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Doubting God
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Many people wonder why the Bible and science appear to be in conflict. Some Christians claim God created the world in seven days, while others point to the big bang theory and evolution. This creates the perception that no educated, rational person could believe both scientific evidence and Christianity.
This tension became real for me during my freshman year of college in a Biblical Literature class. I wasn't a Christian at the time, and I was hungover at an 8:00 AM class when my professor discussed a verse from the Old Testament and explained why it couldn't be true. My small faith crumbled in that moment. When I encountered something I didn't understand, everything I thought I believed seemed to fall apart.
I believe the conflict exists because some people see the relationship between science and the Bible as competitive instead of cooperative. They frame it as either/or—you must choose one or the other. But what if God, who created both science and scripture, intended for them to work together?
Historically, this hasn't always been the prevailing view. Around 1600 years after Christ, Saint Augustine of Hippo taught that science and the Bible are actually complementary, not competitive. He believed that any conflict stems from either misunderstanding science or misinterpreting the Bible. This view dominated for about 1,500 years.
The shift happened during the Age of Enlightenment and the scientific boom of the 1800s. With discovery after discovery, some people began thinking science explains everything. Nervous Christians saw science as an attack on faith. The problem with competition is simple: there are winners and losers. If science wins, the Bible loses. If the Bible wins, science loses.
What if the relationship between science and the Bible doesn't have to be competitive at all? What if, created by a good God, it can actually be cooperative? What if instead of either/or, we could embrace both/and—studying what God created while allowing God's Word to illuminate the goodness and glory of His creation?
You do this all the time in life. When your child has a birthday, you don't ask "chocolate cake or vanilla ice cream?"—you say both. You don't have just peanut butter; you have peanut butter and jelly. You have salt and pepper, eggs and bacon. You watch Batman and Robin.
As Christians, we should embrace both/and more than anyone else, because our faith is defined by many both/ands. Jesus said, "I am the alpha and the omega. I am the first and the last, I am the beginning and the end." Jesus was all God and at the very same time, all man. He came from the Father full of both grace and truth. The author of Hebrews describes Jesus as both the author and the finisher of our faith.
Instead of viewing science and the Bible as competitors, we can say: God created all. We can learn from both and let them draw us closer to God.
In many ways, both science and the Bible are two different tools that help us understand the truth. We use different tools every day, each with its own purpose.
Consider someone on a beach with a metal detector. That detector doesn't detect everything—it doesn't detect sand. But it detects metal. It's a tool with a designated purpose, though that purpose isn't everything.
We can say this about science: it's a tool. Science seeks the truth about our natural world, and scripture reveals the truth about our supernatural God. They both work together.
I love the story of John Kavanaugh, a famous ethicist searching for purpose in life. He packed his bags, moved to Calcutta, and served the poor with Mother Teresa. He asked her, "How can I pray for you?" His answer was, "Pray for clarity—I need to know my purpose."
Mother Teresa responded, "Clarity is the last thing you're clinging to and must let go of. I've never had clarity. What I've always had is trust. So that's what I'm gonna pray for—I'm gonna pray that you trust God."
You may have been asking questions your whole life, searching for clarity. I encourage you to keep asking questions. But at some point, what you may need isn't clarity—it's trust. It's faith.
The challenge is when we think Christianity is about having all the answers. When we build our faith on having every single answer rather than faith in Jesus, we're building on a house of cards. If one of our ideas about God is challenged, our entire faith system crumbles. That's what happened to me in that hungover BibLit class—my small faith couldn't handle one simple hurdle.
We may need to learn to think more scientifically about our faith. Remember the scientific method from junior high? There are four basic steps:
What I love about science is this: if your hypothesis is disproven, you don't give up on science. You just test another hypothesis.
Why don't we do this as Christians? If we encounter a challenge to our ideas about God, don't give up on God. This is an opportunity to ask more questions and pursue a deeper understanding of who God really is. Don't walk away from God just because something doesn't go the way you thought it would.
