“One of my correspondents, who is an engineer married to an ordained minister, told me the story of something that happened to him in an adult Sunday school class. On the first Sunday of the class, the associate pastor walked up to the blackboard and wrote three words across the top of it. On the left-hand side of the board he wrote “Religion.” In the middle, he wrote “Superstition,” and on the right-hand side he wrote “Science.” My friend objected and asked if he could rearrange the words. When the pastor said yes, the engineer got up and erased the board. On the left-hand side of the board he wrote “Science” directly under “Religion.” On the right-hand side he wrote “Superstition.”

When asked to make sense of what he had done, he replied, “Science and religion are both searches for truth and should be on the same side.” Several years later, he added, he formulated what came to be one of the guiding concepts of his life, “When truth and belief come into conflict, it is better to change one’s belief to fit the truth than to change the truth to fit one’s belief.”

The only problem with that principle is that truth comes in at least two varieties–facts and meanings– and the same facts do not always generate the same meanings.”

by Barbara Brown Taylor