The Priests and the Guards

The Priests and the Guards
Matthew 28.11-15


In the world of science, there is a particular form of behaviour that occurs when a long-held belief is under attack.

The most famous instance of it was when Copernicus (1473–1543) argued that Earth and the other planets go round the sun, instead of the sun and everything else going round Earth as everyone had thought up until then. This was utterly revolutionary, and it took another century of research, from people like Kepler, Galileo and Newton, before Copernicus’s ideas became universally accepted by scientists.

Before that happened, there were many people, anxious to protect their current world-view, who did their best to argue against the new theory. Copernicus had observed many new things about the behaviour of the sun and the planets; very well, they would seek to explain these new things within the old system. Anything rather than admit that the system itself was faulty and needed a radical overhaul...

Taken from Matthew for Everyone – by Tom Wright