The reality is that it's incredibly rare to be 100% certain about anything at all. Scientists were certain the earth was the center of the world and flat—until it was scientifically proven otherwise. Medical guidance changes: babies should sleep on their bellies, then their backs. Nursing practices change. What was considered good is now considered bad, and vice versa.
Here's what I want to promise you: you will never have all the answers to everything. At some point, especially spiritually, it will take faith. You don't have to know every answer to every question to trust in Jesus. Without faith, it is impossible to please God. It always will take faith.
Let me look at three qualities of both science and scripture that I believe will help build our faith.
The best place to see the Bible and science work together is in the very first verse of God's Word:
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1)
Why is this so powerful? More than 3,000 years ago, scripture declared what science confirmed in the last 100 years: the universe had a beginning.
Prior to the big bang theory, most atheist scientists claimed the universe was eternal. This matters because if the universe had a beginning, it demanded a beginner—a cause outside of itself. As Christians, we believe God said, "Let there be," and He caused the creation of the world.
This is a powerful example of science supporting what scripture said 3,000 years ago.
Consider the intricate design of creation. Genesis 1:2 says:
The earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
Then God organized everything beautifully, and each part had purpose and worked together. A seed is placed in the ground. God sends rain. Water seeps into the soil. The seed takes root, pushes through the dirt, sprouts, grows into a plant. With rain and sun, it buds and bears fruit. Animals eat the fruit. People eat the animals or the fruit. The cycle continues. Things die and return to the ground, fertilizing it. Seasons change. The world goes on.
You look at all this and think: "It's impossible that this is the result of random chance." It must be the result of a divine designer.
Even atheist scientists find this fascinating. They've discovered that approximately 150 different astronomical constants are perfectly designed for life to exist. Consider the precision:
Atheist scientist Sir Roger Penrose calculated the likelihood of the universe having such precise design. His conclusion? The odds are 10 billion times a one with 123 zeros behind it—an incalculable number. If you stretched all those zeros across the world, they would span the entire galaxy and continue.
You're more likely to win the lottery 10,000 times in a row and get struck by lightning every time you cash the ticket in than for this to happen by accident. This is why the late Christopher Hitchens, an atheist, called this the most compelling argument for the existence of God.
The Psalmist said it well:
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies display his craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night the heavens make our God known.
Science and scripture working together to show the glory of our Creator and Master Designer.
The third thing I want to encourage you to look at is the resurrection of Jesus. What's powerful about the resurrection is that it makes Christianity unique among world religions. Christianity is the only falsifiable religion because it's based on evidence of the resurrection.
All you have to do is prove Jesus didn't rise from the dead, and you disprove Christianity. Scripture even says it:
If Christ has not been raised, then all of our preaching is useless and your faith is useless. (1 Corinthians 15)
If He didn't come out of that grave, this is all a big joke.
There's fascinating scholarship on this. The most basic facts are known as the six minimal facts surrounding the resurrection. For a fact to qualify, author Gary Habermas compared about 3,400 different sources—Christian and secular alike. For a fact to make the list, it had to appear in 90% of the sources; most appeared in 100% or very close.
Fact #1: It is not disputed by hardly anybody alive today that Jesus was a real person who died by Roman crucifixion. You don't have to be a follower of Jesus to know He walked around, taught, was followed, and hung on a Roman cross where He died.
Fact #2: Jesus' followers experienced what they believed to be actual appearances of a resurrected Jesus. Whether or not you believe He rose, there is enough evidence—secular and otherwise—that the followers were completely convinced He was dead and then was no longer dead.
Fact #3: Because of those experiences, these followers were willing to die for their faith in Jesus' resurrection. We could stop there.
Fact #4: The Christian Church started right after Jesus was killed, in the very city of Jerusalem where He died. Here we are 2,000 years later, and the church of Jesus Christ has spread around the world and continues to meet and thrive.
