‘After extensive revision and thanks to amazing expert* help (US and UK), the revised Teaching Course accompanying God’s Cosmic Cookbook is now about to be released in pilot-phase form.

Yahoooooooooooooooo!.

‘…if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out…’  (Luke 19:40, NIV) When Jesus uses these startling words on his way into Jerusalem for the last time, he’s explaining to the Pharisees that the whole of creation (even the rocks) will praise him and shout out who he is if people don’t… It is a bold and poetic way of saying that creation is there to bring glory to its Creator.

The voice of creation then, is something we shouldn’t ignore and when we listen to what the stones are crying out, they speak of an ancient origin…

This month I want to continue thinking about how best to respond graciously whenever a Christian brother or sister wants to insist that modern science is incompatible with our faith.

We discussed one approach to this last month and, remembering again Peter’s essential advice re answering with gentleness and respect, another possible response is to point out that scripture itself encourages us to learn from creation and see in it God’s glory and power…

You may, personally, have complete confidence that modern science poses no threat to your Christian faith (and likewise that Christianity poses no threat to science), but it can still be difficult to know how to respond when others challenge you on this, especially when they do so assertively or even aggressively.

Building on last month’s blog it can be helpful to think of the Bible and modern science as answering different, but equally important fundamental questions…

The aim of scientific research is to answer what, when and how type questions about creation… How it works? How and when did it start? What is in the universe and what will happen to it in the end? The Bible, on the other hand, is much more interested in ‘who’ and ‘why’ questions about God and our relationship with God.