There may be no more important theological issue facing local churches today than how we deal with science and, more generally, the spirit of critical inquiry underlying the sciences. In the past two centuries, every aspect of our religious faith has been subjected to the scrutiny of critical inquiry. In the old days, most people lived in a local village and religious faith was accepted as the norm. Today we live in a global village that is less and less openly religious with each passing decade. The influence and role of religious institutions is dwindling even in rural and conservative places like Lewis County, New York.
An important segment of the larger church has responded to the challenges of science and modern critical inquiry with defensive anger and disdain. These faithful Christians reject the facts of biological evolution and much else that science teaches. Their primary goal is to protect what they believe to be the factual truth of Genesis 1. Rejection of science is a strategy that might work in the short run, but in the long run it is doomed to failure. Science has fundamentally changed the way we look at reality. We may retreat into the walls of rejection and find safety there, but fewer and fewer of our children will do so. Rejection of science isn’t going to work for the long haul.
Ignoring the issue is not going to work either. It cannot be ignored away.The one viable alternative is to learn how to reshape our faith in ways that make sense in a world of science. We Christians have been adapting our faith to changing times and cultures from the beginning, and in fact Christianity would not even exist today if our long-ago ancestors in the faith hadn’t made the cultural leap from Judaism and Jewish culture to Roman-Greek culture and religious thinking. The barbarian cultures of Europe, later on, had a huge impact on the Christian faith. We need only do again in the 21st century what we did in the 1st century and the 11th century, namely learn to think about Christ with contemporary minds and communicate him in contemporary ways. The important thing, of course, is to think also about our contemporary world with Christian minds, minds inspired by the Spirit, informed by the Bible, and rooted in local churches.
We have long put it this way: we are to be in the world but not of the world. Our world is shaped by science, and we must embrace the world as it is in order to continue for yet another generation to share Christ with the world in ways that the world can understand. If we reject science, we choose to be aliens in the contemporary world—strange and maybe even comical aliens not worthy of serious consideration. If we ignore the challenge of science, we will drop the ball entirely (not even pick it up, actually). If we are going to live in a world profoundly influenced by science, then we must learn how to speak its language in ways that make sense both to science and to faith. What a fantastic, exciting challenge!
