A disturbing philosophy in our society is that our beliefs and feelings determine reality. As a result there is a constant focus on the new, and the old is discarded for new. Whenever we have the chance, we change or upgrade houses, cars, phones, clothes and even beliefs – it seems as often as we are able.
We constantly regard the old as irrelevant, and as a side-effect of this attitude we also do not value our elderly or our history. Atheists and agnostics discard Christianity as a relic of the past. Even Christians fall into the trap of not valuing the old, taking up the newest trend or teaching.
However, the most important things in our lives are constant and have not changed in thousands of years. This is because as a scientist I know that some things never change, even though opinions may do.
Science can be seen as a story of discoveries, each discovery providing a more complete picture. From the discovery of cells or electrons, new knowledge does not invalidate past knowledge. A cell is still a cell and an electron an electron, though our understanding of them may change. Importantly, though our understanding of these things has changed, the things themselves have not changed.
An electron has the same characteristics today as it did 10 000 years ago, and DNA still existed thousands of years ago even though we did not know it existed.
Truth is not dependent on our understanding, and does not change on whether we know it or not.
Much like science the Bible is a history of revelation on the nature of God and his plan for his people. In Genesis a limited amount is known about the character of God, but by the time of the death and resurrection of Jesus we know much more about the nature of God.
The nature of God did not change, only our understanding of Him. God has always existed (Revelations 22 verse 13), and his truth is eternal.
Furthermore the existence of God does not depend of whether you believe in him or not, just in the same way the universe is composed of atoms whether you believe it or not.
The Bible is the story of truth revealed by God, and we risk losing our understanding of God and ourselves if we reject the history of our Bible. The Bible and the history of the Church are always relevant. By ignoring our history we run the danger of ignoring the revealed nature of God.
Nathanael Yates from Perth, Western Australia, is an award winning young scientist completing a PhD in the neurobiology of schizophrenia
Nathanael Yates' previous articles may be viewed at: www.pressserviceinternational.org/nathanael-yates.html