First I want to thank the several people who gently pointed out to me (from my last article) that the stars don’t reflect the light of the sun. Of course they don’t (writer’s glitch).

I know better – the moon reflects the light of the sun.

Suppose I had mislearned this odd scientific fact in kindergarten and had slipped all the way through school and university with it. Suppose I somehow thoroughly believed this to be true for 50 years.

Now, suppose my Grade 5 grandson set about to persuade me that my scientific understanding of the moon and the stars and the sun were basically flawed. I would not take kindly to it.

But a grandson can be persuasive. Once set straight, I might come to a greater appreciation and awe of the night sky.

This is basic science. It asks the “how do things work?” kind of questions. It regularly challenges inadequate beliefs about how things work.

Now lets consider this from the faith angle of life.

I meet dear people who function with a kindergarten version of the Christian faith. Christianity was taken in along with Santa Claus and remained unexamined.

I also meet bright young people who think the Christian faith is only worth as much as believing in a long-since discarded Santa Claus.

I am a strong believer that religion, faith and spirituality are for grown ups. It takes dedication and hard work to discard the inadequate beliefs of childhood and take on a grown-up faith. Religion or faith asks the “why” questions of life that guides us in how to live.

I think there’s a lot of agreement that care of the environment is the most important human issue of our day. If our belief system is fixed on a literal seven days of creation, it may not be adequate to move us into action to change our ways.

But if we can, deep in our souls, hear the ancient repeated phrase from the Genesis 1 creation story that God saw that “it was good”, we might just have a chance to fall flatly and fully in love with our beautiful planet Earth.

Now that is a good starting point for how to live. To deeply believe that creation is awesomely beautiful and deeply enchanted with the divine touch of a Creator continuing to act, is the kind of belief that can sustain us for a whole lifetime.

It can even have us dedicate our lives to care for God’s creation with a view for future generations.

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Deborah van der Goes is an Anglican priest who lives in Cedar.