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After Solomon’s reign, Israel becomes divided into the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. In the Old Testament books of 1 and 2 Kings, about 40 different kings of these divided kingdoms are introduced and evaluated, and the overall picture is grim. Only about 8 get anything like a passing grade. But what are the criteria for being a good king? Charisma? Innovative policy? Economic success? Military prowess? Nope. The clear standard is to be faithful to God and God alone, to only worship God and to rid themselves of other, competing allegiances, whether gods or human powers. The Israelites of this period worshipped God, but they had also erected shrines and idols to other spirits and deities. This was a no-no. For them, there is to be no “God and”, only God alone.
A similar theme can be found in Jesus’s teachings. In his Sermon on the Mount Jesus rejects the idea of following God and economic success but charges his followers to “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness” (Matt. 6:33). Material needs (not wildest desires) will follow from putting God at the center. Likewise, Jesus has stern words various times for religious leaders who taught God and Laws. Jesus’s point is subtle here because unlike the gods of surrounding kingdoms that competed for the earlier Israelites’ allegiance, the Law of Moses isn’t bad but a good gift from God. But when the gift becomes a competitor or substitute for the giver in our hearts, it becomes an idol.
It seems that lots of good things are vying to become part of “God and”: God and Social Justice, God and Patriotism, God and Creation Care, God and Freedom, etc. We can love God well through seeking justice, a properly tuned patriotism, caring for creation, and safeguarding and exercising responsible freedom, but none of these get to become a rival for devotion to God. We even have to be careful that the Bible doesn’t compete for our attention and devotion. We worship God, not a text, not even a text inspired by God.
This challenge of rejecting “God and…” thinking is a recurrent priority for Blueprint 1543. You may have noticed that we do not talk a lot about promoting “God and Science” or “Christianity and Science.” It is tempting! Even though we need to let people know that we want to encourage God’s people to make good use of the sciences, we do not want to give the impression that we think “Science” or the sciences are remotely equivalent to God in priority, or that to do scientific work well can be a test of whether someone is seeking first the Kingdom of God. Compared to God and God’s Kingdom priorities, the work of Blueprint 1543 and even the world of all of the sciences put together are trivial matters.
I want to be careful here. The sciences are a good thing, a gift from God that we can use in God’s Kingdom. Some of us may be called by God to invest a big part of our lives in participating in God’s Kingdom work through the sciences. It is for this reason that Blueprint 1543 is trying to help sciency people responsibly care for and use the tools of the sciences. It is for this reason that we want to help churches embrace the useful insights and tools of the sciences. But it is because the sciences are good gifts that they hold the potential to draw too much devotion, and become an extra add-on to following God. God must be our focus and devotion, not God and the sciences.
