“Signs of the Times Part I: Awe and Curiosity”
Psalm 19:1-10, Matthew 16:1-4
Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark
May 7, 2017
The ink was running from the perpetual drizzle, but the message on the sign was crystal clear: “Got plague? Yeah, me neither. Thank a scientist.” The day was raw and wet, but the energy at the Boston March for Science on April 22nd was warm and bright. Jenny Allen and I carpooled and then took the T into Boston, carefully maneuvering our own signs to avoid impaling other marchers in the packed train.
The signs of the times were creative and thought-provoking. There was one that led me back to 11th grade chemistry—“Think like a proton, always positive.” Then there was the sign that prompted memories of math class: “Alternative facts are the square root of negative one.” It took a minute, but I finally got it: the square root of negative one is imaginary. I loved the rainbow-colored brain on a sign that read, “Your brain on science.”
Jenny and I had both thought a lot about our signs. Jenny drew upon her background as a linguist for hers: “Science, from the Latin: Scio, scire, scivi, scitum—to know, understand, have knowledge of.” And on the back: “We ignore it at our peril.”
I too drew upon my professional background. I wanted to respond to the ways religion is so often considered anti-science—fanciful, wishful thinking removed from real life. I also wanted to counter the approach that pretends faith and science inhabit parallel universes, one spiritual and one material, that never intersect. So my sign said, “Science and faith fit together like awe and curiosity.”
Both Jenny and I were stopped by people who wanted to take pictures of our signs. Apparently they struck a chord—in people who appreciated the reminder that science is a quest for knowledge and in those who needed a way to reframe the supposed conflict between religion and science.
The march prompted me to think more about the intersection between faith and science, and even more about how scientific and faith communities can work together to address the challenges we face—especially the crisis of global climate change.
Many scholars and theorists write eloquently about the relationship between science and religion. These thoughts, though, are mine, based on my own limited experience of science and my own particular perspective on faith.
Both science and faith, at their best, are about asking crucial questions: Who are we? Why are we the way we are? How does the world work and how do we fit into it? What is possible for us?
Science and faith involve living with questions that are never fully answered, because every answer leads us to a deeper question. Thoughtful people of faith recognize that it is idolatrous to think we can ever fully understand God, for by definition God is beyond our human capacity to comprehend. Thoughtful scientists acknowledge that the things we accept as established truths are in fact theories, supported by the existing data, that may ultimately change when new data emerges. Scientists and people of faith are challenged to act boldly on incomplete knowledge—or else we would never act. As we act, we are challenged still to be open to new discovery.
Science and faith, in different ways, call us to be observers of what is around us, to step back from our personal biases and goals to be present to what is. A scientist designs a study with a starting hypothesis and thenobserves and records what happens whether or not it supports her preconceived notion. Spiritual practices—meditation, liturgy, prayer, singing—are designed to help a person of faith let go of his regrets from the past and his worries about the future in order to claim the present moment as a sacred gift.
One of the signs at the March for Science boldly proclaimed, “I believe in data.” While I understand the impetus behind the sign, it gave me pause. So what? Data on its own is just a bunch of meaningless numbers. For science to make any difference, the data has to be interpreted. Good scientists recognize that interpretation is fraught with danger. It is only human to interpret information to support what we want to believe.
People of faith face a similar danger. What meaning do we make of our sacred texts—the inspiring and perplexing record of the observations of people of faith over millennia? How do we make sense of the moments in our lives when we think we experience God at work?
Science and faith, in different ways and perhaps to different degrees, both involve interpreting what we observe and experience. Both are open to abuse from people who twist words and data to suit their purposes. Both are vulnerable to the ways well-intentioned people unconsciously insert our own biases. Both rely on communities to help us contain that danger—peer review for scientists, shared study and community discernment for people of faith.
“Science and faith fit together like awe and curiosity.” Science begins with curiosity, with a quest for knowledge. Curiosity invites awe, as each new discovery leads us deeper into the mystery of existence, into layer upon layer of elaborate and intricate truths. Faith, as expressed by our psalmist, begins with awe—wonder at the glory of creation that leads to wonder at the glory of the Creator. Awe inspires curiosity—a desire to understand in order to experience the gift of life more fully. Awe and curiosity come together to create an ever-deepening spiral of discovery and wonder. At their best, science and faith create a similarly ever-deepening spiral, as we seek to understand and improve life on this planet.
There is a distinctive gift that faith brings to this on-going quest for knowledge and improved quality of life. For me, to choose faith is to choose a conscious interpretive bias as I observe and experience life. As a Christian who seeks to follow Jesus, I choose to interpret the signs of the times through faith that there is a creative power at work in the world, a power that is love. As a Christian whose faith centers on the Easter story, I choose to interpret life through the conviction that this creative power of love is ultimately stronger than the forces of hatred, indifference and despair that would destroy it. As a Christian who believes in incarnation, I choose to trust that God works through our actions to bring the victory of love to fulfillment. I choose to trust that hope is alive even when I cannot see it.
Sometimes these “interpretive choices” I make as a Christian seem to be based on evidence. My belief in God—that creative power of love—reflects the love I have experienced in my life and the ways I have felt God’s healing power at work. My conviction that hope is alive emerges from my experience of new life breaking through when I didn’t think it was possible.
Other times, faith seems to run counter to the evidence. Based on what we see on the evening news and Facebook, it would be realistic to conclude that hatred is more powerful than love. In order to trust in the power of God’s love in the face of the brokenness in our world, I have to choose to believe there is more than what we can see.
In those times when the evidence seems to point to despair, my respect for science reminds me that choosing faith does not give me permission to ignore what I see. That would not be faith; that would just be denial. Faith is not about seeing the world through rose-colored glasses; faith is about seeing the world so clearly we can see the potential for wholeness beneath the broken surface. Faith is about committing ourselves to look deeper, and sometimes wider, to find the hidden source of hope. Faith is about seeing what is, envisioning what could be, and dedicating ourselves to getting from one to the other.
It’s a nice intellectual exercise—to reflect on the intersection between science and faith. In our world today, it is so much more than a nice intellectual exercise. To face the crisis of global climate change, we need every gift scientific communities and faith communities have to offer—and we need all those gifts to come together.
We need the hard data about what is happening, and we need painstakingly honest thinkers to work together to interpret it. We need careful observers—those who record precise numbers and those who invite us to stop and marvel at the wonder of creation. We need curious questioners—and people to call us to the silence of awe. We need courageous prophets who will name how dire the situation is, and equally courageous prophets who proclaim the promise that change is possible. We need visionaries who will dare to imagine a restored creation, and we need detail-driven planners who will find those practical first steps to get us moving toward the vision. We need to come together—with mounds of data to absorb, with words of inspiration to get us going, with songs to awaken us, with bread and cup to give us strength for the long journey we face.
Science and faith fit together like awe and curiosity. May we celebrate the scientists who make our lives so much better. May we rejoice in faith that assures us our lives matter. May awe and curiosity inspire us to treasure and transform our world. Amen.