Science is Good | Wisdom, Stewardship, & Mercy in Three Stories

Stump: 

Welcome to Language of God. I’m Jim Stump

In the spring of 2025 BioLogos launched a new initiative. We called it Science is Good. The initiative was in response to a cultural moment marked by distrust of institutions, suspicion of expertise, and a sharp decline in public investment in scientific research. And to help frame the call to Christians to speak up in this moment, we turned to Matthew 25, where Jesus gives three parables, each one highlighting a virtue that we believe are relevant to science: wisdom, stewardship, and mercy. 

In this episode we have three scientists who have stories about how they see their work corresponding to these parables in ways that illuminate the goodness of science. But before we get to those, we think it’s important to consider some context. It’s too easy to take a Bible verse and try to make it say something which was never intended or even considered by the authors. The Bible is not a science textbook — I’m sure you’ve heard that before; but neither is it a philosophy of science textbook. Science, as we understand it today, has only been a thing for a few hundred years, so we shouldn’t expect the Bible to reference science directly any more than we would expect it to reference the United States of America or the internet. But doesn’t that mean we can’t apply the wisdom of Scripture to our modern world. 

To help us think through our approach and give us some insight, we asked a friend of mine Jason Miller, pastor of South Bend City Church. Here’s what he had to say: 

Miller:

I think it’s important to remember that, yeah, the Bible isn’t primarily a scientific text. That seems really clear. You sit with great scholars and they help you think about what these authors meant and what they were doing. I don’t think they were doing science. So that’s important to remember. And when we think they were doing science, we end up with a lot of, I think, really problematic applications. However, if the Bible can’t be a text that we use for the modern world, then we’ve got some other problems.

If we can’t wrestle with it together in community and with the guidance of the spirit and continue to work out what this might mean for our modern world, then we’re going to have a real gap there. And so I think it’s good that we’re using it like this, as long as we remember that it’s not directly a scientific text.

Stump: 

More specifically, we have parables. When people asked Jesus a clear question, he usually responded by telling them a story. I remember, as a kid, hearing stories like Aesop’s Fables where after the story there’s this clear and succinct moral. And I used to think that that moral somehow cheapened the story. Like if that’s all they were trying to say, then why tell this elaborate story? And I’ve been reflecting a little bit wondering whether what we do sometimes to parables might be like that. If we say, here’s what it really means, have we somehow cheapened what Jesus was doing?

Miller: 

Yeah, if the parables just have one flat literal direct meaning and application, you might wonder why Jesus used them because he doesn’t actually offer that often. Often he just lets the story speak for itself and sometimes he explains it to his disciples. But I suspect that’s actually really good because parables, like a lot of things that Jesus does, are kind of subversive. They break into our lives in ways that are more transformative than they would be if they were just simple, flat, direct, one dimensional ideas. They have a growing kind of life in our lives as the story works itself out and we keep turning it around in our minds and try to figure out what it means for us today. I also love that Jesus seems to trust us to do some of the work. He says, “I’m to give you the Holy Spirit. You’re going to be in the church and community and then together you’re going to keep working things out.” And I think that’s another reason that he speaks in parables and it’s a good thing that it requires us to use our minds and our understanding to continue to figure out what these subversive stories mean as they keep working themselves out in our lives.

Stump:

These parables in particular seem to be more directly about the coming kingdom of God, the eschaton. They aren’t parables about science and we can’t expect that Jesus was somehow slyly referring to future scientific development in his stories to the Israelites of his times. 

Miller:

However, if Jesus is talking about what we can expect in the end, and he’s giving some warnings about the end, that when the kingdom of God comes in its fullness, we will wish that we had heeded these warnings. Then another way of saying it is that our eschatology or our vision of the end should probably inform our character that the kinds of people that would do well in these stories, the kind of person who would be sorted as a sheep and not a goat, the kind of person who would hear the master say, well done, you’ve invested what I gave you, the kind of person who thinks wisely about what’s coming in the future. We want to be that kind of person, right? And so I think we could say that these parables call us to be people of wisdom and stewardship and mercy. And if you’re really a person of wisdom and stewardship and mercy, then that’s probably going to apply in every part of your life, including how we think about the modern world and how we use science in it.

Stump:

With this in mind, let’s hear from our guest scientists. 

