Variety: Job 38v1-7, 34-41
Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man; I will question you, and you shall declare to me. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy? … Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, so that a flood of waters may cover you? Can you send forth lightnings, so that they may go and say to you, ‘Here we are’? Who has put wisdom in the inward parts or given understanding to the mind? Who has the wisdom to number the clouds? Or who can tilt the waterskins of the heavens when the dust runs into a mass and the clods cling together? “Can you hunt the prey for the lion or satisfy the appetite of the young lions, when they crouch in their dens or lie in wait in their covert? Who provides for the raven its prey, when its young ones cry to God and wander about for lack of food?”
The Australian geneticist Charles Birch paraphrased the conversation between God and Job, substituting questions he thought God might ask today. “Where were you at the Big Bang? How is it that out of a universe of pure hydrogen you have come into existence? Did life begin when the first cell came into existence or do elements of life exist in the foundations of the universe?… How can life grow from the non-living?… Because there are accidents and chance in the world why do you think there is therefore no room for purpose? Can you not have both? And when you have analysed life down to its molecular blocks in DNA why do you think you have discovered the secret of life when you have not yet discovered the source of love and all feeling?” None of this is intended to shut down science, but to recognise its limits - investigating the mechanisms of the world - and remind us that God is the ultimate creator and upholder of it all.
The Oxford Theoretical Chemistry Professor Charles Coulson – who was a Christian – wrote, “When we come to the scientifically unknown, our correct policy is not to rejoice because we have found God: it is to become better scientists.” In other words, for those of us working in the sciences, the more we learn about the way the world works, the better scientists we become and the more we can celebrate the one who made it all.
John Bryant, Emeritus Professor of Cell and Molecular Biology at ExeterUniversity, said ‘When you’ve made a new discovery…Being, for a short time, one of just a handful of people outside God who know that information is a real privilege. I’m not going to deny that an atheist feels awe and wonder, because they do. I think that is just increased when you realise that these intricate mechanisms you’re seeing are the work of an awesome creator.’