6th Grade Education

Recently I sat, captive in a room filled with elementary age kids, and heard an incredibly illogical position described as logical and a logical position as illogical. The positions were respectively, the creation of the world by the Divine and the creation of the world by the Big Bang.  The former bolstered by the first creation account in Genesis and the later mischaracterized as just a theory.  

I need to be clear. I was in the room because I believe in many of the same things as the speaker; The inerrancy of the Bible, the existence of God, the divinity of Jesus Christ, the freedom from sin He offers us all if we will only believe and accept it, and the importance of teaching our kids those same truths.

I also need to be clear that as I sat in that room my blood boiled, I bit my tongue and feared for every impressionable young mind that sat in the room with me.

Faith, by definition, is at least in part, illogical. Science, by definition, is logical.

It is possible to effectively convince a group of kids that the illogical is logical and the logical is illogical. You can condition your audiences response with your tone and phrasing  "... can you believe some people think the world began with a bang?... Like a firecracker…?" and mischaracterizations "…this is what is called a theory…which is just an idea…"

However this type of indoctrination falls apart in the face of actual facts and logic.

When these same kids are in high school or college, faced with a mountain of logic and evidence in favor of scientific explanations of the natural world, their world will seem to be presenting a choice. And what choice are they more likely to make?

They may think it through like this.

When I was 10 years old my Bible teacher said I shouldn't believe in science, instead I should believe in God. But now my science professors have shown me, and I've even seen for myself, that science ideas are not just ideas, but ideas built on evidence and reason. These ideas have been held to the highest levels of scrutiny and have stood up.

 The science makes sense.

But my Bible teacher said I should be skeptical of science…

But science says even science should be skeptical of itself…and only hold as true what holds up to the best evidence.

Who should I believe? Who is in a more believable position?

If my Bible teacher was wrong about science…maybe she was wrong about God too…

This might sound extreme but I know it can happen because it happened to me. I'm fortunate to have seen this crisis of indoctrination, logic and faith all play out in my adult life. Being a late comer to faith I was fortunate to have the maturity to consider and think and be patient and pray and read and learn and grow and pray and find peace. Peace with science, peace with my faith and peace with the knowledge that we have been made by a Creator God who doesn't ask us to reject logic, but emboldens us to pursue truth, because if it is true it is from Him.