quiet time” is appropriate. But in all honesty, it takes megalomania to a new level.

It reminds me of a song by Rufus Wainwright, an exceedingly talented musician. In “Pretty Things” Rufus sings “everything’s a sign of my astrology.” In other words, life’s occurrences mean little more to me that how they directly affect my circumstances. Different way of putting it – but the same result. We see “signs” in life as God’s intervention to teach us about something God wants us to improve. Now, if you see life’s positive blessings as God’s work, people will crucify you as a “prosperity gospel” pundit. But as long as you see God’s interactions as negative commentary on a pathetic spiritual life, that’s considered okay. But that’s just as unbalanced. God doesn’t cause traffic jams to promote humility. Neither does God cause good situations for Christians at the expense of others around them.

The place in American culture you can see this most often is in interviews with sports figures. Cross-reference Oral Hershiser’s mid-80s comments that his Christianity makes him a better pitcher or Reggie White giving glory to God for winning the Super Bowl. The latest example of this is Florida Gators quarterback Tim Tebow. Psychological motivation? Sure. Accurate view of God’s actions in the world? Hardly. Amazing athletes, crummy theology. But what concerns me more is the number of seasoned Christians falling into the same trap. You are certainly welcome to live in that paradigm – you’ll be surrounded by a host of evangelicals who feel the same way. But to those watching you who live outside that self-confirming view of life, you’re bound to look self-absorbed by seeing everything as a “sign of your astrology.”

Answering the “Whys” of Life

I hear too many horror stories. Of course, that’s part of the ministerial profession and I’m thankful I can be available to those who trust me with their personal tragedies. But I never get past hearing about the injustices and sadness of others. Yet, at the same time, every story I hear is familiar in a way. After relaying stories of betrayal, death, misfortune, disease, and suffering, people always take the next logical step: they ask me questions of theodicy. Theodicy is just a fancy theological word for the issue of why evil exists in a world where a caring God is present. I recently finished reading this book and at the end, the author puts down some candid thoughts on this very issue. He says:

I am a theist…and must reconcile my belief in God with the existence of evil. In a word, I cannot. In spite of years of thinking and teaching about this topic…I cannot reconcile the existence of a good God with the existence of evil…I cannot fathom why God does what he does, and thus I will never understand why this God permits evil. The author of Job had to accept his ignorance and trust in his God. So do I.

I talk to people constantly who struggle with their faith in the midst of having these very same thoughts. I also find that behind the hardened exterior of the most objective atheist exists a story of personal betrayal or pain. But it’s those that follow Christ that worry me the most. They say, “I’ve committed my life to God. Why was he not there in the midst of my pain?” Good question. I’ll let you in on a secret. I don’t have an answer for that. Maybe I should, but I don’t. Sure, I’ve got some good theories. We’ll sit down sometime and I’ll tell you about them…and watch your eyes glaze over after 15 minutes of theologizing. But I don’t have one simple, definitive answer. Our world teaches us that by understanding something, we can diminish it’s power over us. Education eradicates poverty or war or suffering, etc. But in moments of tragedy, knowing why something happens rarely numbs the pain of loss. That’s when it becomes clear that we don’t need answers as much as we need healing.

I can tell you this. God wants to build relationships with us that are bigger than the “why” questions we face. You see, from what I can tell, God wants to create a dynamic, living, growing level of interaction with you that eclipses that pain and confusion felt in a particular moment. Intimacy that will swallow the circumstances of a moment in time.  But there’s a catch: Christianity, to withstand heartache and tragedy, cannot be nominal. It must be the center of existence for living. Otherwise, tragedy will easily swallow a fledgling faith. The question is not “Why did this happen, God?” but rather, “Is my love relationship with God strong enough that it can absorb the “whys” and unknowns of living on this planet?” In other words, is my trust in God unfazed by what I don’t understand about God? And that, my friends, is why theology only works inside the context of dynamic relationship.

Let me explain it this way. I am a minister at a church. My “job” is to foster a deeper walk with God for my congregation and create chances for them to know God in a more intimate way. But that role as a minister is only as valuable and fulfilling as my role as husband and father. The husband and father roles are much more important. I know, I know. I’m ”called” to the ministry, right? Nope. I’m called to be a Christ-follower, a husband, and a father. My professional life is only a result of those deeper, more important relationships. Some truths have such significance that they inform and shape our understanding of our world. And that’s what matters in the midst of the “whys.” I believe confusion and pain and tragedy in our lives can take a back seat to the overflowing abundance of God’s grace and love. The unknowns can be swallowed up in the definitively known: the security of God’s unconquerable love. That may not tell you why tragedy happens…but it may help you survive in the midst of it.

