This pandemic threatens to overwhelm our preparation for the day when the church must always proclaim, The Lord has risen! He has risen indeed! So as we try here at Science for the Church to help the church to engage science, facing a Holy Week unlike any in my lifetime, I want to offer three apparent realities coming from the scientific community.
Humans are relational beings. Biologists often refer to us as a social species, one of the most social of all species. Isolation is not in our nature. In fact, most of what nurtures us is interpersonal connections. So what do we do when, for the greater good, we are forced to stay away from one another, to not to leave our homes unless it is absolutely necessary?
If your church is anything like mine, there are leaders—lay and staff—trying to determine how to move forward as a faithful, worshipping community in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.
God certainly treasures this earth and its creatures. God created this world and poured beauty and love into it. As Christians, we know that God calls us in Genesis 1:26-28 to value the earth because we “have dominion” over it and over the creatures. “Dominion” is closely related to stewardship, that is, to act as God’s viceroy on earth, to “bear his image” as Genesis 1:27 says.
One of the most important topics—for many the topic in religion and science—is global climate change.
Relationships between ministry leaders and science professionals are a powerful way to engage faith and science. That fellowship often already exists—it is just a matter of acknowledging it and intentionally leveraging it. And then what happens?