From the Pastor's Desk

It's easy to be fooled into thinking that all reality is contained in our physical world, in the three-dimensional realm of our five senses. We've been conditioned to believe that hardheaded, rational, no-nonsense people should accept only the natural world as really real. If you can touch it, taste it, smell it, see it, or hear it, then you're dealing with something genuine. We are told that you can believe in or comprehend only those persons or things that stand up under rigorous scientific verification.

This view of the universe is based on what philosophers or theoretical scientists might call a closed system of reality. In other words, according to this view, everything that exists is encompassed by the ordinary physical world and the laws that govern it. Conversely, nothing exists that cannot be fully known by human beings through the laws of the natural system. This is a way of looking at things that has popped up relatively recently, beginning with Isaac Newton's approach to physics in the 18th century, the so-called Age of Enlightenment.

While Newton was deeply religious, many scientists and philosophers who followed him were not so humble. They put human reason on a pedestal that left little room at the top for an infinite, unsearchable, dynamic deity. The problem is that the basic tools and training that applied scientists rely on are inadequate to explain all of reality. There is a miracle dimension. There is a reality beyond reason. "Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love Him" (1 Cor. 2:9).

Pastors Mark and Jennifer