FAITH AND SCIENCE
By Adesoji Aderemi
Image from Laugh Again
Sciences was what many of us dreamt of as Junior Secondary School III students. We either wanted to become Doctors or Engineers. Just a few of us wanted to be Lawyers and Accountants. We knew nothing about the specifics of choosing a career path.
Fast forward to my days in Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital, I am now a Pharmacy Student and oh yeah, I loved the prospect of being a Pharmacist. It was thrilling to be a “drug lord”; or “certified drug pusher”, as we fondly called ourselves then.
However, the struggle was on. It was subtle but grew loud with every passing day. I mean you couldn’t succeed through a health-related discipline with “reckless abandonment”, your objectivity and logical reasoning were a necessity. The more you embrace the logical reasoning that science demands, the less you see the necessity of faith.
I mean, I had seen weird healing testimonies in Secondary School. The Chapel Prefect Boy was the go-to for every feeling of discomfort, and fortunately, I doubled as the Health Prefect. There were times I laid hands and gave the sickness an ultimatum and it would be gone. Other times, we gave Paracetamol for all complaints including stomach upset and all kinds, yet the testimonies of healing were evident.
Imagine coming from such a background and you have to live by hypothesis and diagnosis. In the end, science triumphed. I grew to be a shadow of my faith exploits. But my God would not have gone far.
Pastor Olumide Adegbesan recommended HEALING THE SICK by TL Osborn “out of nowhere”. Scarcely had I read through the first Chapter and my deliverance came.
You see, the struggle between living faith and living by fact is a subtle reality that many science-oriented believers are unable to grasp but the effects on them are obvious. I know Pastors, trained as Medical Professionals who while claiming they believe in “living by faith” their lives are antithetical to their supposed belief.
While I am not trying to pride myself in my deliverance, I sincerely feel scientific minds who are believers in Christ must subject themselves to the true form of faith-science union.
Faith is not neglect of facts but the elevation of divine truths above human and logical facts. Science on the other hand is not supposed to counter faith but to help our faith. This is because faith is not illogical even if we find it difficult to comprehend. Science also is not the absence of faith but the discovery and search into faith.
A man can begin with faith; believing a truth without fact. Years later, science comes along and presents the fact that validates the truth that had been held long ago. This is an example of the right appropriation of faith and science. This unfortunate thing that many do is to posit faith and science as enemies but the God of all factored science in when He created all and He remains the Lord of all (science inclusive).
On this note, I counsel my colleagues who are struggling with faith to stop trying to disbelieve and just embrace faith. Science will catch up later. And to those who are oblivious to the struggle, your recognition of the struggle is your first step towards light.
Yours-in-faith.