The first parable in Matthew 25 is the parable of the bridesmaids. The parable tells the story of ten bridesmaids who took their lamps and went to wait for the bridegroom. Five of them were wise and brought extra oil. The other five were foolish and brought none. When the bridegroom was delayed, the foolish ones ran out of oil and had to leave to get more. While they were gone, the bridegroom arrived and took the prepared bridesmaids into the wedding feast, shutting the door behind them. So without reducing this parable to one single point, I think we might at least respond by saying: You don’t know when the moment will come, so it is wise to be prepared.

Emily Smith is an epidemiologist, writes the popular substack the Friendly Neighbor Epidemiologist, and is a previous podcast guest. Epidemiology might not be the first field you think of when you hear the word “wisdom,” but think about it—wisdom isn’t just knowing facts, it’s about seeing clearly, anticipating consequences, and acting with foresight and compassion. That’s exactly what epidemiologists do. They prepare. They study patterns and data to prevent harm before it spreads. It’s a discipline deeply grounded in care and readiness.

Smith:

And it strikes me how much this parable sounds like science, because it’s just gathering, it’s being ready, it’s gathering some supplies and data and doing things in excellence. So I mean, it feels like, you know, in my work, I’m an epidemiologist, and so my job is to look at the communities or the people who are affected by some sort of either disease, or it could be poverty, or it could be food insecurity. In my line of work, it’s all of the above. And so for me, it’s people who are on the margins of health care access, plus poverty, plus child health, which is pretty much what I do. So to give you an example, in Somaliland—this was one of my very first studies in my PhD program—we tried to map out in the country where the kids are that have some sort of health need, specifically a surgical need, because those are really hard to they’re not necessarily hard to treat, but they require most of the time, very timely, quick access. If you think of a child who is born with a congenital anomaly, a lot of those need surgery within hours of birth or it’s 100% fatality rate. So you can imagine, in a place like Somaliland, it’s the fourth poorest country in the world. It has 2 million children and 15 hospitals, most of them in the capital city of Hargeisa. So if a nomadic mother gives birth, you know, in the mountains, 15 hours away, there’s no way for her to be able to get to the health clinic in time to save her child. So the preparedness part for me comes in of we need to map out where those kids are, we need to map out where the hospitals are, and then that gives us the gap of, where do we put the next hospitals? So the preparedness is, where are the gaps? Where are we not and how do we get there?

Stump:

The work of figuring out where those gaps are is a scientific question and has answers that can be obtained by careful analysis.

Smith:  

History has taught us these systems work. You know, the science of defining who is most at risk and choosing not to walk by is the hallmark of what I hope to do in my career. And you know that sounds like another, the other parable of the Good Samaritan story, which is, I mean, anybody who knows me, knows that I just love to talk about that. 

Stump:  

You’ve talked about that on our podcast before, I believe. 

Smith:  

I sure I did, probably a lot. So when you think back in history, so when HIV was first finally given the attention that it needed, I mean we think of millions and millions of people just dying, and epidemiology helped find where they were. If you think of one of the hardest hit countries back in the 80s and 90s, it was Botswana, and so that helped us. And I say “us” in terms of the science field, the interventionist you know, where do you go in to give not only preventative care, but also some treatment care once treatment actually became available? So you’re right. I don’t do the individual treating, but I tend to think of my profession as treating the communities with whatever could ail them or does ail them.

Stump:

The actual work of science isn’t usually very visible to people who don’t work in the sciences and sometimes from the outside or from the media portrayal of science it can look messy or wasteful, but while science is done by humans who are flawed creatures, it also is a process that builds on itself, checks itself, and often those humans who work in the sciences are motivated by helping people…

Smith: 

I mean to me, we do the best that we can with science in an iterative process, which it just takes time to answer these really complex and hard questions that we do it from a space of excellence. You know, when I do my mathematical type modeling on where do we build the next hospital system that takes a lot of time, and there are certainly some errors along the way, and you learn from it, and you tweak the model or tweak the experiment, but I want to get it as almost perfect and excellent as I can, because it’s going to impact real people on the ground. So there’s some, you know, there’s some grace given towards science and just wanting to do things really, really well.

Stump:

Emily gave the example of Somaliland earlier and there have been many positive outcomes from that work.

