GRACE & PEACE
“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
Growing Dominion, Part 24
The findings of science (and research) should be held by us gratefully, and loosely. In other words, as has been discussed already, we should be profoundly thankful for all the blessings we have received. These blessings include freedom from many diseases which plagued previous generations, hot and cold running water, warm places to live, light bulbs, and so on. These things are all directly attributable to some guy somewhere figuring things out. Let us call him a scientist, or a technician, or an engineer. Whatever we call him, let us do it with gratitude. We live better, more comfortably than the vast majority of the human race has lived up to this point.
So why would we hold anything loosely? There are many outstanding servants who can become tyrants if given free reign to rule. In other words, science is not our worldview, science is not absolute, and a lot of things we take for granted now will turn out to be false, or half right. “Oh, there’s a good kind of cholesterol now?”
God’s kindness to us allows us to fumble our way ahead. If we know ourselves to be fumbling, we can be grateful for every advance we make. But if we believe our fumbling to be a steadfast steady march and inexorable progress, we have ceased being grateful Christians and have become idolatrous fools.