History’s Take on the Word of Faith Movement

With the recent passing of Oral Roberts, I began to ponder the Word of Faith movement and it’s impact on our present theological landscape. I grew up on a steady diet of T.V. evangelists. And as a young Christian, I adopted much of the “prosperity gospel” or “Word of Faith” message I heard. Now, there’s much within “Word of Faith” that needs correction. A friend of mine wrote a balanced treatment of that here (give it moment to download). But there’s some good things about it as well. That may be strange for you to hear, since normally people either love the “Word of Faith” message or they think it’s heresy. Sorry, I wish it were that simple. Sure, prosperity preachers say some wacked out things. But they also believe God actually cares about the day-to-day issues of life, like finances and health. And that’s something many of their detractors have no answer for. People who say God does a greater work by “healing the soul,” and not the body are completely out of touch with real life. Of course, there’s balance – God’s not gonna give you a Mercedes because you confessed it into existence. But neither am I the least bit afraid to say that God does bless people materially and financially.

Most people see the “prosperity gospel” as a new phenomenon – something created in the last 40 years or so. An “Americanized” form of Christianity that hinges upon Western consumerism and greed. And if you merely study contemporary reflections of Christianity, you may convince yourself that you are correct. But there are countless examples throughout church history that say otherwise (you can start with historians Keith Thomas, Valerie Flint, and Stephen Wilson for this information). For example, Keith Thomas in Religion and the Decline of Magic, tells the story of a local parishioner who believed his excommunication was ineffective since he had his best crop production the following year. In other words, this guy thought that if God had been angry at him, he would not have received such blessing. Yet his material prosperity stated otherwise. Most Christians throughout history have followed this line of thinking.

Equating material and relational “prosperity” to Christianity is as old as the church itself. This most commonly involved alternative uses of consecrated items found within the church. Parishioners drank holy water as a cure for illness, sprinkled it on their homes, their fields, and on their cattle for protection. Clergy performed exorcisms to make fields fruitful, lit holy candles to protect animals, and spoke curses to drive away vermin, weeds, and crop destroying insects. During communion, parishioners would not swallow the host but hold it in their mouth until they returned to their seat. They then carried the host as an amulet for protection, to cure disease, or sometimes ground it into powder to sprinkle over crops as a charm against caterpillars. Christians also took the blessed palms from Palm Sunday back to their farms where they placed them above their beds, on religious pictures, over doors, or planted them in the fields to ensure good crops. They were also placed in the cradles of babies, used to ward off storms, or weaved into small crosses that the people used as talismans. The practice of making palm crosses was banned in the 1540s, yet people continued these practices to the end of the 1800s. At calendar festivals, animals were blessed by the priest, sprinkled with holy water, and ritually washed or dipped as part of ceremony for health and protection. There are reports of parishioners withholding their tithes from ministers who refused to perform such remedies.

Despite clergy’s efforts to state otherwise, Christians have always believed in a prosperity gospel. The examples above explain this thinking: though Jesus helped in the afterlife, a cross worn around the neck protected from peril now. Though the Eucharist represented a life of spiritual communion with God, the host could be sprinkled over crops now. Though the blood of Jesus atoned sin, communion wine could heal a sick child now. It shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that the rise of such practices roughly coincided with the marginalization of spiritual gifts by clergy.

Belief in ”prosperity” did not stop with the Reformation or with the Enlightenment. With Catholic and Protestant clergy condemning their use, people continued to employ alternate methods for physical and financial well-being. In 1594, Lutheran inspectors in Germany reported that “the use of spells is so widespread among the people here that not a man or woman begins…or refrains from doing anything…without employing some particular blessing, incantation, spell, or other such heathenish means…” They did this because clergy gave them no Christian alternative. So, they found substitutes. Documented examples like this exist into the twentieth century.

So, Sam, what are you trying to say? I’m saying that most Christians (until they are taught otherwise) honestly believe that God should be willing to intervene in their daily lives bringing “prosperity” in the forms of material blessing, protection, deliverance, healing, and wealth. Telling them they shouldn’t expect such things has never deterred anyone from seeking God’s blessing. The “Word of Faith” movement is merely a modern manifestation of this. And though some may see such requests for “blessing” beneath them, the majority of Christians throughout history have thought differently. The “prosperity gospel” isn’t new. In fact, wherever you find well-meaning Christians seeking the kindness and generosity of God, you’ll find it. If God cares at all, then he must care about all aspects of our lives.