Smith:  

There’s been some bolstering of the healthcare systems that are already there. And my main collaborator is Edna Adan, and she has a hospital in the capital city, and so she’s been able to do some pretty incredible surgeries on children’s conditions that you know previously, five years ago, would not have made it. There’s a condition called gastroschisis. If there’s any MDs listening, they’ll know what that is, that it’s where the bowels of the baby are born outside of the body. And here in the States, you recognize that a child has that through ultrasounds that, you know, most of us get just prenatal care, and when the child is born, it’s a pretty simple surgery, and you can tuck the bowels back in and, you know, make sure monitor them for any type of complications, and they go to live a very, very normal life. So it’s almost 100% survivable here in the States. That’s one of the conditions in Somaliland that is 100% fatal if they do not get to care very quickly. So she’s been able to do a lot of those surgeries now on her own with her team, and you’ve also seen some training of specialties, like anesthesiologist, some community health workers to identify these surgical conditions, or, you know, kids with cancer, or kids that broke a bone and need very quick surgery, working with the communities to get them to her hospital very quickly. So you’ve, you have seen some great progress. But what is happening now in the funding world, with global health funding going away? I mean, it’s stopped so much of that progress right now because of the lack of vaccines or the lack of global health funding to people just like her.

Stump:

There is still a hard question about how to know what work to fund, because any project is going to have economic tradeoffs.

Smith:

There is the payment, if you will, of just expert mercy in doing this, because we believe it from a heart of the Good Samaritan, and like Jesus said. But if you look at it just from a purely economic standpoint, there’s a huge return of investment for investing in the poor first. I call this the bottom up approach, instead of the trickle down approach. It’s almost the trickle up approach. It’s a flipped way of viewing development or money. To give you an example, in our work, we did an economic analysis of surgical work that happened in the Sudan. And this is in South Sudan, where they’re having a lot of the conflict right now. And if you invest there, you know we’re thinking of physician, all the supplies that are needed, there is a 14 to 1 return of investment. So for every dollar, you’re going to get $14 back. And that’s not just to the hospital, that’s to the country itself. So from an economic standpoint, it actually makes more sense to invest in the poor first and then work from there, rather than the flipped trickle down approach. 

Stump:

Before we move on to the next parable, I asked Emily to reflect more broadly on the idea behind this initiative—Science is Good—and how it connects with the work she does.

Smith:  

Well, the concept of “science is good” reminds me of the anchor of why I do what I do, which is the Good Samaritan story, and as an epidemiologist, that’s to quantify the most at need and then choose not to walk by in our policies. But, you know, another thing it reminds me of, is of at the very beginning of the Bible, you know, when the world is being made and all of the lovely things are coming to fruition, and then when God said, “it’s good”, you know, he didn’t say it was perfect. And he didn’t say “hashtag nailed it”, but he said it was good. And there’s such to me, it just feels like a place of rest and love and care for the world or for who we’re trying to take care of. So for me, that’s science, you know? I try to do that through my own work, and hopefully call it good at the end, but also help bring some goodness to the world through it.

[musical interlude]

Stump:

The second parable in Matthew 25 highlights the virtue of Stewardship. This is the parable of the talents. A master gives his servants varying amounts of money—five talents, two talents, and one talent—before going away. The servants who received five and two talents invest wisely and double what they were given. The one with one talent buries it, afraid to take a risk. When the master returns, he praises the first two for being faithful with what they were given, but rebukes the last for doing nothing with his gift. The lesson is about using what you’ve been entrusted with—investing it, not hiding it.

Se Kim is the director of  membership and governance at the National Academy of Medicine. That means she helps oversee one of the most respected institutions guiding health and science policy in the country. But today, she’s speaking as an individual, sharing her personal reflections and not speaking on behalf of the Academy. 

In the parable, the servants are given talents—that’s money. I think it’s fair to also think about the stewardship of talents as in aptitudes, the gifts given to each of us, in different amounts. And so the first question is, is that even legitimate to think about it this way, that science is a talent or a gift? 

