1. Please, pray with me. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock, and our Redeemer. Amen. The message from God’s Word as we continue our sermon series on Defending the Christian Faith is taken from 1 John 1:1-3, it’s entitled, “Seen with Our Eyes, Touched with Our Hands,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. Maybe you’ve thought that we live in a wonderful time. Literally, our times are full of wonders in medicine, computers, transportation, communication—and the list can go on. If smartphones weren’t enough, now you can live in a smart house. From the “inner space” of the human cell to the outer space of distant galaxies, science has learned and contributed so much! But, today we need to think about something besides science called “scientism.” Scientism holds that science provides the only real knowledge there can be. Tested scientific conclusions seem to be all that many people will recognize as true. They need to see something with their eyes, touch it with their hands.
3. Such thinking can form a stumbling block between people and the Christian faith. This kind of thinking lies at the heart of our culture. People who leave the church often say the church doesn’t keep up with science. They think it opposes science. We live in a wonderful time, but it ceases to be so wonderful when the spirit of these times stands between people and the Lord.
4. Scientism holds that science provides the only real knowledge. The problem here is not science, but what people make of science. Even more impressive than science has been its close cousin, technology. Since the Industrial Revolution, technology has made great impacts on day-to-day living. Think of the many developments that have made life more comfortable at work and home, over the last 200 years. Technology has placed power at our fingertips in so many ways. Already in 1829, Thomas Carlyle wrote in an essay entitled “Signs of the Times” that mechanism had become mankind’s god, the thing we trusted in most. Likewise, it was easy to think anything appearing to oppose science must mean us no good. At the end of the 1800s, Andrew Dickson White of Cornell University published a work with the title: A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom.
5. Something was being made of science. Forget theology or philosophy and stick with science! It deals with real stuff, things that can be seen with the eyes and touched with the hands. Science has done very well at learning about what can be seen and touched. That success has led modern scientists to make an assumption about the scientific field that they have staked out for themselves. This assumption is that nothing exists beyond it.
6. Scientism claims that nothing exists beyond what can be seen and touched. There has been a tendency to suppose that anyone wearing a white lab coat must count as an authority. We should note well that when scientists advocate scientism, they have stepped out of their area of expertise. Describing the interactions of subatomic particles is science. Asking how and why such particles exist is not. Scientism is not science. It’s a conclusion about science. The problem is what people make of science. But even when they are reaching beyond their grasp, following them can still prove tempting. The force of scientific authority remains. Our society has almost run out of any other kind of terms with which to discuss matters in public.
7. The scientific establishment has shown that pretty much whatever can be done scientifically will be done. Science produces no ethics. Evolutionary science cuts ethics loose from any foundation. One scientist said that he believes rape to be wrong. But if this conviction about rape resulted from his evolutionary past, he acknowledged, then it turns out to be too subjective. The idea that all truth has to come from a test tube didn’t come from any test tube. Scientism contradicts itself. No one can live with strict scientism.
8. Scientism seems embedded in the thinking of people today, also Christians. Don’t you find your horizon often limited to what you can see and touch? In 1873, C. F. W. Walther remarked that “we are living in terrifyingly atheistic times, in which everything is attributed to nature instead of God.” Things turn out to be no better today. Instead of recognizing God as the real Giver of rain, we just think in terms of weather fronts and colliding air masses. God’s miracle of life surrounds us, but we fail to see his fatherly hand. We fail to see not only that God created all things but also that he sustains his creation, right down to the present moment.
9. Even we Christians can turn into “practical atheists.” We don’t deny that God exists, but in practice we fail to acknowledge him. Not the psalmist, though: “The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing” (Ps 145:15–16). Another psalm says, “My times are in your hand” (Ps 31:15). Jesus said, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered” (Mt 10:29–30). We Christians can be very much like King Asa of Judah in the Old Testament when he had a severe foot disease. “Yet even in his disease he did not seek the Lord.” He only “sought help from physicians” (2 Chr 16:12). How did Carlyle put it? “Our true Deity is mechanism.” Despite all its flaws, scientism proves strong. It strips people of our creaturely sense of dependence on God. Through scientism, unbelieving idolatry can run amok.
10. Ironically, it was Christianity that set the stage for the development of modern science. For modern science to happen, first people had to believe that the world itself isn’t divine and therefore can be subjected to study and experiment. This conviction couldn’t arise from various Eastern religions, but the Christian West had it. Second, for modern science to happen, people also had to believe that the universe can be understood upon reasonable inquiry. We may take these beliefs for granted, but they both result from the teaching that God created the world.
11. Christianity added something else: “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us . . . . No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known” (Jn 1:14, 18). In a way, the Creator of the universe subjected himself to a science experiment. Our text says, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us—that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 Jn 1:1–3). Did you catch that? When we see Jesus, we see God, John wrote, and when we touched Jesus, we touched God. Why? So, we can have fellowship with him! The key to life is not scientific knowledge but fellowship with God in Christ.
12. Jesus’ mission wasn’t to bring scientific knowledge to the world. He came to rescue. We were caught in our own idolatries, including the modern idolatry called scientism, which strips us of the awareness that, as creatures, we depend on our Creator. We deserved nothing from him but rejection and anger. But God was in Christ “reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.” Reconciled, by faith we have peace and an ongoing fellowship with the Creator God, who didn’t spare his own Son, but gave him over to bear our sin and be our Savior. “For our sake [God] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:19, 21). The key to life isn’t science, and certainly not scientism, but fellowship with God. On account of Christ and by God-given faith, you have fellowship with God.
13. Fellowship with God in no way rules out good science. When you know and believe that your heavenly Father sent his Son into the flesh in such a way that he could be seen and touched, you do not dismiss science. This is your Father’s world. No one can be more comfortable in it than you. No one can take greater delight in it. No one can rejoice more in learning about it. No wonder Christianity set the stage for modern science!
14. Many great scientists through the years have been Christians. None of them found faith in God to be a “science stopper.” Their faith spurred them on to scientific discovery. To name but a few: Gregor Mendel, Blaise Pascal, Robert Boyle, Michael Faraday, Lord Kelvin, Joseph Priestley, and Johannes Kepler.
15. Kepler was on track to be a Lutheran pastor when one of his professors advised him that he could also serve God by applying his gifts to the study of science. Throughout his scientific work, Kepler delighted in “the book of nature,” confident that its Author was the same God who wrote the Scriptures and sent Christ to be seen and touched and to die and rise. Far from shutting down every thought of God, Kepler was thrilled by the opportunity to think God’s thoughts after him, as it were.
16. Scientists make life better for people. In a way, they have the honor to do a little of what God does. Many scientists do not recognize that last part. The limited horizon of scientism keeps others from seeing it. Scientism solves nothing. It even contradicts itself. The key to life is not scientific knowledge. It is fellowship with God in Christ. Let’s point that out. Amen. Now the peace of God that surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, until life everlasting. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment