Science & Technology in a Missions Context: Lecture Review (week 10)

This past week we had the pleasure of having Derek Chignell speaking on Science and Technology in a missions context. He shared some history of Science and how is took shape, and sharing some stories of scientists - turned missionaries, who still loved science and technology but didn’t see how they could merge and fit together in their calling to disciple the nations. He talked about 3 boxes of Science and Tech.

Revelation, Incarnation, and Application, and he talked about nature and the bible, and how God never intended them to be separate, but together to form a christian worldview that incorporates nature and science, and the bible and theology, all based on his character and nature. And he talked about when looking at science and theology, there are four ways society tends to deal with it. Fight, Separation, Harmony, Dialogue. And he compared the differences between Creation, creation ‘Science’, Evolution, and Evolutionism. He finished off by talking about his passion, ‘Water for Life’ ministry.

Some key points he shared about were the 3 boxes of Science and Tech;

Revelation - science is a study of God’s revelation. (Whether scientists believe this or not, it doesn’t matter).

Incarnation - ‘to be born’, to be human. Do scientists differ from anyone else? Why are they doing science and not anything else? We want to encourage young christian people to go into science, and secondly, we want to make a bridge into science.

Application - Simple ways of solving problems. My belief is that we as scientists, have the gift of solving problems. But we have a great tendency then and go into a village, and we start to see the problems, and then we start saying ‘I can solve that’. We are already telling the people, we see what your problems are, we can fix it for you rather than listening and learning and co-creating with them.

Another key highlight was how society tends to respond to issues of theology and science in 4 different ways.

The fight - war. We want a winner and loser. I attack you to validate me and visa versa. There can be a lot of emotions and heat, and trying to make someone agree with you.

Separation - Science is reality, please enjoy your beliefs but don’t bring them in here. (which is related to post-modernism)

Stephen Jay Gould - science and faith do not overlap. Don’t mix them. Non-Overlapping MagisteriA

Harmony - Let’s try hard to make it all agree I’m sure we can do it!

If you try to use science to try to confirm what the bible says, its a bit dangerous, because science changes, and we don’t know if Genesis 1 is supposed to be literal for example.

Dialogue - Some things agree, some things don’t, so lets talk about it, and dig in, but not try to win (fight). It’s not about winning and losing but rather going deeper into the topic.

What impacted me most was the comparison between the Worldviews of Creation and Evolutionism, and the theories of Creation ‘Science’ and Evolution. I had never really heard before that you can be a christian evolutionist, or somewhere on the scale in part even. But I wasn’t sure about a literal interpretation of Genesis 1, knowing the Hebrew culture was not like the Roman and Greek culture, and being aware of their differences when looking at the Old versus the New Testament, and why and to whom they were written. And it was releasing to at least understand the difference between evolution and evolutionism. Evolution being a theory, but it doesn’t say ‘therefore No God’, it’s open for discussion, whereas Evolutionism is the worldview that evolution is how we were created, and it can be explained and therefore we don’t need the concept of God anymore to explain the things about the universe we don’t understand. ‘We don’t need God as a crutch anymore’ basically is how Atheists have taken the theory of Evolution and turned it into Evolutionism.

In conclusion, I have freedom to look into some things more, without thinking I’m ‘spitting on God’, and not only do I have the freedom, but I also feel challenged to personally, I want to be relevant to this generation, so even if I choose a stance or not, at least I know what the discussion is. And I can help to bridge the gap between science and the church. The gap isn’t so wide everywhere, but there are areas where the gap is very wide, and really needs some bridges built because the church, and the science community are missing out on what each other has to offer and bring to the table for revelation and understanding.