Faith and Science

When I opened the door of my little truck there was a skunk there on the seat. 

I jumped back and the skunk hopped down on the ground and started to amble away… then became a puppy, who turned around and came back to me.  I was afraid.  The puppy rolled over on its back and lay there like it wanted its tummy scratched… then I woke up. 

How many things like this come from the inside of our sleeping brains, reprocessing and re-sorting what’s in there, and how many of these things come from an outside source? 

The ancients believed that people in altered mental states were open to revelations from outside.  Sleep or the lack of it, alcohol or other drugs, episodes of what we now call mental illness, injuries, meditation, massive changes in one’s life or one’s thinking, and other things, can trigger these events. 

“Is Saul with the prophets again?” was said by people about Israel’s first king.  Reading his story in the Old Testament it would seem that King Saul, by today’s standards, was mentally ill.  It also seemed that there were bands of roving “prophets.” Were these people on the edge of insanity, making ecstatic proclamations and seen perhaps as channels of God’s words? 

Faith and science put different spins on events like this.  Can we entertain a balance in our lives in which the observations of science (a diagnosis or theory) can still leave room to see things as sourced from the unknown God, providing insight that we wouldn’t otherwise have, even with all the facts?  Can a little child teach us about God?  Someone with Down’s Syndrome?  A crack whore?  I’d like to think so.