Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.   John 17:17

     Amy was in tears, with no real idea where to turn for help. She'd just  been dismantled by a "Christian" professor who laughed at her when she answered  his questions about how the world was made. Worse, he'd also called her naive  for believing the Bible was true and without mistakes. Other students joined the  debate, and it seemed like most of them were also laughing at her. For the first  time in her young life, Amy wondered what was truth; and how she could know. Her  tears were real and so were her doubts.

     From the birth of Christ to the so-called Age of Reason, it was the  Christian church which was known as the  leaders in exploring answers to the hard questions of life. Not so much, today.

     On the one hand,  National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting System, Discovery & History  Channels are attractive to Christians because they examine and discuss topics  the church is often silent about. On the other hand, these bastions of cultural  exploration are often confusing to Christians because they dismiss the  supernatural nature of God, as well as denying His spiritual authority.

     While the opponents of faith argue religion is the cause of most wars  and most violence, history fails to support this myth. Only when humans took for  themselves the authority God had until then reserved for Himself, did the intensity of human violence increase. It is  no accident the century after the Enlightenment saw more deaths by genocide than  all of history to that date.

     Humankind separated from God is humankind separated from its moral  compass.

     This is precisely why Amy was struggling. It is not enough to tell our  children to "accept on faith" what Scripture teaches. That kind of thinking leaves them adrift when  anti-faith biases at academic institutions---or in the culture at large---plant  seeds of doubt about ultimate truth. We must teach them that the gap between  what research shows and what God says is due to  missing pieces of the puzzle we've not yet uncovered; usually because the tools  to uncover the missing pieces haven't yet been invented. Jesus expects us to be  thinkers; He expects us to explore. He expects us to ask and answer the hard  questions of life.

     For His followers, He has but one caveat: We must test  every answer against what Scripture teaches.

     Especially when modern scientific thinking appears to conflict with the Bible,  Christians should step up their involvement in scientific research. We should be  active in exploration, debate and reasoned discussions! Science is, at most, a  collection of the best information we have on a subject at the present time,  given the limits of our research tools. The "facts" of science are always  changing. This means no "fact" is ever rooted in the kind of certainty our  finite minds like to attach to it. That's why Isaac Newton broke new ground  after hundreds of years; and why Albert Einstein fixed the few things Newton got  wrong. Science is a transient part of the human experience which in its best  forms is a search for truth. But not all science is best-form, so the results of  science must be tested against the Truth that never changes: Scripture. As part  of an effort to glorify God, Christians must be active participants in the  search for truth by pursuing science and scholarship boldly, using the same  tools as the doubters and agnostics.