Kim:

I’ve been thinking about this, and I think it’s totally applicable. And I have two things I wanted to share. One, I think science is a gift or talent, not the monetary, economic but, you know, abilities and things like that. First is a gift in the sense of vocational calling, right? We’re all called to work. We’re all called to do something with our lives and our work matters to God, and how we use our time here on Earth, and how we use our abilities that God has given us, both for our own growth, but also to contribute to the church and the community around us. So in that sense, for scientists, it’s our vocational calling, right to use our talents for the good of humanity, for the good of the church. And when God told us, you know, love the Lord with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind, in some sense, what we study with our mind, if we’re interested in the sciences, that’s our if we’re gifted in the sciences, or we’re aptitude for science, that’s a talent, right? And we apply that, and we use our soul and our and our and our heart to serve the church and use our calling that way. 

The second thing of your question, of why science is a gift or a talent, can we interpret it that way, is science is good in the sense of its product or its knowledge, right? So science usually discovers something, discovers and generates knowledge, but also creates something. I know other conversations that you’ve had included like vaccine and medicine and things like that. And so for scientists, for knowledge, there’s an inspiration for us to kind of discover, in God’s creation, and to wonder at his creation, and to wonder at his magnitude of things, or even the microscopic things, right? And those eureka moments are what inspires us. But science is also as a product. We use our knowledge to kind of create those resources and the needs that humans need, and we use those to support and care for each other, so both as a vocation of calling and as product or knowledge, I think it’s totally applicable that science is a gift or talent

Stump:

As we think in terms of some of the Apostle Paul’s teachings, and the body is a unit, and there are these different kinds of gifts within the body, it’s not a stretch, for me, to think that some people have more scientific aptitude than other people, and that that’s not to say “They’re better” or “they’re worse”, but they have different giftings, different interests. We might also say that everybody has a little bit of that, some have more, some have less, but everybody has some. And everybody’s scientific aptitude could be encouraged to be developed in some way. 

Kim: 

It’s not just an aptitude, knowledge wise, if some folks are more inclined to study that, but it’s also about curiosity. It’s also about wonder, searching for what is interesting. I mean, even little kids, when they’re young, they just wonder about the plants and flowers and just how beautiful. I think that’s scientific, right? It’s a sense of curiosity. It’s a sense of discovering something new. And I think God gave all of us that, and we know that because he says God created the world for us to marvel at and wonder at. I think that’s scientific. But on the other hand, I do think there are certain skills and talents that God gives people differently to each serve differently. And we see that right when the Bible talks about pastors are this, and, you know, preachers are that, or or whatever. I am not a great singer. My church knows that I’m not a great singer. My husband still prays I will one day be musically inclined, and he has lots of faith. But, you know, I still love to sing. I’m a joyful singer. I’m not a talented singer, but in that sense, I think that tells us like as long as we do it with joy of what God has given us for His glory. I think anyone has the aptitude for many things.

Stump:

How can we best invest in or develop scientific talent and ability?

Kim:  

Investment in science is also an economic you know, the parable, the talent is obviously an economic story, right? Parable—using an economic example. And we’ve been saying talents as in the sense of like skill or aptitude, but it could also be very economic, right? So an example I was thinking was, you know how when people say you want to invest money in the stock market, don’t try to guess the highs and lows, because you’ll just, it just won’t work. You just dutifully keep investing regularly, right? And it’s the same way with science. Much of science, we don’t know what we’re going to study, if that’s going to be a gateway or discovery to something much more wonderful, right? So we need to keep investing in science. We need to keep investing in our people, in our research, in our funding and contribute to that. 

For example, a lot of serendipitous discoveries led to something amazing. And I have a couple of examples for you. Penicillin from Alexander Fleming, who noticed a mold in his petri dish. Discovery of microwaves, apparently, during working on radar waves. I’m not a physicist. I’m a biologist by training, so I have no idea how to explain that to you. And then CRISPR, which was in bacteria, and they now are looking at it to treat diseases and those kind of things at the genetic level. So there’s lots of examples of where just continued, large scale investments in our people and processes and infrastructure and science led to these amazing discoveries that you would not have made the connection. No one would have made the connection. And so I think in that sense, it’s the investment of talents, right? And, of course, investment in people and giving people opportunity, access and belonging. I think, particularly in today’s society, we are seeing that many young scientists are very discouraged. We are in the United States losing people in the sciences because of this. I think we have to continue funding large-scale, providing them opportunities, grants and things like that. And those are very important, giving them a sense of culture and belonging, that they are welcome and what they’re doing is valued. But you know that goes into community support and such. Building trust.

