We’re having a difficult time with truth. Particularly truth as told in scientific or biblical stories.
Philip Pullman, a master storyteller, in an essay entitled,The Origin of the Universe,* contrasts God stories from the stories of science. He says that God stories tell you what to believe. Whereas science stories ask you what do you see.
Pullman goes on to say that scientific stories “depend on our contribution, on our making the effort to understand and concur.” And that,”It’s only through honesty and courage that science can work at all.”
Our world will blossom when we see that this call for honesty, effort and courage, this demand to look and see the truth, applies equally to our engagement with biblical stories as with the scientific.
Looking for truth
Truth is such a beautiful word. To say, and to seek. But especially to see because we do have to see it to believe it. And that can be difficult.
We may have lenses clouding our ability to see it. We may be using the wrong tools in our search. Analyzing rather than weaving for example.
“Thus the art of weaving, of tying together, will soon replace the disjunctive and divisive methods of analysis.” Michel Serres
Weaving scientific and biblical stories to seek the truth. You may hold the warp and I might hold the weft. Apart from each other the single threads are limp, barely visible, and useless.
But if you come towards me and join your thread with mine, these threads weave together to become cloth. Made by two threads at 90 degrees to each other. Stronger for that.
Finding truth in scientific stories
Science has a distinct advantage over biblical in seeing truth. It has terrific tools that keep getting better and better, helping science research to see further and deeper into the physical stuff of life. But there is a downside to this in seeking truth.
As scientific stories go further and deeper, using bigger and ever more expensive tools, you and I, and most of humanity, are sidelined. Because you and I can no longer see ourselves the truth, revealed by instruments we cannot possess.
As a consequence, what we typically think of as applying only to biblical stories, believing the stories of science require more and more faith on our part. Faith that the truth as revealed by science is true.
It also means that as the tools get better, the scientific stories change. What was true today may not be true in the future. This is not a problem for biblical stories.
Finding truth in biblical stories
Bringing your calculator, your calendar, your telescope will not help you find biblical truths. If you’re measuring time or space in the Bible, you’re off track. Those are tools finding scientific truths.
Biblical stories reveal truths using only one instrument – our bodies in action. Our eyes for seeing, our ears for hearing, our lips for speaking and telling, our hands for giving and healing, our feet for going and turning, and our whole being for knowing and making. Only we can breath life into biblical truths.
Unlike scientific truths awaiting discovery through observation and documentation, biblical truths are awaiting our actions to reveal them. There are no metrics or definitive photographic images in biblical truths. This is no fancy equipment. No advanced degree necessary. There is only the grand experiment of the everyday life of a human being. You and me.
The weaving of scientific and biblical truth
So there is much that separates scientific from biblical stories. But while what these stories bring to the cloth are at 90 degrees to each other, they have as their purpose the same thing. To embrace life. Scientific truths in understanding life, biblical truths in bringing life.
Even so, let us not leave this discussion in black and white. Life is more complicated than that. As biblical stories can help us understand life, science can help us engage. Pullman’s dichotomy of science and god stories – flip it. Science stories tell you what to believe and biblical stories ask you what do you see. Is it two sides of the same cloth? Hence the “art of weaving.” A foundation of life proven true by scientific and biblical stories.
So let’s weave our world together using truth found in scientific and biblical stories. Taking our desire for understanding, and engagement, to weave ourselves a strong fabric that supports life.
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*First appeared in Exon, the Exeter College Magazine college magazine in 2006 and now in the book, Daemon Voices, a collection of Philip Pullman’s essays.