My Nomination
Earlier this week in an online post I mentioned Lake Superior State University’s annual list of words and phrases that should be Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness.
I’d like to be the first to nominate the word/phrase following the science.
This phrase is meaningless at best and idolatrous at worst.
When people use this phrase, I think they mean we are making good decisions based on truth. And who can argue with that aim? Certainly we all hope for that.
The problem is our understanding of science. Science is not a thing to be followed like a road map. This one data point does not necessarily lead to that data point and then the next one. Science is not a dot to dot two-dimensional exercise.
It is more like a Venn diagram with multiple over-lying layers. It is more like a balancing act of spinning plates. There are mutually exclusive data points that need calibration and coordination—more of this means less of that, but less of that means we get more of this.
I have known not a few people who needed to balance and calibrate the scientific data points relating to their heart while doing the same with data points relating to their lungs. There was no road map. There was no science “to follow” as such; there were calculated decisions that needed to be balanced. To follow the science for the heart would spell death. To follow the science for the lungs would be death by another cause. Instead scientific data points had to be carefully, even prayerfully, balanced.
M. Scott Peck wrote about life as over-determined. Decision making and cause and effect are jumbled up in a very intricate web. Even on the Road Less Traveled more than a roadmap is needed for a safe journey.
In this time of difficulty when people are seeking their way out of the complicated mess that is 2020, we would be better served by seeking to balance and calibrate scientific data points regarding COVID-19, along with data points from other medical science (impact of delay in medical procedures), the social sciences (the effect quarantines have on people), the science of education (the effect of non-face to face education, especially for poor children), economic science (the impact of unemployment on cities), and so on.
To say, “we follow the science,” is really quite meaningless. It has become a club used to squash conversation and to squelch a more thoughtful, broader decision-making path.
And it is one thing more.
Ultimately, for Christians it is idolatrous. We follow Jesus.
Yes, we use scientific data. We Christians have historically been at the vanguard of scientific inquiry. The entire exercise of science follows more logically from the Christian view of origins than from a materialistic view of origins. But we do not follow science. We are above all students who trust and follow the one who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. And in 2020, now more than ever, we will be better off fixing our eyes and hopes on Jesus than following incomplete, inconclusive and often competing data points.
It seems significant to me that we would be better off if we just banished the phrase “follow the science” and instead pledged to prayerfully and neighborly put on our thinking caps!
What seems significant to you this week?