Truth You Can't See

Some people believe scientific truth is the only truth, meaning we should only believe in tangible things that we can see and touch.

But truth is more sophisticated than that. Lots of things are true even though we can’t physically touch or observe them. Like our thoughts and ideas. Or what about truth that is so meaningful we need stories to communicate them? Stories in the Bible, for example, are true in a deeply profound way that apply to everyone everywhere in every generation.

You can’t use Trigonometry to explain love or to cook up a meaningful relationship in a lab. Books, movies, and great music give us language to talk about ourselves in ways that science can’t address. Science describes what things are, not what they mean. It can tell us what the universe is made of and how it works, but it can’t tell us why we exist.

Science is so advanced that we can tamper with the very boundaries governing our humanity, but it offers no wisdom for determining whether those boundaries ought to be tampered with. Just because something can be done, that doesn’t mean it should be done.

As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.” Science provides us many wonderful benefits, but for humans to thrive, we need truth we can’t touch and see. We need meaning. We need purpose.

“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10).