"Most Likely to Succeed"

I tend to vote Republican. I believe that our country is in trouble because we call so many things that are evil, good, and so many things that are good, evil. The Republican Party often supported what I believed the Bible says is good, such as the sanctity of all life from conception to natural death.

However, I have to agree with Senator Mitch McConnell’s statements:

“Let me give you my view of what happened January the 6th. And we all were here. We saw what happened,” McConnell said at a media availability at the US Capitol on Tuesday.

“It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election, from one administration to the next. That’s what it was,”

Was the election fair? I don’t know. But the kind of behavior seen on January 6 is not democratic and not Godly. Do I like much of what President Biden has signed into being? No, but God is in control. If we truly believe that, and behave like we believe that, we will be lights shining on a hill that cannot be hid and the darkness will have to flee.

I believe that as Christians we should be involved in politics. I spend a lot of time writing kind but pointed letters to my politicians on how I would like them to govern. I spend time praying for them. I work to teach my kids how to live Godly lives, in hopes that they will support politicians who believe in God. I work hard to vote for politicians who call right, right and wrong, wrong, according to God’s word.

Our country was founded as a Christian nation, no matter what contemporary academia says. Our country will fall if it stops following God. But it is our job to build the country up from the grassroots, with God’s truth and love. That is the only way. Only if everyday people are loving and following God will they want leaders who also love and follow God.

Our nation was founded by fighting a war. Our nation stayed in one piece by fighting a war. But both of those wars were started by the other side, the side that said, no, your belief in truth is wrong.

Starting a war because we believe we are right makes no sense. If we are right, then we just need to stand on that and let the other side eventually agree, or start the war. But we should never be the ones to start a war.

We can work to find truth and hold people accountable for wrongs, but remember,

Only God’s love wins.

Genesis 1 establishes that God asserted His authority over chaos to bring order to it so that life could flourish. God then created humans and gave His authority to us so that we can assert that authority over this world to bring order out of chaos so that life can flourish.

I believe that the recently developed vaccines are one way that humans are exerting their authority over the COVID-19 virus to bring order out of the chaos it has created so that our lives can flourish again.

Both Jesus and Paul tell us, in the New Testament to obey the governments we find ourselves under because they have been setup by God. The only times we are not to obey the government is if the government asks to not love God or to not love other people.

So when presented with a government mandate to get a vaccine I need to ask two questions: Does getting the vaccine cause me to not love God? Does the getting the vaccine cause me to not love other people?

I have heard Christians argue that getting the vaccine causes them to not love God because it requires them to put harmful substances into their bodies, which are to be treated as a holy temple.

Jesus specifically teaches that nothing going into a person can defile them. The only exceptions would be if ingesting something causes it to be difficult to love other people. For instance, eating too much or drinking too much are sins because the consequences of obesity and drunkenness make it difficult to properly love other people.

Remember, Jesus asks us to lay our lives down, so worry about how the vaccine will affect us personally should have no bearing on our decision, except as it could affect our ability to properly love others.

I believe that getting the vaccine, unless I were to have a specific medical condition that would make it impossible, actually helps me love others, and therefore, love God. The vaccine makes it less likely that I will spread COVID-19 to others, which is a way of loving others. Getting the vaccine also means that if I should get COVID-19 I will most likely get a milder case, also making it easier to continue to properly love others.

I realize that there are some who believe that the vaccine has killed more people than COVID-19 has. As someone who has done biological research in the past and also worked for a medical company that did a lot of research, I find that hard to believe.

So I think that the vaccine mandates are the government doing what God designed government to do: exercise His authority to bring order out of chaos so that life can flourish.

Lately I see a lot of yard signs in my neighborhood that say, “In this house we believe that:” among other things, “Science is Real.” That got me thinking, what is science and is it real?

The word, “science,” comes from a Latin word that means, “know.” And Mirriam-Webster also defines, “science,” as, “the state of knowing : knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding.” So then are these yard signs saying that my neighbors believe that knowledge is real? I agree with them, if that’s the case. I too think that it is possible to know things. But, no, I don’t think their signs mean that knowledge is real.

The Encyclopedia Britannica defines science this way: “Science, [is] any system of knowledge that is concerned with the physical world and its phenomena and that entails unbiased observations and systematic experimentation. In general, a science involves a pursuit of knowledge covering general truths or the operations of fundamental laws.”

I believe this is what my neighbors mean when their signs say, “Science is Real.” So science is the observations of our world and the analysis of those observations. That sounds good.

But who is doing the observations and analyzing the data to come up with this real understanding of the world?

Humans.

And we all know, for real, that humans are fallible. Sometimes people purposely make untrue observations or come up with untrue analysis because they want to create their own truth about the world. But even when people are trying their best to make unbiased observations and analyses, mistakes will happen because, people are, well, fallible.

So is science real, is it the truth about the world we see around us?

Because science is based on fallible humans’ observations and analyses, I find it truly illogical to make the blanket statement that all science is real.

However, if carefully and honestly done, I believe that science can help us understand the world around us.

But how will we know if the science conducted is real? Is the truth?

To know if the findings of scientific study are real, they must be measured against a known truth. Because humans are fallible, we can’t use our own standards to measure the truth of a scientific finding. So what can we use? There is only one perfect standard that I know of, the God who created all of this that we are trying to understand.

Therefore, if a scientific finding concurs with what God has already said is true about the world, then yes, that science is real. If the science conflicts with a biblical truth, then no, the science is not real, be it because of purposeful manipulation, or accidental misunderstanding.

Remember, science is fallible human’s best attempt at understanding the world that a perfect God created.

So do I believe science is real? If it does not agree with God, then, no, the science is just vain imaginings. But if it agrees with God, then, yes, the science is real.