2/5/14 Brandon, Ryan, and friend all about 20
On the
evening of the Evolution/Creation debate I had an interesting conversation with
some students on the campus of IIT. They
were aware that the debate was going on, so I asked how they felt about matters
of faith as students of a secular and science-based university. Brandon, Ryan, and another student all had
very similar ideas – they agreed that their studies of science and the nature
of the universe – how vast and complex it is – leads them to belief in a
Creator God, but they just can’t get past the specifics of the Bible which go
against their science-based understanding of the origins of the world. “What does it matter whether we were made in
six days or in six billion years?” they asked.
“What really matters is how we treat other people here and now”. Ken Ham, founder of the Creation Museum and
the creationist in the debate, was right when he said that salvation doesn’t
require belief in a young earth, only faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness
of one’s sins. Yet our beliefs in
origins are important for a variety of reasons I can’t cover in a paragraph or
two. But one reason – that the issue is
whether the Bible can be trusted as divine revelation or is manmade and subject
to the whims of our interpretation – became very evident as I talked with these
three students. We talked about origins for a while after I answered their assertion with a question of
my own – “If God made the Earth in six days, I have to wonder, why did He take
so long? After all, this is the God of
the universe we are talking about. He
could have made it in an instant if He wanted to” They
were comfortable talking about this, trying to fit in scientific theories for biblical
events that really are meant to be seen as miraculous evidence for God’s
existence and power. Then I moved on to
ask them about their views on God Himself.
Two of them view God as a sort of an impersonal “life force” like the
Force on Star Wars, while the third believes in a more Biblical view of God as a
personality who has preferences and makes choices, yet he held the unbiblical view
that one’s good works can automatically earn him salvation. I see a connection between their views of
origins in Genesis and their overall views of God. They all feel free to pick and choose what
they like and don’t like from the Bible, rejecting what they don’t understand
or can’t explain and inserting their own imagined or alternative explanation in
its place. The Bible isn’t their
authority, but just a supplement to their man-centered “wisdom”. I explained to them that when we construct an
imaginery God in our minds that we are more comfortable with rather than
relying on the Bible, we are just as guilty of breaking the 2nd
commandment against false images as the makers of the golden calf were in Moses’
day. This lack of respect for biblical
authority begins, I believe, with a lack of respect for the accounts of origins
found in Genesis.
For a
very good analysis of the debate, go to a post by Albert Mohler
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