Senior Living

Isaw a bumper sticker today that caught my attention: “The good thing about science is that it’s fact whether you believe it or not.”

To me, that sticker implied that if you are a person of faith, your beliefs are unreliable because they are not based on science which is fact and therefore indisputable.

In other words, science is superior to faith.

But the reality is that science and fact are not synonymous terms.

There are many scientific theories that cannot be proven and do require belief in order to accept. Such is the case with the scientific theory of evolution, or the speculation that the earth is billions of years old, or the notion that cows are causing global warming.

Remember that science once maintained that disease could be flushed from the body by blood-letting.

But don’t get me wrong, I am not anti-science.

Faith and science do not have to be mutually exclusive. But perhaps there should be a bumper sticker for people of faith that says, “The good thing about belief is that science can’t prove you are wrong!”

Jesus said in Matthew 17:20, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

But the real reason that bumper-sticker caught my eye and prompted this article is that I wondered what kind of person would put that sticker on their car. I felt sorry for that person.

A life that chooses science and logic over faith is a life that will not see God. For God is Spirit and must be worshiped in Spirit and in truth (John 4:24), and the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight (1 Cor. 3:19).

Dan Williams is the senior minister at Lexington Baptist Church.