“Grace Revealed,” Part 3

And there’s one more area that grace can impact our daily lives. And that’s having a grace-filled church. Churches often receive a bad rep nowadays. You hear comments about how people “love Jesus, but hate the church.” I’m not so sure God feels that way. In fact, the Bible seems to be pretty clear that God thinks the church – with all its judgment, criticism, gossip, and pride – is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. A perfect and radiant bride for whom he would do anything…even die a horrible death.

So, what does a grace-filled church look like? I’ve got a couple of ideas, but let me illustrate with another story about children. My two older daughters are pretty steady kids. They don’t overreact too much when they don’t get their way. So, when they started school, I noticed something that completely threw me for a loop. When I would pick up the girls, buckle them in their seats and drive off, they would both start crying…I’m talking about emotionally falling apart, people! I couldn’t figure out why this was happening. I scolded them for crying. I bribed them with candy. I tried to get them to sing songs with me. Nothing worked! I asked our caretaker if the same thing happened with her. She smirked and told me they saved that especially for me! This went on for several months…until finally I read something interesting in a parenting book. Children often withhold their emotional reactions to the day’s events until they are most secure – in this case, with a parent. In other words, my daughters were saving their true feeling for a time when they felt safest: with their daddy.

People look to churches for the same thing. For a church, there’s a simple formula as well: grace = safe. More than just a Methodist compliance statement, God has called the church to be a “safe sanctuary” for everyone who comes here. In a grace-filled church, people can fall apart and it’s okay. It’s fine for people to struggle. To confess. To grieve. To share their deepest hurts without fear of it being immediately placed on the gossip vine. It takes a long time for someone to give their trust and confidence to another. And it only takes one moment for that trust to be shattered. Like my daughters, people intuitively know when their church becomes a place where it is no longer safe to share.

What does a grace-filled church look like? It values the feelings of others. It creates ways for people to be open and honest about their struggles. It believes the best about others, even when there may be evidence to the contrary. It encourages and lifts up those who are hurting. It ministers to people who don’t fit the mold rather than distancing itself from them. It focuses on the important things in life rather than obsessing over trivialities. In other words, like Numbers 6, it’s a church with a smile on its face…only because the smile is genuine. It reflects the gracious glory of God with the same terms that describe its Maker: favorable, pleasant, generous, kind, concerned for other’s well-being, beautiful, benevolent, and full of gratitude. Are we a grace-filled church? I think so. Are there ways we can become a more gracious church? A safe house for hurting people? Sure there are. There’s always room to grow.

So, how does this happen? How do we become a grace-filled person, family, and church? Well, this may sound a little simplistic, but there’s no quick fix or magic formula. Grace fills our lives simply by letting Christ do those things through us. To be grace-filled toward others, we must first accept grace for ourselves. We must learn to live in a grace-filled relationship with Christ. That means that we stop keeping rules for God and learn to rest in his arms. It means we must first be open with God before we can be open with others. It means we allow God’s healing grace access to every detail of our lives. For then and only then can we show graciousness to others in the smallest of ways.

And that’s the problem for many people who don’t live grace-filled lives toward others. It’s because they have never received grace for themselves. They’ve never released themselves from their own tyrannical expectations. They never collapsed in the arms of Jesus because they were too busy trying to impress him. I suppose that’s what Catholic monk Thomas Merton was talking about. He said, “If we believe God is a stern, cold lawgiver who has no real interest in us, who is merely a ruler, lord, and judge and not a father, we will have great difficulty living the Christian life.” And if the Christian life is anything, it’s a life of grace.

Why were those early Christians willing to joyously shout “Grace to you!” as they passed each other in the street? They realized that despite their flaws and failures, God was smiling at them. That may be difficult for some of you right now as post-Christmas blues set in. Christmas is not the easiest time for many people. But what I hope you walk away with this morning is this: when God looks at you – this morning, right where you are – he smiles at you, too. He always gives us the benefit of the doubt. Do you want to put God in a good mood? Start spending time with him. And as we are given a revelation of grace in Jesus Christ, it captures our imagination. It focuses our attention. And gradually we become grace-filled just like the gracious God who created us for friendship with him.

