Frameworks
If you arrived here expecting pictures of Michelangelo’s David, don’t leave yet. Instead, picture the studs that form the framework of your house. They give it the strength to stand and separate the space into individual rooms based on their purpose. The framework supplies both structure and organization.
Thoughts and ideas need structure and organization too. As we encounter new ideas, we need to organize them into categories. They need mental frameworks.
Faith needs a supporting structure of trustworthy facts. Without that, you’re depending on blind faith, which is fragile and easily broken. Informed faith is resilient and can withstand the stresses of life.
Scripture and Nature
Every generation needs to find answers to the unique challenges it faces. We need answers that fit our present-day setting for the important questions we all ask: why am I here, and how did I get here? When we’re older, we go on to ask: what’s wrong with the world, why are so many things off the rails, and how can I make sense of it?
By the beginning of the 20th century, our understanding of science was exploding. Science and technology had been steadily making people’s lives better and more comfortable. But what had faith done for them? Was the Bible out of step with the modern world? Was it now just a poor substitute for scientific knowledge?
Criticism of the Bible and the “search for the historical Jesus” (who was only a moral example) had been chipping away at the authority of the Bible for a century. Scientists were claiming that life is a simple phenomenon, that would form on its own when conditions were right. No Creator was necessary. It appeared likely that as science continued to fill in gaps in our understanding, faith would simply die away.
Then about 60 years ago, things started to turn around. Science began making stunning discoveries that confirm a Creator. It’s turned out that our world is filled with scientific evidence for a Designer, and a lot of scientists have begun to bring that to light.
The Bible will always be the only dependable source for the answers to life’s big questions. And this is the best time in history to study it; good resources are more accessible than ever. Today, a better understanding of both scripture and nature is within everybody’s reach.
Christianity has traditionally believed that God reveals himself in two essential ways. First, through nature – it’s a logical starting point for discovering nature’s Creator. And second, through scripture – God’s actions, thoughts, and plans recorded in the Bible. The metaphor of two books, the book of nature and the book of scripture, has been around since before St. Augustine.
When we look with an open mind, both of these books are evidence for elegant and ingenious design. There is elegance and genius in scripture in the underlying organization and consistent message over thousands of years and dozens of writers. And the more science learns about nature and life, the more clearly it reveals the ingenious design of our Creator.
