Listening

Last Sunday, we continued our series, The God Debate, with a talk on Science and Religion. Recent public assertions that the God hypothesis cannot be considered credible is a challenge we would like to engage. But the way we engage the question matters as much as the perspective we bring; we want to move past the sound bites that fly overhead, and present a stance that listens as well as shares our way of understanding.

Science (Latin: scientia) literally means knowledge. There was a time in classical culture when theology (the knowledge of God) was considered the “queen of the sciences” because it was the knowledge that ordered all other kinds of knowledge. In the popular imagination, that time has past it seems. But the question of how various kinds of knowledge relate to each other remains an important question, especially as science and religion seem to be at odds with each other.

Science is commonly understood as a method of gaining knowledge. It begins with observation of the material world, notices patterns and tendencies, makes hypotheses about patterns, and tests those patterns by repeatable experiments. Experiment is “experience”, the way we encounter the repeatable ways the material universe behaves. We then move from the observable and repeatable nature of what we see and propose “scientific” laws. This is a method that has proven immensely helpful for understanding of our material world. The fatal move, we think, is when this methodology asserts that what is sees is all there is, that the eye is capable of complete knowing.

One way to understand the difference between scientific knowing and religious knowing is through the various capacities of our senses. In science, the eye is critical, the principle way to know reality: “seeing is believing”. In religious knowing, especially in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the ear is more important than the eye, not because the eye is distrusted, but because there is a personal reality that the eye cannot see. In the Biblical tradition, the universe we inhabit is not primarily material but personal, populated by persons whose reality is deeper than appearances. The first premise of reality is the infinite-personal God who speaks and listens and invites us into relationship with him. While we can know something about God through what we see, we can know much more about him through what we hear.

Psalm 19 provides an excellent meditation on this Biblical idea and I recommend reading it with the question of science and religion in mind. It begins, “the heavens declare the glory of God” (v.1) and goes on to say that there is a kind of “voice” that creation has: “day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge” (v.2). The perspective here is that creation itself speaks, and however dimly we hear it, there is a kind of speech that it makes to us. We must listen to understand reality.

But then this psalm makes a critical move that focuses our hearing onto a firmer and clearer kind of speech. The statement is definitive for a Biblical faith: “The law [or word] of the LORD is perfect, refreshing the soul” (v.7). What follows in this psalm are various descriptors of the words of God and the ways his words bring a kind of knowledge to us that our eye could simply not perceive. It is an affirmation of knowing that is personal and morally transformative because this knowledge of God is not dis-engaged observance but meant for personal and connected knowledge.

The psalmist ends this way: “May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer” (v.14). Knowledge in the Biblical tradition proposes is one that listens and learns to answer back, and that one becomes changed through the exercise. Again, this kind of knowledge is based on the ear, not the eye.

We want to say to those who put science over religion that while we have no quarrel with what science actually shows us about the material universe, it really has little to say about the mystery of persons who inhabit this universe, especially the personal God who speaks. We want to propose another kind of knowledge that is based in the ear and not in the eye.

This coming Sunday, we continue the God Debate series with a message entitles “Going Beyond the Argument”. We hope that you can join us at 9:29 or 11:11 am.

Bob