I have been witnessing an alarming trend lately among people I know or people I have been reading about and, while it is an issue we in the apologetics circles know all too well, the trend needs some addressing. Lately, people have been compromising on some of their beliefs in the face of so called “scientific evidence.” We have all heard somebody say, “The Bible and Christianity say one thing (insert any subject here), but I just can’t believe it in the face of such overwhelming scientific proof to the contrary.” Usually, these same people cannot name exactly what evidence would cause them to doubt but that’s another article for another time. What I want talk about today involves the reasons why people will end up compromising and why the whole idea of scientific evidence versus the Bible is ludicrous.
In my experience, even the most stalwart believers are not immune from this crisis of faith. I have known different individuals who stood for years just to give it up and resign themselves to the omniscient biology text book. Let me get this straight, these same individuals don’t usually stop believing in God or Jesus Christ entirely but they doubt different aspects of Christian thinking usually involving ideas of creation and history. I have wondered for years what could cause somebody to forsake a belief they have held for a long time and then the answer came to me in the statement, “I have no friends when it comes to the Word.”
What does this statement mean exactly? It means that when it comes to believing that the Bible or the Word of God is 100% true and the ultimate authority of our lives, few are going to stand with us. This statement is a very profound observation but it does not cooperate with the way humans want to conduct their lives. We have all heard the statement, “We all want to be loved,” and I think it is very prescient concerning this argument. Those of us who, as Paul would say, have been fighting the good fight for a while know how lonely it can get sometimes defending the faith and I believe it ends up weighing on people to just get some acceptance from their academic peers.
The act of not being accepting can be a horrible feeling and one which most people are unable to bare. However, isn’t that the problem anyway? We tend to think and act according to feelings instead of the knowledge of the Word which we have been taught and have researched. It is to this idea of feeling which 2 Timothy 4:3-4 is so eloquently written, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.”
In addition to the inquiry of why compromise happens in the first place, I want to address the false idea that scientific evidence contradicts the Bible. As apologists, we defend the faith, why? Because we know that God has loved us so much that, through His Son’s sacrifice and resurrection, we have attained salvation and are now given the ministry of reconciliation, reconciling men back to God. How did we attain this information? It is through God’s Word that we have learned this; so, we acknowledge that God’s Word has to be true and has to be the ultimate authority on such matters. Otherwise, how could we ever believe that any of our beliefs are true? Therefore, if we believe that the Word and its account of God and Jesus Christ are true then scientific inquiry can never disagree with what the Word says.
Linus Pauling, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, once said, “Science is the search for truth.” This, pretty much sums up the way I feel about science and its role in our civilization. Now, we ask the question, “What is truth?” Well, Jesus Christ Himself answered that question in John 17:17, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.”