Reconciling Faith and Science: Final Thoughts

Well, I think I’m done with faith and science – at least for now. I sure have learned a lot about it all. My goal wasn’t to learn how to work the mathematical equations involved in a particular scientific discipline, but rather to investigate some of the thought patterns and paradigms that inform our view of science. So, really, this was more about a “philosophy of science” than about actual laboratory procedure.

Three things really rang true for me personally in the midst of all this:

1) The “humanness” of humanity: As humans, we are incapable of laying aside our presuppositions about life and our universe. It’s just impossible it seems. Yet it’s this same human element of our lives that lead many to believe (errantly, I think) that a gulf exist between science and religion. From what I can tell, that division is artificial, just like the Cartesian dualism from which it originated. In fact, some of our most notable scientific discoveries were discovered on a “hunch” that something exists or can be explained beyond the limits of empiricism. Call it Polyani’s “Tacit Dimension” or whatever you like - all elements of humanity (including the subjective/intuitive), when equally integrated, are the future of scientific inquiry. And that includes faith in something else discoverable, whether that discovery concerns God or the natural order.

 2) The depth abyss of discovery: One of the most amazing phenomenons over the past century? Science continuing to shatter our presumptions about the unknown. We used to believe that when we came to the edge of scientific discovery, the answers lay just a few feet in front of us. But now, particularly in the areas of biochemistry and quantum physics, when we shine the light of discovery ahead of us, the answers are miles away. If anything, our continued ability to measure objects on a smaller scale has at the same time reinforced our own limits of measurability. For all our efforts, we still understand very little about our universe.

3) Humility. There’s something good about dropping all the posturing and smoke screens and just saying, “We don’t know. Maybe we’ll know in the future. To draw conclusions otherwise is not only premature – it’s arrogant.” Science and religion need constant doses of humility to guide them. Otherwise, both disciplines can fly right over the top of something grounded in the simplicity and humility of life because they are obsessed with their own pretensions. It’s also what causes science and religion to speak past each other.

Okay. Back to normal topics of life, love, family, and theology… 

Reconciling Faith and Science: Quantum Physics

One of the most interesting topics about faith and science to date is quantum physics. First, some background. For the majority of the history of modern science, scientists operated on something called Newtonian physics – based on the work of Isaac Newton.  For centuries, physics was understood in broad sweeping terms – big, simple, measurable, systematic, mechanistic, etc. According to Newton’s world, the universe could be measured in large scale equations. And rightfully so. Everything seen with the naked eye looked big and vast, so the physical properties underneath were assumed to be big and simplistic as well.  And anything that was worth investigating could be measured using classical methods of science. This is part of the reason that those who embraced the view that science and religion were not compatible had no qualms about dismissing God. He did not easily fit into the classical physics mold.

But then quantum physics was born through the work of Max Planck and Werner Heisenberg. Quantum mechanics describes physical things at an atomic and subatomic level. For example, a quantum is the name for the smallest unit of energy – and it’s tiny. Add to that more particles like quarks, gluons, and hadrons and things change drastically. Rather than try to measure things as we have in the past, Planck came up with a constant that made measuring anything very, very small. Planck’s constant looks like this: 6.626176 x 10^-34. The number I want you to notice is the 10^-34. That’s an infinitesimal number. To measure our world, we had to stop using kilometers – now we use nanometers. Heisenberg added to this confusion (or revelation) by introducing the uncertainty principle. He said that when you are measuring two physical properties against each other, the accuracy of one eventually restricts the accuracy of another. In other words, the more you can measure one thing at the quantum level and use it as a reference point for another, the more the second object becomes immeasurable. And scientists have also discovered something called superposition – that these particles can jump from place to place – sometimes existing simultaneously in two different places.

So, what does this stuff mean for people attempting to integrate faith and science? It changes everything, actually. Science in continuing to discover more about our world also exploded our previous understanding of how the world works. The stable uniform world we thought we knew for the past several centuries is now a whirling mass of infinitesimal particles that won’t stay still long enough for us to learn anything about them. Furthermore, general relativity and quantum physics are basically incompatible. So, not only do we have a new way of seeing the world, we can’t even reconcile it with previous models that we know also have supporting data. Scientists are presently attempting to reconcile general relativity and quantum physics with something called string theory (which states the world is made of ridiculously small strings that operate not in three or four dimensions, but in nine or ten). But string theory operates on a scale 16 orders of magnitude smaller than anything we can currently measure.  As with other areas of science, the more we delve into the complexities of the life, from the universe to the structure of a cell, the more issues are raised for which we have no answer. But I want to point something out to you: string theory is considered a rational scientific field of study. Yet, there’s no empirical evidence for its existence other than a hunch or two derived from our inability to perfect quantum mechanics. So what guides the day to day experiments of physicists working in that area? Faith. Faith in the idea that string theory will be able to reconcile all other physical disciplines.