Fact #5: James, the biological brother of Jesus, was not a Christian until after he believed he saw the resurrected Christ.
Fact #6: Paul, who wrote the majority of the New Testament, went from killing Christians to starting churches because he had an experience with who he believed was the risen Christ.
If you ask me, Craig, why do I believe Christianity is true? It's not just because the Bible says so, and it's not just because of the scientific facts. I believe that Jesus died and rose from the dead because He changed me.
It is embarrassing to tell you how lost and broken and ungodly I was. I lied so much I couldn't figure out what the truth was. I couldn't keep up with my lies. I hurt just about anybody that got close enough to me to spend much time. I stole so much that I got arrested for it. I betrayed very close friends. I hurt person after person and hated myself. I couldn't stop with my addictions and tried everything to be better.
Then I got a hold of a little Bible and started reading the gospels about Jesus. I learned that you could be saved, not by your good works, not by religious efforts, not by trying harder, but by grace through faith. Not just knowledge, not just study, not just research, but faith that a God would love us so much that He would become one of us—that He would send His Son to die in our place, and that His followers were so convinced that He was risen that they would die.
If a man predicts his own death and resurrection, dies and pulls it off, I'm going to follow him. Jesus didn't come for the righteous; He came for people like me, the sinners. He didn't come for the healthy; He came for the sick.
You may say, "Okay, I'm interested, but I still have some doubts." Well, welcome to the party. I still have unanswered questions I live with every day, and we all will for the rest of our lives.
But here's what we know: your doubts don't disqualify your faith. Doubts and questions can actually be a part of a growing faith.
Once you put your faith in Jesus, just try. If you're there, reveal yourself, show me. Just pray and see what happens. Watch if you don't get overcome with this supernatural love that loves you in spite of what you've done, in spite of who you are. Suddenly it changes you and you start becoming more loving too. And then suddenly the world looks on and they say, "We don't know this by the facts or by the textbooks or by your brilliant defense of the gospel, but we seem to like your love."
Ultimately, that's how they'll know that we're disciples—not by the way we preach, not by how good our defense always is, but they will see a love that goes beyond anything you've ever seen in this world, and that love comes from heaven.
Keep asking questions. Keep being smart. Keep thinking. But at some point, you're going to have to put your faith somewhere. I put my faith in Jesus.
As you're praying today, there are those of you where something odd may be happening in your life. Let me try to tell you what it might be.
You could have been like me. You kind of grew up in and around the church, but you recognize you never really knew God or had a personal relationship with Him. You're aware of that right now, and there's something drawing you.
Or you may be a person who's not a church person at all, and something is happening on the inside that's luring you, pulling you toward the things of God. You may still have some questions, but you're being drawn to God.
What is that? That's the Holy Spirit. That's the third person of the Trinity—God the Father, God the Son Jesus, and God the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit draws people toward God. It's like a mystery. You don't know how, you don't know why, but the Holy Spirit's working today.
At some point you're going to recognize you've done wrong. The Bible calls it sin. We've all sinned. Our sin separates us from God.
But here's how good God is. He sent Jesus, His only Son, who was without sin, so He could be the perfect sacrifice. He died in our place. We believe by faith that God raised Him from the dead. The sacrifice was perfect. The penalty has been paid for your sins.
The way you're made right with God is not by religious efforts, not by being better, but by putting your faith in Jesus. You're saved by grace through faith.
If you recognize, "Oh my gosh, I really don't know God, what are we gonna do?" Here's what happens:
When you pray a very simple prayer, God will forgive you. You become new. Your sins are removed. The Holy Spirit takes place in you. Now you're born into the family of God.
If you're watching from today—online, at campus—and you say, "I need that, I want His grace, I want His forgiveness. I don't know how, I don't know why I'm being drawn," at some point it's a step of faith. You take the step of faith.
I believe who you are. Today by faith, I give my life to you. Today by faith, I ask you to forgive my sins. I know I can't get there on my own. I surrender my life, Jesus. By faith, I give my life to you.
