Wrestling with Angels
God Did It
Of course, there's a different way to interpret that data. If we've misread Genesis when we've taken it as a scientific account, and if it turns out God has used millions of years and evolutionary processes to make this world, then we've asked our children to believe something untrue as part of accepting the gospel. Couldn't that lead them to leave the church, when the cognitive dissonance between the empirical data and what we're asking them to believe becomes too great?
Granted, allowing the possibility of evolutionary creation is fraught with difficulty. It requires a hermeneutic more nuanced than reading every genre of the Bible as a postenlightenment textbook. It demands a careful delineation between the theory of evolution (which describes a process) and a philosophy of naturalism (which assumes that the process is all there is). And it brings up all sorts of new issues of theodicy.
But there's no point in hiding these difficulties from our children. The world—and our understanding of God's ways within it—has always been full of mystery and challenge. Our task is to raise up believers willing to affirm the authority of the Bible in all its fascinating and culturally situated complexity. We need kids who are unafraid to ask the sorts of tough and exciting theological, philosophical, and scientific questions you can only ask when you know that, however this world came to be, God did it.
Wrestling with Angels
Carolyn Arends
Singer/songwriter and author Carolyn Arends has written and released 9 albums and penned 2 books, including Wrestling With Angels (Harvest House/Conversantlife.com). She is a regular reviewer for Christianity Today Movies and a list of her blogs can be found at CarolynArends.com. Her bimonthly "Wrestling With Angels" column has appeared in Christianity Today since 2008.
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- Taste the Soup
- In on the Joke of the Bible
- Defending Scripture. Literally.
Star Trek Into Darkness
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JAMES J STEWART
I have been a pastor most of my life, and my Dad was a science teacher. Early in our discussions of Genesis and evolution, we realized that science and the Bible approach this issue with differing types of questions. Science addresses questions of what, when, where, and how. The Bible and Genesis primarily address questions of who and why. Scientists tend to be clumsy in their efforts to exegete scriptures and do theology, just as Christians tend to be clumsy in their efforts to glean scientific data from scripture. Theoretical physicists postulate the existence of at least one parallel universe. If indeed the realm of the spirit is a parallel universe, it is not a universe of matter, energy, space, and time. In a sense, Genesis 1:1-2:3 represents the intersection of these two universes. Science is not equipped to explore the realm of the spirit. Is it any wonder that most scientists are skeptical of creationists' efforts?
THOMAS PECK
The problem with believing that Genesis 1 & 2 are not literal (i.e. but allegorical or mythical) is that 3 must be mythical since it builds from them and so forth. This is more than a creation story, but the foundation of nearly all Christian theology. Since Christianity claims to be 'True' it would seem odd that God would allow a 'lie' to be its basis.
Wayne Froese
One lie I told myself as a good Anabaptist was that evolution was a world view much like literal Genesis is. I didn't know it was a lie. Eventually I had to confront the science issue. Scientific theories are validated by empirical testing against physical observations. Evolution is a scientific theory unlike my literal Genesis. So where is the empirical evidence? Here is lots: http://www.talkorigins.org/ What about link bones? I had this question too but the question reflects a frame of reference embedded in my assumptions. It assumes that there are directed outcomes, like #1 becoming #2 and you look for #1.5. Instead, know that everything is at version # like 3.1415926... Everything is a link bone. Instead, go to your natural history museum and look at the origin of man. It is a great example of transitions. The best part of all this is that it is a rich, strong gospel that is revealed, not a compromised one. There is nothing to fear from all of God's truth.