Galileo, the Christian Encounters Series

Galileo is the first I've read in the Christian Encounters series.  I love Christian biographies--they encourage me to be more for God and they show me that amazing people weren't perfect and often fell short.  They had their own problems but God still used them to do glorious, amazing things.

Galileo was a man like that.  He wouldn't bow down to "the Church" of his day or the scientific community when their beliefs and ideas were wrong.  No one wanted to believe the earth was round, whether that was true or not.  They didn't want anyone questioning their long held traditions because of the control those traditions and thoughts held over the people.  Thinking of this book makes me think of the scripture, "Let God be true and every man a liar."

Perhaps you didn't realize Galileo was a Christian.  After all, he was excommunicated by the church as a heretic.  Well, so were Martin Luther and William Tyndale, who defied the Catholic church around the same time.  They brought about the Protestant Reformation and brought the Word of God to the common people.  

This book opened up my eyes about this amazing man.  He not only made amazing strides in Science and Mathematics, but was also a man whose "love of words would change the style of Italian literature."  A man after my own heart! In more ways than one... I didn't realize before that Galileo was a Christian but that doesn't surprise me--the way the public education system has completely rewritten history and removed any mention of true Christianity is despicable.  Judge a man not by what the religious "leaders" of his day did or believed in, but judge him by his own words and actions.  After he was condemned as a heretic by the church, he wrote:

This afflicts me less than people may think possible, for I have two sources of perpetual comfort--first, that in my writings there cannot be found the faintest shadow of irreverence toward the Holy Church; and second, the testimony of my own conscience, which only I and God in Heaven thoroughly know.  And He knows that in this cause for which I suffer, though many might have spoken with more learning, none, not even the ancient Fathers, have spoken with more piety or greater zeal for the Church than I.

I found the various Christian quotes to be just as interesting as the amazing discoveries of Galileo.  He obviously had strong convictions as a Christian and as a Scientist. He was not arguing for secular Science over the Bible--he believed his Scientific ideas and his Christian ideas were both true.  I like books like this that reveal that God and Science aren't incompatible--after all, any Scientific truth will never contradict the Truth of God's Word because He is the Creator of both.

I received this book for free from Booksneeze to facilitate an honest and thoughtful review.