Science and faith… kids need to know
Most Christians fully embrace modern science and value how it explains and underpins the world around us.
For us, science sits comfortably alongside our faith in an all-powerful creator and saviour God. We might not often even think about it that deeply, but if pushed to explain, we’d probably just say they address different questions… Modern science is, by definition, focused on the material universe (what’s in creation, when it arrived and how it works) whereas our spiritual life is much more about who God is, why we’re here and our individual relationship with God.
Though this might seem instinctively natural and obvious to many church-going adults, it’s not so obvious to our children and grandchildren… Taken at face value Bible stories, for example about the ‘days’ of creation, seem at odds with exciting science like dinosaurs and the Big Bang and if no one takes the time to explain, it can be very confusing.
On a positive note, children can readily understand that, as the Bible was put together way before modern science was even a thing, it can’t have been written to give us scientific information… In other words, the Bible and Bible stories shouldn’t be read in the same way as books explaining what we know about volcanos or comets or reptiles.
Like looking at a beautiful painting or listening to a classic children’s tale, it’s always best to let the Bible or Bible story speak to you… Take the creation story; can you…
feel the total nothingness and emptiness ‘before’ creation
see how God hovered with excitement to bring creation into being
understand God’s awesome power – just commanding everything into being!
feel God’s sheer delight as creation comes together
This speaks straight to the amazing truth that God planned and implemented creation out of nothing, by divine power and rejoiced to see it – WOW!
The bottom line is; Bible stories aren’t there to teach us science, but to help us understand who God is and how important we are to God. Science can’t tell us anything about things like this! If we don’t want our children to think that God and science are opposed or, at best, have nothing to do with each other; we need to explain this.
Modern science describes the world around us and if our children can’t reconcile science and faith when they are young, it is a short step for them to decide as teenagers that God has nothing to do with the real world or isn’t real at all.
