The 8th graders in my Confirmation program, in fact all the students in my congregation, do not struggle with the relationship of the church’s faith in things like creation and resurrection to the contemporary scientific worldview in a way that can addressed in a single lesson, or even two. It’s also true for their parents. It’s true for all of us: the Bible and scientific reality seem at odds, and we move from ignorance of that fact to anxiety about it to uneasy acceptance to resolution. For some the resolution is within the church. For others resolution is a rejection of faith and all it asserts.
Nobody has resolved this by the 8th grade, though. So our time on it is spent exploring a range of possible postures, from opposition to integration. We don’t dictate one. Most never knew anything but conflict was an option, so it’s a useful enough lesson.
But it’s so not enough.
Maybe some element of the scientific needs to be integrated into every Confirmation discussion. Maybe it’s a lens through which to view all the subjects more than a subject unto itself.
YoRocko! 