The Science of Faith

Many, LORD my God, are the wonders you have done, the things you planned for us. None can compare with you; were I to speak and tell of your deeds, they would be too many to declare. Psalm 40:5

One of my favorite places in Berlin is the Natural History Museum. My wife grew up in communist East Berlin and has happy memories of going to the museum as a little girl.

Whenever we go back we love to watch Lucas and Tristan get excited about the exhibits. Their eyes pop open as they run around the old hardwood floors in the museum. The family favorite is the largest assembled dinosaur skeleton in the world, a Brachiosaurus. It is impossible to take a photograph of the entire skeleton without a wide-angle camera lens.

Some Christians shy away from museums like Berlin’s Natural History Museum because the museums strongly promote the theory of evolution. I encourage my boys to probe and ask the hard questions. Truth in science will always point us back to God, we need not fear.

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. Psalm 19:1-2

In science a law is something that is verifiable and inarguable. For example, no one argues against the law of gravity, at least not at the user level here on planet Earth. A theory on the other hand is something that cannot be verified using scientific method.

Good scientific theories are built upon evidence to be fair, but what separates a theory from a law is that a theory cannot be proven. In order to fully embrace a theory some degree of faith is required.

Contemporary scientists like Stephen Hawking and Jared Diamond, who attack the possibility of a divine Creator, seem to lean upon their own presuppositions that God does not exist. Their logic is often circular. They have decided in advance that God does not exist and then text proof nature to support their own ideas. But the theory of evolution begs a question to the modern scientist: Why is evolution a theory and not a law?

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. Hebrews 11:1

We cannot decide God into existence, but others cannot decide Him out of existence either. God exists, or does not exist, despite what we think.

Based upon my own experiences I believe that God exists and that Jesus Christ is His son. I do so as a matter of faith. Those who choose not to believe in God do so as an exercise of faith, too.

... Father thank You for life, thank You for creation. Father please help us to better understand the world You have created for us, this precious space You have given us to let our lives unfold. We pray to You in Jesus name ...

Love Finds Us

The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread. - Mother Teresa

Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. - Erich Fromm

When we lived in Berlin, especially in the spring, I loved to sit and watch people move in and out of the subway, busy people with places to go. Homes are private, thoughts are private, but the subway we share. In a city like Berlin, it is an intimate part of everyday life.

The way people dress, what they carry in their hands, those who travel with them, all tell a story. – But what do we know about others? Behind their smiles or frowns what can we really know? – We all have secrets, things we barely whisper to ourselves, let alone tell someone else … they do, too.

Who can know the human heart? Who can untangle its web of emotion? Our souls cry out to be understood. We need something. We search in vain. We move with purpose like people on the subway, working, sometimes desperately grasping, but left to human devices, never finding.

Maybe we just want to be loved ... unconditionally this time.

The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever. – 1 John 2:17

The world has lied to me so many times that I've stopped asking it for answers. The paradox of faith is that when we stop rummaging around for worldly answers, when we give up on our own ideas of how life should unfold … love finds us.

... Father, thank You for the gift of Love in the form of Your son, Jesus. Father, help us to turn our backs on the empty promises of the world. Command our spirits to be ready to recognize and accept Your gift of Love. In Jesus name we cry out to You ...

Alt-Mariendorf

Albert Einstein is reported to have said that in the form of a mathematical equation all the human brainpower combined is insufficient to comprehend the universe.

Because we cannot disprove what we cannot fully comprehend, we have to leave open the possibility of God’s existence.

The post-modern, perhaps post Christian, society we live in today, argues that truth is relative. But in reality, a believer cannot decide God into existence any more than a non-believer can decide God out of existence.

God exists, or does not exist, despite what we choose to believe. Relativism when it comes to God is . . . unscientific.

+++

On a late weekday morning several years ago, I was walking down the street in Berlin on my way to the city center. Just a few hundred feet from the subway entrance Alt-Mariendorf the Holy Spirit descended on me.

I was not following God at the time, but it felt like my soul was wrapped in love. It was pure, beautiful, and absolute knowledge of God’s existence.

My life was not in crisis, and I was otherwise physically healthy.

I did not then and do not now belong to a Pentecostal or charismatic church where things like this are reported to happen.

The entire experience lasted no longer than a few minutes and ended as quickly as it had begun.

During those moments the Holy Spirit conveyed to me two things.

He said that in the future I would return to God and He had something He wanted me to do.

He also said that someday my faith would be severley tested and that the current experience was a gift, something I could look back on during moments of profound doubt . . . and know God exists.

+++

Two-thousand-and-nine years ago, plus or minus six years, depending on whose calendar you use, God clothed himself in flesh and entered our world. We celebrate that event today as Christmas.

He did it because He loves you and me more dearly than any parent could love his or her own child.

Every emotion you have ever experienced . . . love, rejection, joy, loneliness . . . He experienced as a human, too.

If the purpose of what I experienced fifteen years ago on the street in Berlin is to tell you one thing, it is this: God loves you. The world will not always exist in its current form. Call out to God. He wants to be in a relationship with you.

We are all in need of salvation.

God is real. His love for you is real...

Life Raft

In Berlin the best place to watch people is in the subway. There it’s called the U-bahn.

When I lived and worked in Berlin, I’d step on the train and watch people jump on and off at each stop. The smell of pretzels and other pastries followed people through the metal doors and onto the train at certain stops. I miss it.

All those people, entering and exiting the train. All those stories. Coming from someplace, going somewhere else.

You look at a person, maybe into their eyes for a second ... an elderly gentleman, a college student ... and what do you really know about them?

This weekend I listened to my friend Richard speak publicly about the abduction of his six-year-old son; and Richard's two-year search until his boy was found.

When Richard told the story of their cheerless reunion, his son’s seeming rejection of him, the continuing difficulties, the hole in Richard's heart, it was hard to hold back tears.

What do we really know about the people we see every day? Many stories unfold hard.

Richard has such a solid, durable faith. It surrounds a fragile heart I think. He loves and clings to Jesus Christ like a man clings to a life raft.

John 3:17 teaches us that Jesus was sent by a loving Father not to condemn the world, but to save it.

What do we know about the people we see everyday? -- They need love, forgiveness, compassion, sometimes they need an endless supply of second chances ...

They need the Man who modeled and embodies all of these things. And, they need us to carry out His work.



. . . Father, thank You for Richard. Thank you for loving us. Thank You for life. Father, we cry out to you in Jesus name to mend broken hearts and broken lives. Command our spirits to never take a stranger for granted. They have a story and are Your children, too. In Jesus name we pray . . .