Let´s say we believe there is the great Someone. Let´s say we´re not content with keeping this or that at arm´s length as an unnamed impotent deity, but rather want to get to know a personal, mighty, loving God. How do we go about a crash course in learning of this God?
A Christian, say myself, will say it´s all about the Lord revealing himself to us, not us peeking behind the veil of the temple, incidentally the same veil reft apart at the death of Jesus. The Church is founded, guided and sustained by the revelation of God. The most obvious revelation in the Christian faith is the Bible, which we divide in two parts: the Old and New testament. At the risk of doing some extremely banale theology, one can say the Old is the revelation of the Law of a true and just God, and the New of the Grace of a loving God. It´s simplified and far be it from me to say that the Law is made void by Grace, rather Jesus Christ is also the whole fulfillment of the demands of the Law. Jesus is also very much more than a revelation, he is true God and man as we state in the Nicean Creed. But for now, more out of rethorical clarity than theological, let´s be a bit categorical about the issue and put the OT and NT up as two separate revelations. The third, or the first maybe, is the Creation, Cosmos, the Universe, the revelation of the might of God. As with the two first this one too reflects and is a precursor of the two other. For is it not also a tender mercy in willing into existence, as the love of a parent to a child yet unborn and even unconceived? It´s one God, three revelations.
So what do we do with these three outstretched hands of the All-mighty? Basically we read them and study them, hopefully “under the influence” of Holy Spirit... But we read them as revelations, that is, we let them speak to us before we try to put words in their mouths. This is very hard to do, as we carry an awesome load of prejudice and preconceptions, as do the rest of humanity, if ours look a bit different.
And a certain ruler asked him, saying, Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?
And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is God.St Luke 18:18-19
It must be said that the only valid measure of goodness, of right and wrong, is the Lord. We know love, truth, and goodness by God, we don´t know God by speculating on our own feeble notions of love, truth,
etcetera. I don´t mean to say we´re unable to be good and kind, true, just and loving, there is good within us, there is a friend of the Gospel within us. However, it´s always mixed up and confronted with an inner and outer enemy, we can´t defeat on our own. The mistake is that we assume God to be abstract, and that we have to construct him out of our ethical and aesthetical standards. The reality is that God is concrete indeed, and we have him before us as Jesus Christ, prophesied about in the Old testament, described in detail in four gospels, followed as Lord in the epistles and the tradition of the Church, and furthermore revealed and made manifest by the working of the Holy Spirit within us (who should be named especially today, since it´s Pentecost). What more do we need? But as a certain rich man in hell asked of Abraham, to send the beggar Lazarus to his brothers to warn them and testify of the judgement:
Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.
And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.
And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. St Luke 16:29-31
This approach also goes for the scientific pursuit of knowledge on the Creation, the natural sciences´ study of the world around us. In fact, the proper direction of our thinking should be from the concrete and tangible to the abstract, not the other way around. It´s always more fruitful to generalize and draw patterns out of the seemingly chaotic phenomena that make up our reality, than to expect truthful prediction from our constructed explanations, systems and models of this reality. If a hypothetical alien scientist were given our collected wisdom on the life-world, what we know of ecology, biology and organic chemistry, and out of this was asked to guess at a fauna and flora for planet Earth, I doubt very much the result would resemble anything near a horse or a bird or a flower that we could recognize from God´s creation. And this not because our understanding of nature is flawed (which it of course is to a degree), but it would simply be the wrong direction of thinking.
Often the revelation of God doesn´t appeal to us, seem to be ruthless or even evil. It could be one of the juicier parts of the Old testament, Jesus talking dirty about taking up one´s cross and giving the world the finger. It could be the workings of the natural world, an ugly little HIV virus, a Swedish winter, or the evolution as put forth by Darwin. I´ve heard it said a couple of times, that evolution is incompatible with a loving God. I don´t actually feel very strongly about the subject, I´m not a biologist, what do I know about the origin of species? But I can´t help suspecting that preconceptions are taking the better out of truth.
I believe a scientist, Christian or not, should approach her scientific study just as any Christian should approach God. Completely open to what is to be revealed. Not figuring to know God better than Himself. Humble to the fact that we can´t understand everything yet. Absolutely reluctant and unwilling to ever in any way whatsoever construct a god more to our liking than the real God who created us to be, along with the rest of this beautiful earth, the sun, moon, stars - and an HIV virus or two.
