This morning in the 18-25 year old Sunday school class that I help to teach, there was a rousing discussion of how we reconcile science and our relationship with God. Personally, I have always wondered why society seems to feel a reconciliation is necessary. I love God. I do science in order to understand something that God has created. I could say that science is a subset of God. In this way I think that the debate over “evolution” and “creationism” isn’t as much a debate between people with differing opinions about science as it is a debate between people of differing opinions about God. I believe He exists, guides my life, protects me, encourages me, and knows all of the math, even the stuff we haven’t discovered yet and the stuff we never will.
Later this morning, I led the Children’s Church, which is a place for the children in grades 3 and under to go so that they don’t squirm around in the pews during the sermon.The sermon is good news for adults, but terribly boring for a child, so Children’s Church is also a place for the children to go to learn about God in ways that they can understand. As a burgeoning mathematician, I always try to include a little bit of math in my church. I began the children’s lesson the same way I always do, by asking them to count how many children are in the room. Then I asked them some questions.
me: “Who created math?”
boy: “The president!”
me: “The president must be very smart. Who is smarter than the president?”
other boy, screwing up his face in deep and earnest thought: “God!”
first boy: “That’s right! God created math!”
me: “That’s right. God created everything. How many days did it take God to create everything?”
first boy: “Six! No, ten! Maybe even 15 or 16!”
This led into a playacting of “and God said Let there be light, and there was light,” followed by a rousing discussion of what Jesus was like when He was a little kid, followed by a rousing game of ok-everybody-twirl-in-place-until-the-first-one-falls-down.
At least we all agreed in the end that God created math and that Jesus was probably the nicest kid in his class.