Stump:

When God was doling out gifts, talents, and aptitudes, I can’t imagine that these were decided by community type or ethnicity or cultural background. Instead, I assume these were spread out more generally, but we have had issues of developing and investing in science equally among all communities and people groups.

Kim:  

The sad reality of the society today that not everybody is given the same opportunity and access, you know, or those types of chances where they’re able to see somebody that could spark that interest in a child or a student about the sciences, I can only say that I recognize that that that disparity is there, and that we need to do more to encourage each other and those in those communities to kind of embrace and recognize that not everybody has those opportunities and also and to try to provide those. This is where I believe that church can play a powerful role, because that is where boundaries should not exist in terms of people and communities. It’s really where people should belong, regardless of their backgrounds or, you know, where they come from. And can the church, both in the local sense and in the broader sense, be that example where we provide, especially in circumstances where public support of sciences in historically marginalized community is dwindling, to be frank.

Stump:

We might even say that Christians are one of those communities that are underrepresented in the sciences. It’s not as bad as it’s often been portrayed but the percentage of Christians in the sciences is definitely less than in the overall population. 

Perhaps there are specific challenges, maybe even related to our current cultural moment and the ways that the culture wars have put the sciences on one side and religion on the other side. We need to come up with ways to meet these specific challenges, for Christians to invest in the scientific talent in their communities.

Kim:

I think the church is foremost focused on, I think the well being and spiritual growth of people. And within that umbrella, I think science could be a very wonderful tool, because in some sense, helping both the people who do sciences in the church and welcoming them as part of the community is one way, right. An example I remember when I used to help the AAAS dialog on science, ethics and religion, we did these community events where we brought scientists and church leaders together, and I remember distinctly one of the postdocs who was at the meeting said she wished that her pastor understood that she had to be in the lab at nine o’clock at night and could not come to the young adult activities and that there were other opportunities in other days. And then that’s always stuck with me. Are there little things that churches can do to kind of provide chances for not only for the community to recognize the scientists and embrace them, but also for the benefit of the scientists, for their own spiritual growth, to provide opportunities for them to be a part of the community. And could there be small hanging fruits. On the other hand, I think, as well as that, I think there’s opportunities where churches can work with scientists in their congregation, whether it’s those in healthcare or those in more tangential fields and serving communities along STEM backgrounds to kind of encourage discussions on these with whether it’s questions that the society asks during today about what does this mean, or how should we apply, whether it’s something that we’ve seen before, like vaccine, right? They can involve those in their communities and congregations to kind of help the entire church. And this goes back to the calling as a vocation, right? Can you work with scientists in your congregation for the benefit of the church as well.

Stump:

Despite the challenges we’ve heard about, Se remains hopeful. I asked her what gives her optimism about science and its place in our world.

Kim:

I think there’s a lot of supporting evidence that science, funding science and funding science infrastructure and people and places and things like that, gives a huge return into society and societal growth. And I don’t presume to speak on behalf of all scientific community, but I will say that perhaps I’m a little bit more rose colored in the sense that I think scientific community are genuinely committed because we’re genuinely committed to the good of society. There’s a sense that, yes, some things we’ve encountered in recent days are discouraging, but we have to come together to figure out how we can communicate the benefits and the good of science to our public arenas and to propel us to kind of encourage other people to see that, rebuild the trust in science and scientists and those in those fields, so that ultimately it’s about serving the broader world right. And I think there is some optimism that encourages us, us to get together

Stump:

The third parable in Matthew 25 is about Mercy. This is the story of the sheep and the goats. At the final judgment, people are separated like a shepherd separates sheep from goats. The sheep are welcomed for feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, and visiting the imprisoned. The goats, who ignored these needs, are turned away. What’s striking is the refrain: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me.” It’s a clear call to show mercy—especially to those who are suffering and forgotten.

And our final scientist to help us think through the scientific application of this parable is none other than Francis Collins, the leader of the human genome project, director of the National Institutes of Health under three presidents, and of course, the founder of BioLogos.

Francis has spent much of his career advancing scientific projects that aim to alleviate suffering from genetic diseases including cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s disease and Type 2 diabetes. But more recently his work has focused on Hepatitis C. 

Collins:

Well, I will talk about hepatitis C, but in the context of the parable from Matthew about how we are called not just to be nice to people who are nice to us or who people who have lots of resources, but also especially how we’re supposed to reach out to people who are in difficult straits. The least of these. 

