SCIENCE AND THE SECOND COMMANDMENT

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  I began 149 posts ago last June.  I started out posting twice a day, but that was during the summer.  

Once school began, I found myself blessed if I could post once a day.

I was thinking about that today.  My decision to blog ever has been in deference to my muse. 

Before I began blogging, I did some research.  Just about everyone I read offered the following advice:  blog what you will never run out of words to write or talk about.

Well, for me that would either be sports, literature, or God. I could see myself stumbling had I chosen sports or literature, at least once or twice in my life, but my muse gushes incessantly concerning all things divine.  

Unless my brain suffers from a disease, I will never run out of words about this most profound love in my life. 

I love God.  My love for God inspires my love for science. In fact, my spiritual growth owes a lot to science.  I believe science makes it possible for me to love God purely, that is, without baggage.

How is that possible?  The answer is simple: the second commandment of the Decalogue.  

The second commandment says, "You shall not make a graven image."  That is the commandment that makes science possible.  

The god of creationism is a graven image.  The BMW Jesus is a graven image.  Anything created that has been elevated to the status of the ground of all Being is an idol.

Science had revealed to us a reality beyond any God ever imagined by Biblical writers.  Science had revealed the finitude of all gods heretofore worshiped.

Indeed, science has revealed how religion works, how religious texts are put together, and how ideas evolve.

Science has shown us that we do not have to fear extraterrestrial, supernatural entities like ghosts and demons because they are fictional characters.  Only the monsters that live within our evil hearts can hurt us.

A second generation Christian, Justin Martyr, wrote that truth belongs to Christians.  If that is true then theology will never be contradicted by anything science discovers.  

Indeed, it is not theology that is the problem.

Hermeneutics or the science of interpretation is the source of all the apparent conflict.  I maintain that it is an apparent conflict, not an intrinsic one.

It's not the Bible that is at war with science.  It is how the Bible is interpreted.  Science frees us from an idolatrous literal interpretation.  I say idolatry because the Bible presents more than one graven image of God, that is, images hewn with words.  

Science reveals the wonders of reality; theology reveals our wonderful God of love. 

I do believe God is the creator.  I do not believe that God created the world with evolution. 

I believe that God is the ground of being.  Creation happens in God.  If God were not real then there would be nothing. 

Creation happens in God as naturally as energy exploding in a big bang.  Creation happens in God as naturally as chatter from a child.

There is not nothing.  Instead, there is all this wonderful, marvelous, and remarkable Being-itself that never stops moving, never stops evolving, never stops being. 

All that is coruscates with life.  That’s just the way it is.

And this is the God that has been revealed in the life of Jesus to be our God of love. 

If our lives revealed that, no one would ever doubt it.  All arguments would cease.

Blessings…