my journey through faith and science

I'm wondering if I can even write this post with my spectrum of readers in mind... My uncle who has earned his living from science for the past 30 years or more on one end of the spectrum, and the most conservative of my Christian friends on the other end of the spectrum. Sprinkled in the middle are the rest of my friends and readers, a group which consists, as far as I know, almost entirely of devoted followers of Christ, yet with varied opinions on the issues that make one a "conservative" or "liberal" Christian. Yet I will try.

For some time now, I've been wrestling with whether or not it is really possible to fit a belief in evolution into my faith in God.

It is one thing for me to say on a theoretical level, "Yes, of course someone can be a Christian and still believe in evolution," and then forget about the topic for the rest of my life. It is quite another to be able to teach my children with conviction what I believe to be the truth of the matter. I have strong convictions about who I believe God is, and I naturally share these with my children. But I also teach them what I believe to be the truth about every facet of life that I think they should know, and how the world works is an area in which they are particularly interested. I can't skip over the "millions of years ago" references in their dinosaur books anymore by saying "a long, long time ago" - their sense of time is more acute now, and they know what millions of years means. They are beginning to notice, too, if I skip the pages with timelines showing when different creatures lived, with man near the end. So I'm pushed into having a more concrete opinion on the matter.

I know that scientists say that the evidence for evolution is incontrovertible, that it is an established fact of science and a necessary premise for understanding other aspects of science. I have heard the arguments about how science is based on measurable, reproducible observations, and is the best way to investigate the natural world; whereas religion or philosophy is based on spiritual observations that cannot be measured or reproduced, and cannot be relied on for objective truth about how the world works. Those who want to be considerate to religious people also add that both fields of knowledge have their place and value, and that one can use science to understand how the world works and religion to understand spiritual matters.

This sounds like it would be fine and good... except that a major element of faith in God is the understanding that He is the origin - the Creator, the Sustainer, the Mastermind behind everything that is. Not only this, but also that He is pure goodness - that evil did not come from Him. This understanding has traditionally meant that we do not consider death and decay to be part of His original plan - it is attributed to humanity's influence on the world. That as humanity made choices that were counter to the goodness of God, we welcomed in an evil influence in our world that affected not only ourselves, but the entire fabric of creation, in a mystical or supernatural way that resulted in decay and death for all of creation, rather than life and continual renewal as God would have intended.

It seems to me that for one to believe in evolution, the association between death and evil must be abandoned. For in this case, death was the mechanism used to bring about homo sapiens, the life form that would be able to have a soul and consciousness, reflect the image of God and commune with Him in a spiritual manner. It also would have been the mechanism to bring about all the beautiful diversity of life that we currently witness, a force of nature that ultimately helps equip living things with the traits they need to fit into their environments perfectly.

But how can this perspective be reconciled with our faith? Our faith is that Jesus is the anointed one of God who was able to defeat death through the power of God. Because of his death and resurrection, we do not need to fear death ourselves, and we know that we too will be resurrected one day. We come to understand and believe these things at least in part through the intervention of the Holy Spirit, whose activities in our world may not be reproducible or measurable, but are attested to by millions of believers, I suppose billions through the centuries. Clearly, there is another way of knowing aside from scientific analysis, a spiritual element to our existence that can't easily be objectified.

I think this is what many believers come up against when faced with the theory of evolution: They come up against their own sure knowledge and confidence in God, which they have come to know and believe through spiritual faculties that are no less meaningful and reliable to them than a scientific analysis. Evolution presents them with an explanation for the origin of life that seems contrary to the story of God that they know. Why would God use a method to create all forms of life that depended upon death, and by association pain?

The only satisfactory answer I have come to (if one is determined to reconcile a belief in evolution with faith in God) is that perhaps physical death is not the enemy we suppose it to be. Maybe it is not innately bad at all. Maybe the death that occurred as a result of our rejection of God was (and is) a spiritual death, a disconnect that haunts humanity and that leaves us searching for the connection we lost. Surely Christ's purpose was to restore this connection between God and humanity, beginning on a spiritual level, but culminating in a physical recreation at the end of time. Our physical recreation at the end of time, in bodies that are no longer subject to time - i.e. to the ravages of decay - will bring a fullness and completion to the renewal that God in Christ is bringing to our world. But what if being in decaying bodies, susceptible to death (and yes, the pain that goes with it), here on earth is not symbolic in the same way, not purely an association with spiritual death, but simply a feature of the free-will world God created? What if it was necessary for our world to be this way in order for free will to exist? What if it was never possible, or desirable, even, that human beings on this world would not be subject to death; what if even the first humans were destined for physical death at some point, but would then step into the next phase of their existence in spiritual union with God until it was time for the new world which will be outside of time? What if their death because of rebellion was only a death to the spiritual life, to the image of God that He breathed into them himself at the dawn of man, a death which made their earthly lives immeasurably more difficult and would have made their eternal spiritual lives desolate had it not been for the work of Christ?

On the other hand, what if the connection between sin and death cannot be separated? How then should believers respond to the science of evolution and to the scientists (and ordinary people) who believe it to be valid? How can we, steeped in a culture that relies on scientific methods of analysis for everything from our drugs to our parenting methods to our economic strategies, reconcile our disagreement with the science, with those we otherwise consider to be experts, in this area? How do we explain or defend, in a way that makes sense to others and doesn't isolate them from our faith, allegiance to the spiritual knowledge we have obtained over scientific knowledge that we believe contradicts it?

Obviously, I have more questions than answers. This is not a post to convince you one way or the other. But they are questions that I want to resolve, that I desperately want to understand - if not for my sake, then for the sake of my children.