The Scientist's Favorite Psalm

I belong to an organization of Christian scientists called the American Scientific Association (ASA). When I say that, I always have to carefully point out that I don't mean Christian Scientists/Mary Baker Eddy (although I must say, they had a very interesting habit of just numbering their churches, so you'd often see the seventh or eighth Christian Science "church," for example -- very scientific of them!). Rather, it's an organization of a bunch of practicing scientists who are also Christian. It's very ecumenical, both in denomination and in science-faith philosophy. There's a few young-earthers and flood geologists, a larger number of intelligent design types, but I'd say the majority are (for lack of a better world) theistic evolutionists. Francis Collins (head of the Genome project and perhaps the association's most famous member) proposes in his book The Language of God that a better term for "theistic evolution" would be BioLogos, with logos referring to the active word of God ala John 1. Would that make an adherent of that view a biologician?

One of the things you notice about the ASA in a very short time is the number of times Psalm 19 is quoted. It happens at least once a newsletter:

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork.

Scientists love that stuff, at least verses 1-6. It's part of the reason why we do science, the universality, grandeur, and regularity of the scientific method. This week's sermon was on "Inhale: Creation" and the chosen text was, you guessed it, Psalm 19. The interesting thing is if you just went from the way the psalm was quoted in the ASA newsletter, you'd probably think the psalm was just 6 verses long. But that's not the half of it. After a stirring description of the sun and the stars, verse 7 seems jarring to the scientist:

The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul/
The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.

And on it goes through verse 9, extolling the virtues of the Torah. The second half of the psalm centers around the revealed Law rather than the natural Law, Karl Barth rather than Rene Descartes. My own internal sensors cause me to read through this faster, because it seems less central to my life.

But the two halves do go together, and are deliberately related. Reading this psalm as a whole is important, just like the points I made about intergration of faith and science in the post "Introduction Part 4." To put that into practice, here's just a few things I see in relating the first half to the second:

The second half is more personal, but it still extols the universality, grandeur, and regularity of the Torah. "Nothing is hidden" = universal, like the sun's light or the heavens' declaration.

Verse 10 explicitly compares Torah to nature, and check out who "wins":

More to be desired are they than gold, yes, than much fine gold/
Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.

If the Psalmist must pick, he'll pick Torah over nature (or at least nature's consumables) any day.

The universality and regularity of the Torah quickly lead to the realization that, oops, it's more righteous than I am. This reminds me of the transition from Romans 1 to Romans 2. In Psalm 19, verse 12 is a confession, and verse 13 is a remarkable request:

Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins/
Let them not have dominion over me

This essentially is saying "save me from myself" -- the light of God's revelation, the sun of the Torah, clearly illumines all my inadequacies. I can't even control myself, and sin eventually takes away even my own choices about myself. Verse 14 completes the thought with hope and a return to eyes on God:

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart/
Be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord/
My strength and my redeemer

The overall movement is from creation to revelation to confession to redemption, starting at the cosmos and zooming in to the choice centers of the brain (Who can understand his errors? Cleanse me from secret faults), returning at last to a reliance on God's ability to save from anything. Even myself.

A God who created a good creation has not abandoned it, and can save. He can save us, and he can save it. That's a good thing to hope for, while working in the lab and investigating the regularity and intricacy of nature.