Maker Of… (Amos 5:8)

He who made the Pleiades and Orion
And changes deep darkness into morning,
Who also darkens day [into] night,
Who calls for the waters of the sea
And pours them out on the surface of the earth,
The LORD is His name.

Amos 5:8

I, like many who read and believe The Bible, have often been told about how scientifically inaccurate The Bible allegedly is. There are two responses to this that carry equal validity.

First, there is the reality that science itself was once scientifically inaccurate. As an example, medical science used to think that blood letting was more or less a cure all where fevers were concerned. This is now understood to be false. Science, in all its forms, is the search to understand the world around us and that search is going to lead to wrong conclusions from time to time. When better evidence is presented, science (allegedly) moves to where the evidence points. I say that the move is alleged, because scientists are human beings and human beings can become attached to pet theories and notions and refuse to act on better data. And I admit that the preceding statement is often turned on believers.

Second, there is the reality that scripture actually describes things that science did not understand until much later. I am not going to claim that constellations like the Pleiades and Orion were never understood to exist before The Bible called them out, that is an absurdity. However, this morning’s verse describes both the diurnal and hydrologic cycles. The verse speaks of God changing darkness into morning and darkening day into night. Put plainly, that it is normal round of day to night. Not a terribly scientific thing, as most anyone can observe it, but the verse explains the how. Science tells me that everything came from a huge explosion and that matter gradually formed and that gradual formation resulted in the perfect conditions to start things into motion and keep them right on moving down through the millenia to today. Which just sounds like a fever dream. The Bible says simply that God did it and continues to do it. How did the Earth get into its spacial groove? God put it there. The next part is that which makes me smile and astonishes me that it is overlooked. I mean, sure, it says that God is the One Who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out on the surface of the earth, but the process described is how we understand the hydrologic cycle. Evaporation from bodies of water later condenses and falls on land. The cycle is described. Sure, God glosses over the technical details, but the engineers with whom I work gloss over the technical details of things all the time. In order to do my job, I do not need to know the complex physics that make our machinery possible or how to calculate I2R losses. Those concepts would take a long time to explain to me and would confuse the actual message about how to safely replace a given component. Should I then be surprised if God gives only as much information as is necessary to communicate His message?

God is the Maker of … well, everything. He designed it, created it, and maintains it. And those who says that The Bible is scientifically inaccurate are, I suspect, parroting what someone else has said or are turning a blind eye to descriptions like those contained in this morning’s verse or want to dismiss the scientific statements as poetry. Having read a fair amount of poetry, I can safely say that poets rarely imagine on quite the scale that we are being attributed if the scientific statement of scripture are dismissed as poetical language. God is the Maker of all things and He reveals as much through statements in scripture that reveal bits of knowledge that we had not yet attained.

Awesome. How about some application. I am reminded that God knows. He knows all about creation and how it works because He made it. He knows all about the human body and how it was designed to work, since He designed it. He knows all about the laws that constrain me within a physical universe and the chemistry that makes up my bodily function as well as influences the same. God knows. What is more, God cares. That God calls for the rains is a reminder that He is concerned about the basic needs. That God keeps the diurnal cycle humming along is a reminder that He is good to His promises (He has made more than a few promises in scripture that are contingent on the diurnal cycle’s continuation). God knows, because God is the Maker of whatever good thing I care to name.


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