Hepatitis C is a silent killer. You acquire it by sexual transmission or by contaminated blood from a transfusion, although these days, we know how to screen so that doesn’t happen so much anymore. Or by people who use intravenous drugs and share needles. There are about 4 million Americans right now who are infected with this virus, but it’s a very slow process. So for several years after the initial infection, you feel fine, maybe 10 years, maybe even 20. But the virus is working away in the liver, forming scars that ultimately turn into cirrhosis. By the time you get symptoms, your liver is in very bad shape. You might at that point, basically need a transplant if you’re going to survive. And on top of that, this is now the most common cause of liver cancer, because that virus does that too, a terrible disease. 

The good news is that it’s curable. We don’t get to say that very often about an infectious disease caused by a virus, not just it’s manageable, but it’s curable. You can eliminate this virus with a very simple one pill a day for 12 weeks. 95% cure rate. Now that didn’t just happen by accident. That was based upon decades of research trying to understand, how does this virus replicate, and how could you block that step, ever since the virus was discovered by my friend Harvey Alter, who won the Nobel Prize for this for the work he did back in the late 1980s so that was NIH supporting research and a bunch of institutions, particularly Emory University in Georgia. And then, as it began to look more promising, companies looking at this going, well, maybe we could take that information and turn this into something that could work. And now two companies, Gilead and AbbVie, have these pills with essentially no side-effects. Very simple, one pill a day, and this almost 100% success rate in eliminating the virus. It’s gone.

Stump:

This is really different than something like HIV, which though we now have effective treatments for, you still take pills for the rest of your life. With Hepatitis C, 12 weeks of a pill is a complete cure. 

Collins:

So why is this a problem now? Why is that disease still infecting 4 million people? Because we’ve had this approved therapy now for almost 10 years. It’s because it costs a lot. Initially, $94,000 for a 12 week course. It’s down now to about $24,000, and if you have good insurance, you can probably get that covered. But if you’re not insured, or if you’re on Medicaid, you may not be able to find a way to get this done for you. I’ll tell you about friend of mine, Barb Martin, who’s an amazing singer songwriter, but she’s self employed. Health insurance, not something she could really put a lot of her limited resources into. And found out she had hepatitis C, which she probably acquired a long time ago from her first husband, who was a drug addict. And so she thought, well, okay, I’ve got this, and there’s a cure, no problem, right? $20,000? Didn’t have that. She was fortunate. She looked around and found that there was a program funded by the Virginia State Department of Health that offered this to people who tested positive, but most states don’t have that, and she got access to the cure, and she’s fine. She’s completely over what otherwise, probably by now, would have either put her into a very bad place needing a liver transplant, or she might not have survived at all. We want that to happen to more people. 

Stump:

So we have a problem and we have a solution, but so far we haven’t come up with a way to bring them together.

Collins:

So I confess, as a physician, as a scientist, as a Christian, I just can’t look at this situation where you have a cure like this and it’s not available to the people who need it, and say that’s okay. It’s not okay, and not only from the perspective of alleviating suffering and giving people a chance for a long life, if you really want to get down to it, it’s very costly to treat people with end stage liver disease. If you go through the math, we could save a lot of money if we just cured everybody right now and didn’t have to pay for liver transplants and liver cancer treatments downstream. Did the math, it would save our country about $7 billion if we just did this. But right now, it’s not happening. So with a lot of help from some other visionaries, some of them in academic institutions, some of them at the FDA, some of them in the Congress, and particularly on a bipartisan basis, two senators, Cassidy and Van Hollen, who see this as a passion and a mission, we have now seen just a week ago, from the time I’m meeting with you today the introduction of legislation, a very well written, highly detailed legislation about how to do this in a five year period and find those people and get them cured and save 10s of 1000s of lives and the $7 billion so I know congress a little complicated right now. Is that going to be enough to get this into the end zone? I don’t know, but it sure ought to be. 

Stump:

Let’s bring this back to the parable of the sheep and the goats.

