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by Kevin Pauley
Before the 1939/1945 war, if someone fell ill with pneumonia, there were several days of high fever while the patient fought for life against the infecting germ. Everything was done to maintain the patient’s strength, but no specific cure existed. Then, if the outcome was favorable, about the sixth day the body produced an out-pouring of antibodies into the blood, the skin soaked with sweat, the temperature came down and the patient sat up and asked for food. The ‘crisis’ had come. But the outcome was often death where apathy or weakness could not match the invasion. Pneumonia was called the ‘friend of the aged’.
Then came the discovery of the Sulpha drugs, and soon after, antibiotics. The treatment of lobar pneumonia was dramatically changed. Its cure now lay in the hand of the doctor. The crisis can come within a few hours: it is swift and predictable. Even very old people can be saved time after time from death by pneumonia. Previous to these medical discoveries it was common to pray for the healing of a patient with lobar pneumonia. Earnest intercession for the patient was made day after day by families and congregations, until the crisis came – or death. Today we do not feel the need to pray for the crisis; we give penicillin and it comes.
Our understanding of the relationship of God to the people with pneumonia has changed. God has, as it were, stepped back and put full responsibility for life or death into the hands of human beings. We could say that God has taken pneumonia off the intercession list and put it on the thanksgiving list instead. All the facts and explanations, the diagnosis and the cure, can be given in terms of medicine, epidemiology, biochemistry and pharmacology. Some feel they do not need to look further, unless they are one of those people who wants to ask a deeper ‘why?’. Why make the world in which pneumonia exists? What meaning does it have?
Religious explanations for everyday joys and sorrows therefore no longer carry conviction. Talk about God has little meaning for the public affairs of life. Religion has been relegated to the private choices and personal behavior of individuals. Secularization involves a revolution in thought and values, which has deeply affected us. Scientific understanding and the ability to act on it have given human beings a new kind of responsibility with far-reaching consequences.
This new responsibility is God’s gift to us and invites our response. We can become co-creators with God in curing pneumonia, immunizing our children, feeding the hungry in Ethiopia, or writing letters on behalf of prisoners of conscience. God does not rescue us if we refuse to take up this new form of responsibility. Was not his second command to humanity in the very beginning of human history to “fill the earth and subdue it and rule over it”? The scientific effort is an expression of man’s bearing the image of his Creator and sharing, as God’s servant, in God’s kingly rule. As God’s representative in the creaturely realm, he is steward of God’s creatures. Science does not push God out. It invites Him in more and more.
Pray for those Christians who are scientists, teachers or university professors.
Kevin Pauley is a pastor and writer. He lives in Illinois with his wife, Lynn, their five children and two dogs. His internet address is Berea.
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