Guest Blog by Tom Sheahen, Ph.D. (President, Institute for Theological Encounter with Science & Technology; ITEST is the parent organization of EWDG)

It is well known that children of middle-school age have a strong interest in ecology. The program Exploring the World, Discovering God (EWDG) is a series of classroom lessons that teach concepts in science and faith side-by-side, to demonstrate their compatibility, that religion and science are both paths to a knowledge of God.  Learning modules for grades K – 4 already are in circulation (see www.creationlens.org), and lessons for grades 5 – 8 are currently being developed.

From the point of view of Exploring the World, Discovering God (EWDG), an essential message to be drawn from observing our earth is that God is a very clever creator, who has brought into being different forms of life that thrive explicitly because they use the waste from the other form.

The fact that we breathe oxygen (which is discarded by plant leaves) and plants need CO2 (our waste product) is an incredible gift from God. We would never have been able to think of that in a zillion years.  Our students need to learn to see the marvel in that. There is a line somewhere in the Old Testament about being “wonderfully made.”

Have you noticed that farm folks tend to be more religious than city folks? Perhaps that’s because farmers live closer to nature and are humbled by it. They directly experience a greater fraction of the things God has enabled to exist, as contrasted to the things mankind has built.

All during “Earth Week” on the Weather Channel, they ran a series of Home Depot commercials about ways to save both energy and money, including topics like putting mulch on your garden, making compost, etc.  Every one of these ideas is within reach of a middle school student; and each of them ultimately involves recognizing some underlying complementarity between different aspects of living nature.

So far, that’s a public-school science topic.  But in the EWDG program, we point out that God put those compatibilities in place, built-in as part of a truly brilliant master plan of which our knowledge only scratches the surface.  Science calls our attention to that; it makes us stand in wonder and awe; it invites us to seek a deeper appreciation. By exploring the world, we discover God.

Just as the study of biology includes human biology which leads into sex education which blends into respecting the value and dignity of the human being, so also the study of ecology should lead to respecting and caring for God’s creation because it belongs to God. If you don’t see yourself as God’s assistant, your enthusiasm won’t last. Indeed, a young student whose education about ecology stops at only the “secular” level (things like a scout troop spending a Saturday morning cleaning up trash by a stream), will be tossing beer cans out the car window by the time he’s 18.

EWDG wants to give our school-children the basic scientific capabilities that will enable them to comprehend much more in later life, and we want them to be motivated by understanding that God devised all that science in the first place.

An entire year-long science curriculum (grade 5 ? grade 6?) could be focused on the science of ecology, excursioning into chemistry and physics to learn supporting principles. Coupling that with the Christian perspective that it’s God’s creation we are concerned with, could be a great achievement for a participating school.

The complementarity of plant and animal life is a terrific place to start, because the student just naturally wonders “Gee, who thought this up?”  The only permissible answer in public-school is “I dunno.” From the very outset, EWDG replies “God is a whole lot smarter than us, isn’t he?”