Collins:

Think about it. Jesus said, yeah, you visited the people in prison. Turns out a lot of people with hep C are in prison because of a connection with drug use. A lot of them are in opioid treatment programs trying to get clean from their opioid addiction, and many of them succeeding only to die of hepatitis later that we didn’t take care of. So we need those folks also on this list of people, to reach out to people who are sick, people who don’t have insurance. You’re supposed to pay attention to those folks, visit them, care for them, those who are hungry, those who are naked. Isn’t that what that’s about? And Jesus said, “when you do those things to the least of these you’re doing them to me.” I think about that a lot with this particular opportunity. We have a chance to follow what Jesus is calling us to do to the least of these. Many of these people are down and out. Many of them feel stigmatized by how they got this virus in the first place, if it happened to be related to drug use, they’re trying to put their lives back together. Many of them are parents with kids. Their future hangs on whether this enterprise can succeed and whether we will live up to that parable in Matthew that calls us to be the sheep and not the goats.

Stump:

These stories, on their own, are moving testaments to the good work of science. But let’s bring the pastor’s perspective back in. Here’s Jason Miller again, responding to what he just heard from the scientists.

Miller:

I think I celebrate what we’ve just heard as a pastor. Because I’ve just heard three people who in the depth of their context and work are taking really seriously Jesus’s teachings and asking themselves, what does it mean to be a wise person in a world where, for example, in Somaliland, these surgeries are urgently necessary? What does it mean to be a person of stewardship when some people are given profound gifts for this kind of work? I’m not one of them, by the way. I have so much admiration for people who do well in these science fields. What does it mean for a person to take mercy seriously in a world where the least of these are suffering from infections that are life altering or life threatening and we have what it takes to help them if we can just align policy with these capacities. As a pastor, I’m just like so moved. This is what it looks like in the year 2025 in the modern world to take seriously our faith and assume that it applies to every part of our world and every part of our lives. And so I would just say that we’ve just seen a sterling example, heard a sterling example of what it means to be a faithful believer in the modern world.

Stump: 

1. Science is good. But we’ve been saying that long enough now that the initial joy and acceptance of the PR campaign has worn off for some people, and they’re asking, “but is it always good?”

Miller:

Yeah I might have a couple of different approaches at this. Here’s the first one. We can say science is good and somebody else can say, wait, hold on a minute. Don’t we need to be discerning about it? And we’d say, yeah, of course, but you don’t get better at discernment by condemning the whole thing. And so I think the first move in honoring any kind of gift in the world is to celebrate it. And then from that place, we can be thoughtful and discerning about it. So to say that science is good doesn’t mean that anything that any scientist says is always good. But it means that when science is doing its work, which is empirical and testable and clarified through repeated attempts from different people we learn a lot about the world that God made. And I don’t know how tools that help us learn about the world that God Made could be anything but good when we know how to use them.

Stump: 

That’s one point. And the second?

Miller:

Yeah. Just to say this. We read all over scripture that God made this and that to know this world is to honor God to worship God, that when you pay attention to the work of God’s hands, these are acts of devotion to God. And science has all these tools to pay attention to the world that God has made. And I don’t know why we would turn our nose up at these tools when they’re so helpful, not just at helping us appreciate this beautiful world, but in particular helping us take care of the people that are in this world. And without the tools that we’ve just heard about, from these three scientists, we’re going to have a much harder time taking care of people in the world where God cares about people who are suffering.

Stump: 

OK, if we were publishing a peer-reviewed article in a philosophy of science journal, we’d need some caveats and nuance to simply proclaiming “science is good” and I regret to say that hardly anyone would take note of it. But we’ve heard from three scientists telling us how they’ve used science for good, and from a pastor who is celebrating their applications of biblical virtues to their scientific work. Let’s do more of that!

I bet there are some scientists in your church. Ask them to share about their work in Sunday school, or a small group, or even in the Sunday morning worship service. If you’re a scientist and no one in your church will ask you to share, tell us about your work and how it is good: send an email to scienceisgood@biologos.org.

And share this episode with someone you think would benefit from hearing the message that science is good.

Thanks for listening.

Language of God is produced by BioLogos. BioLogos is supported by individual donors and listeners like you. If you’d like to help keep this conversation going on the podcast and elsewhere you can find ways to contribute at biologos.org. You’ll find lots of other great resources on science and faith there as well. 

Language of God is produced and mixed by Colin Hoogerwerf. That’s me. Our theme song is by Breakmaster Cylinder. BioLogos offices are located in Grand Rapids, Michigan in the Grand River watershed. Thanks for listening.