A Reflection Next to the Great Divide

Like most people born after Matthew Arnold published “Dover Beach” (that is, about 1867), I have walked along the great science/religion divide my whole life. For me, it started with my parents, each of whom stood on a different side. How they managed to stay married to each other for over forty years would be a good lesson to us today. In high school, I tried science but found it taught by men who believed that science required that we check our imaginations at the door before walking in. “What fellowship,” they seemed to tacitly argue, “hath hard science (to me it was hard) with fancy?” Then, as a Christian, I found some people saying things I knew were not true about science and scientists, most of whom were very creative and imaginative people, and many of them even Christians, or at least respectful of mystery. 

Today, the great divide seems to me a tiresome rift. I am suspicious that the rift has more to do with ideological perspectives than it actually has to do with science or religion. In a country given to deepening political divisions, with more and more people skewing hard right or left and “unfriending” (not even a word until about ten years ago) anyone who disagrees, I want to advocate for a kind of “both/and” policy. I love hearing from scientific researchers. For example, how bees communicate is endlessly fascinating. I also am convinced that there is an eternal beyond, outside, within, somewhere--whatever directional metaphor we might choose--that remains related to the material.

A friend who is a scientist and also a Christian recently gave me a sermon on the Hebrew verb “to create” in the book of Genesis. Like a typical scientist, he was to the point. “The verb suggests that in creation God hovered over chaos and gave it purpose.”

That I find persuasive, both in terms of how "creation" happened and happens, and what has happened in my life.