Creation Spotlight
Structural Integrity
The following is an excerpt by Dr. Oliver St. Clair Headley from the
book on the seventh day. This book is by 40 scientists and academics
that explain why they believe in God. Dr. Headley has a Ph.D. in
inorganic chemistry from University College, London and is currently
the Director of the Center for Resource Management and Environmental
Studies, Cave Hill, Barbados.
People have asked me how a senior scientist such as myself is a
Bible-believing Christian. I hope this essay will give some insight as
to why I believe.
I suggest that the teachings of the Bible constitute the structural
integrity of the Christian faith, which has to move with the times in a
world where cultures are changing and knowledge is increasing rapidly.
When
you fly to New York, as the plane takes off, where are its foundations?
All the people on the plane are praying – there are no atheists on an
aircraft at takeoff – that it flies to New York safely and it remains
intact for the whole journey. We in physics and engineering say that we
want it to retain its structural integrity. This is the key to the
survival of a moving entity. Loss of structural integrity is usually
disastrous in moving systems, and the Christian faith is a moving
system in this fast-paced world.
Some Christians are trying to keep the Christian faith popular in the
modern world and are willing to remove the Bible’s more unpopular
doctrines. By doing this they are compromising the structural integrity
of the Christian faith. In fact, I believe they are doing what John the
revelator forbids in Revelation 22:18-19. They have forgotten that the
Bible’s doctrines form a self-consistent set and that John said that
God would subtract from the Book of Life the name of anyone who
subtracted anything from the set.
Some Christians want to be like the world, so people are saying, for
example, that committing fornication or adultery is not so bad if the
couple love each other. Even if some people argue that the original
seventh command-ment is in the Old Testament and may be a bit
old-fashioned, Revelation, the last book of the Bible, is totally
against all forms of sexual misconduct. In its 22 chapters, it condemns
sexual impro-priety about 20 times.
I believe these sins, sexual impurity and love of money, are two of the
devil’s best traps. They are as bad for serious Christians as mercury
is for aircraft. Mercury and its compounds are completely banned from
planes. This is because it removes the protective oxide film on
aluminum alloys and exposes the metal to attack by atmospheric oxygen.
After less than a week, it turns into a pile of white powder – total
loss of structural integrity.
On the other hand, faith seems to be the principle that unifies the
moral and physical laws of God. The faithful righteous are in harmony
with all of God’s laws, and He permits
them to do things with His physical laws that
an unrepentant sinner cannot aspire to.
As I look at the famines, the wars and fighting, the
environmental degradation, and the deterioration of moral values in
Western civilization, I suspect that the Lord is about to shut down
this experiment of having humans looking after this beautiful planet.
The signs that Jesus gave in Matthew chapter 24 are there: the same
conditions that prevailed before Noah’s flood. I believe we have to
make sure we are ready to meet our Creator in the judgment, and that is
why I choose to be a Bible-believing Christian.
