Christian Meteorology

Christian Meteorology October 2, 2015

Westboro Baptist National Weather Service

I had been meaning to blog about “Christian meteorology” again well before Westboro Baptist Church announced their plan to picket the National Weather Service. While the Bible contains not a single reference to picketing, it is clear that God controls the weather. And so if one is going to object to the practice and the teaching of “secular science,” it would be natural to focus on meteorology – which explains weather in terms of high and low pressure, humidity, warm and cold fronts, and a range of other things without ever mentioning God. Evolution is less obviously at odds with the Bible than secular weather reporting is.

On this topic, see Neil Carter’s post on Christian meteorology and his follow-up on whether Christianity and evolution are incompatible. And Chaplain Mike wrote:

All of life is sacred, but that does not mean we must talk about all of life in sacred, special language. We can talk about mathematics in mathematical terms, the sciences in scientific terms, history in terms of people and events in the context of natural human and societal processes, human relationships in terms of the actual physical, emotional, down to earth things we experience in life.

As people of faith, we are certainly free to talk about how we think God is involved in anymatter — that is a legitimate topic of inquiry. And it is always appropriate to be thankful to God and cognizant of God’s presence. But we don’t have to automatically bring God-language into every conversation or consciously try to speak of God’s participation in every matter we discuss.

In fact, to do so is to act in a way that is contrary to the way God made the world. He has hidden himself, by and large, and left it to humans to discover this world and this life and give our own language to our experiences.

 

 


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