Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
14 February 2010
Text: Luke 9:28-36
I was at Austin Seminary, and we were having a series of lectures on evolution. It was extremely important for the future pastors at the school to be exposed to the intricacies of these matters. Our seminary was training Presbyterians and Methodists who would be pastors all over the world, but most of us would be concentrated in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Arkansas—and these are places where there are often heated debates over evolution.
We don’t always get a sense of it here in the D.C. region, but there’s a strong religious movement to keep the scientific findings of evolution from the textbooks, and to present theories like “Intelligent Design” in the classroom.
Many Christians in Texas saw evolution as a threat to our faith. They took the words of Scripture literally, so they believed that God created the world roughly six thousand years ago, and the entire process happened in 144 hours. They fought long and hard against any scientific theory that might deviate from those presuppositions, because they believed that to question would begin to crack the very foundations of Christianity.
This issue is so important to many Christians that they have set up Think Tanks dedicated to the work of Creationism. They set up powerful lobbies, to make sure that politicians hear their views. They carefully study textbooks, and protest when evolution is taught in schools. Many times parents will even home-school their children, so that there won’t be a chance that their kids would be exposed to evolution.
I have watched Christians ridicule scientific findings for years. We know how the scientific method ought to work. You have a hypothesis, and then you gather data and test that hypothesis. If the data collected supports the hypothesis, then you have a conclusion.
But, sometimes Conservative Evangelical Christians can get it all backwards. Sometimes Christians start with a conclusion (like the world was created 6,000 years ago in six days), and if data that goes against that conclusion, then they try to disprove the data.
This practice points to the awkward relationship that science and religion has had since the 16th and 17th century. Now we look at the text and we see stories like the Transfiguration, and we wonder, How could this be possible? How can these men suddenly be on the mountaintop, talking with each other? It’s not scientifically possible for these miracles to occur. So what’s the use of Scripture? What’s the use of religion? Why do we gather together and pray and worship God, when the very first chapter of this book cannot hold up to an eight-grade biology class?
All of this points to this awkward relationship between science and the Bible.
So, our seminary invited some of the professors and academics from University of Texas to talk to us about evolution. They knew that as religious leaders, we would be in the front lines of this debate. We would have parishioners who would come to us with concerns about their child’s eighth grade biology class, and they wanted to make sure that we were ready to answer those questions.
Most of the visiting professors were wonderful. They helped us to understand the scientific findings, and they gave us the tools that we would need as we talked to the ordinary people who might be struggling with what they should believe.
But there was one man, who presented the Big Bang Theory, who was not so courteous. Just before his lecture was complete, he launched into an extended tirade against Christians. Basically, calling us all idiots.
Perhaps if I were a scientist in Texas, I would have the same reaction to Christians. I can certainly understand when certain groups, have been targeted by certain Christians, why they would make generalizations about all Christians. But, it was still rather unfair, when we were on his side, for him to be making these assumptions about us. And, in my humble opinion, if he was that vehemently opposed to us, then he ought to have turned down the invitation. And the honorarium. Instead of using our hospitality as an opportunity to tell us what morons we were.
But I digress… the point is that when we look at miracles in the Bible, often our modern minds don’t quite know what to do with them. And much of this uncomfortable relationship between science and the Bible is rooted in our ideas of how the world began.
It hasn’t always been this way. The author Karen Armstrong writes and about this in her book The Case for God. She said in an interview that the ancient mind had two different ways of acquiring knowledge. In Ancient Greek, the original language of the New Testament, there are two words: one is logos and the other is mythos.
When we look at the etymology, or the original root of words like Biology, Sociology, Anthropology, we can get a sense of what the term logos means. It means words, but there is something a bit more exact about the term as it was used in ancient culture. Logos pointed to science, reason. Logos helped us to function practically in the world, and logos helped us to accurately reflect the realities of the world around us.
And there was another term: mythos. Mythos was different than logos because the point of mythos was not to give us the words to accurately reflect with reason and science, but it was to give comfort in the midst of sorrow. It was to be there, to help us to get over our egos. It was to inspire us into a life of compassion. It drew us into a silent awe. Mythos was a discourse, it was stories and poetry that helped to comfort us when we were suffering and in pain.