Here’s something else to notice in all of this. In the area of quantum physics, the unknown or “gray” areas of conceptual thought are considered not only appropriate, but are expected. Yet, when theology is experiencing a “gray” area, it is often dismissed as unscientific. In fact, theology is held to a stricter standard of proof than those investigating string theory or chaos theory, much less some grand unified theory. For science, the unknown gray areas somehow represent progress or hope while for religion, they are conceived as doubt. But they both represent the humanness of our endeavors and should be treated with the same level of respect and care. There’s a great verse that Jesus spoke about removing the beam from your own eye before mentioning the speck in another’s. We don’t do that with science and religion – instead, we parade our experts across the stage to discredit the other. We fire shots across the bow or each other’s ship. But both ships are floating on a sea of philosophical beliefs, assumptions, worldviews, and…well…faith. Faith sends one person to church on Sunday while it sends another to the laboratory. And for many scientists who have accepted faith as part of being human, it sends them to both places in the same week.

Reconciling Faith and Science: The “Humanness” of Science, Part 3

More examples of the “humanness” of scientific inquiry…

When Albert Einstein created the General Theory of Relativity, he didn’t like what he discovered. His theory predicted that the universe was slowly expanding or contracting – the universe was moving, one way or the other. At the time, that was a completely unconventional idea. So much so, that Einstein did something very human: the thought that the universe may not be uniform or constant was so repulsive to him that he inserted a “fudge factor”  – a variable constant, retrofitted to keep the universe in a state of eternal equilibrium. Einstein’s theory told him what he didn’t want to accept…so he changed the formula to adapt to his beliefs.

In the 1920s, Edwin Hubble (Hubble telescope) further confirmed that the universe was in fact expanding. So, Einstein actually took a trip to see Hubble’s data with his own eyes. Both men believed in a static universe – but eventually conceded the point. The universe came into existence sometime in the past. Into the thirties and forties, scientists continued to rail against the implications of Hubble’s discovery. In 1938, when asked about the issue, chemist Walter Nerst angrily stated: “We cannot form a scientific hypothesis which contradicts the very foundations of science.”

The dissention continued through the forties, fifties, and sixties. Astrophysicist Arthur Eddington stated: “Philosophically, the notion of a beginning to the present order of nature is repugnant.” Rather than accepting the expanding universe and the beginning of existence, scientists spent their time coming up with alternate theories to contradict it. In 1948, Scientists Gold, Bondi, and Hoyle came up with the Steady State model while other scientists adhered to the “oscillating-universe” model. Both models stated that the universe had no starting point and remained in a state of equilibrium – Newtonian physics was safe. But eventually in 1965, two scientists in the Bell Telephone Lab provided data to support the “big bang”: cosmic microwave background radiation – a left over relic from the origins of the universe. 

 By the 1990s, based on mathematical computation and computer-generated models, most astrophysicists confidently stated that all solar systems in the universe behave in the same way as ours. In 1995, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz discovered a planet with similar characteristics to Jupiter orbiting a star in the constellation Pegasus. Everyone assumed this planet with similar physical properties would behave just like Jupiter does in relation to our Sun. They were very surprised to learn that the planet behaved nothing like Jupiter. It hurries around its host star every 4.2 days. It takes the earth 365 days. The planet only measured 1/8 the distance from its star that Mercury is from our Sun. So, it was closer and faster. About these differences, Mayor said, “It was very strange to consider the attitude of people facing something completely in disagreement with theory…some astronomers said things like ‘Oh, this is not a planet because you cannot form Jupiter-like planets close to their stars.’” But obviously, you can. 

Once again, like last week – am I making a case against science? No. I like science. I’m making a case for the very real “humanness” of any academic discipline. Every discipline has stories like these in its history. Yet, though religious ones are paraded for a wide audience, you have probably never heard about these. Next post, I’ll explain why we feel that “humanness” in science is unacceptable.