If we have a child who dies, we absolutely want to know the scientific reason why that child has died. But after we know that, we want something else. We need something that will help us to come to terms with the tragedy. We want the poetry of Romans eight, that will comfort us with knowledge that there is nothing that will separate us from the love of God—not even sickness or death. We want the comfort of Psalm twenty-three, which speaks to our soul and tells us that even though we walk through the shadow of death, God will comfort us. God will eventually lead us to the green grass and the waters.
Mythos tries to explain and comfort in the midst of human suffering. When there were no easy answers, mythos tried to give meaning to our lives, with full realization that there are things that we don’t understand. As the Scriptures say, we see through a dark glass.
I the ancient mind there was the idea of two things. There was no competition between the two ideas. In fact, the early theologian, Augustine, made it clear that if there was a contradiction between science and the Scripture, then the Scripture needed to be re-interpreted.
There was just the sense that both were necessary.
In the 16-17th century, there was a radical shifting of religions and science. The Protestant Reformation was taking place, so there was this destabilization of religion.
Meanwhile, modern science began to take hold, and there were great strides that were being made–cures for sickness and disease. Science began to explain so many things. And mythos began to look flimsy, it was discredited. Logos became the only reliable, credible means of truth.
We can see how the tension became evident between the time of Copernicus and Galileo. When Copernicus presented his ideas to the Vatican, the Vatican was in nominal support of his finding. But when Galileo presented some of the same ideas, it was in a new time, and the Pope made the terrible mistake of putting Galileo under house arrest.
There was still an idea of logos and mythos. Among the Protestant Reformers, John Calvin said that the Bible did not speak to science. He called people who try to impede science “frantic persons.” If you want to learn about cosmology, don’t go to the Bible, go elsewhere.
Then something interesting happened. Sir Isaac Newton, and Rene Descates said that they could prove, scientifically, that God exists. Newton and Descartes began to point to science and they said that there had to be a divine intelligence to create all of this. There had to be an original source that was skilled in geometry and mathematics. If we look at nature, then there is undeniable proof that there is a Creator.
The church was thrilled by this notion that there would be scientific proof for our religious beliefs. Mythos was no longer discredited, because logos had proved it! And we began to make Newton’s God central.
With the discoveries of the Big-Bang theory and the findings of evolution, this proof that was so central to the church, came into question.
Something happened within conservative Christianity in the midst of all this. With the advent of modern science, many Christians no longer read the stories of Scripture with the same lenses. They began to see the Bible as a literal, factual book.
Again, the story of creation plays a central role in this. In the Bible, there are four accounts of Creation—there are two in Genesis, one in Proverbs, and the other in John. In one of the earliest church councils, it was declared that the creation accounts were metaphorical and should be read as such. Early mystics often came us with different creations myths.
Now, in conservative Evangelical Christianity, there is the sense that the Bible is a book of stories, wisdom and poetry that speaks to our deepest sufferings and stirs us to compassion, but it is more than that, it is also factually correct. Many conservatives believe that if we begin to say that the Bible might have some scientific or factual errors in it, then we nullify our entire faith. And we are doing nothing short of calling God a liar.
There are some people, like Richard Dawkins, who say that with the advent of modern science, mythos is irrelevant, and a movement of new atheists have gained great ground. But even though modern thinkers have declared that God is dead many times, the vast majority of people around the world are still religious. There is still a longing for mythos. There is something about these stories that comforts us in the midst of our pain, there is something about gathering here that stirs our compassion. There is something here that changes lives.
We cannot make scientific sense of why two dead people were talking to a Jesus, a man we declare is divine. We cannot, scientifically, prove that regular clothes and faces are turned into glowing brilliance. We cannot make those things happen in a laboratory. But we have this story of God incarnate, who is learning from prophets of old how to die.
The goal of religion is not to accurately reflect the realities of the world around us in the same way that science does—it is not to gather all of the words and details that will fully encompass the world. The goal of religion is to bring us to a sense of silence and awe. It is a humble understanding that there are things that our human minds cannot explain.
But, on the other hand, we will try to explain those things that we can, with the all of the robust scientific energy and intelligence that we can muster, we will study, test, try and prove.
There is the understanding that God is so infinite and so vast, that we may not be able to scientifically prove the existence of God, but that does not mean that we do not have wonder. And, when we look at this wonderful account of the Transfiguration, we know that lives can be transformed with the humble acknowledgement of God.
For the glory of God, our Creator,
God, our Liberator,
and God, our Sustainer. Amen.
