"(Brian) Young showed how our beliefs about creation have a huge effect on our faith in general. For instance, if fossils are millions of years old, then death preceded man on earth, in direct contrast to what the Bible says. The Bible says that by one man death came into the world, and that Jesus is the one who overcame it.
"'Can you just believe part of the Bible?' he asked. 'The millions of years theory is in direct contrast with the rest of the Bible.'"
~ From a Christian newspaper review of a Brian Young presentation
1Cor. 15:22 ~ For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
Fundamentalism solves all problems by using a literal, face-value approach to scripture. And there is no more nagging problem for fundamentalism than the theory of evolution. Thus evolution becomes the demonic conspiracy and foe of all "true believers." It becomes more important for some to defeat evolution than it does to simply proclaim the good news of the savior. Modern science seems like the nemesis of the foundations of all scripture.
It is true that evolution has also become a foundational logic for atheists who fundamentally reject God (emphasis on "mental"). They delight in making "fundies" the butt of their jokes. Creationism and the Bible itself become absurd to the devoted atheist. This creates an unbridgeable stand-off between these avowed enemies.
The "first man" Adam poses a particular problem, as Brian Young's quote (above) illustrates. How can he be the first if there were millions of years of men living before him in a long, drawn-out climb from some transitional creature?
The antidote to any fundamentalist belief is to look at the problematic scripture as a figure or an allegory. To the fundamentalist mindset, though, this seems frequently tantamount to unbelief, sin, and gross error. Yet God Himself is obviously fond of symbolism, for it is everywhere in both Old and New Testaments.
In considering this, I don't see why Adam cannot exist as both a literal, historical person and as an allegory as well. The Bible is one of our better historical documents, and archaeology is proving its soundness almost on a daily basis. Even though much of its history was passed on orally, it remained remarkably consistent and verifiable.
Evolution deals with pre-history, that which occurred before the very recent development of recorded history. Adam is a part of recorded history as a real person. He is part of all mankind as a symbol.
And another sticky problem arises with Adam's extremely long life. Do we assume that cavemen also lived millennial lives?
Whatever the answer is, Adam arises at the juncture of recorded history and pre-history; and the ancient oral histories of those early civilizations were replete with allegory. As Bible believers, we are left with Adam as the first man, whatever that may mean.
But the apostle Paul used the above analogy as a picture comparing Adam to the new man Jesus. It is this application that is important, more than who or what Adam actually was. At the very least, Adam symbolizes the old man ~ what we are now ~ born of whatever processes God has created. There need not be this terrifying gap between science and faith.
All of us are "Adamic" in at least one sense: we all die. But the new Adam (Jesus) is not dead. He lives forever and has the power of resurrection, to bring us back to life after we die.
Whatever Paul believed about Genesis, the message he was conveying was not about how God created stuff, but about the way He has gone about resolving the problem of sin and death, and that is all focused on His Son, the sole regenerator of dead men. That is, God is going to do away with death through the "Second Adam."
Evolution is not our enemy. We are reduced, by opposing it, to a kind of denial about the information God has left within nature. We are fair game then for all rational people, kind of like the church was when Galileo challenged the notion that the earth was the center of the solar system, as the church of his day decreed. Today, the sun-centered solar system is universally accepted and provable. Evolution is very close to that kind of acceptance, even by much of Christendom.
Belief in evolution will not destroy ethics and morality in the world, nor will it negate the veracity of scripture. Those who fear this outcome are in danger of becoming dinosaurs.
Job 38:
1 Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm. He said:
2 "Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?
3 Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.
4 "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand.
5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it?......."
As in Adam (the human species) all die; in Christ (the new human) all are made alive again. Whatever means God used to create what is now, He has a whole new idea about where it is going. The Bible says He created it all by, for, and through Jesus Christ. In the same way, He will recreate it: only this time it will work.
Man, as we know him, is about to become extinct. But he will rise again in a whole new life. And Jesus is the vehicle of that transformation, both now and when that change takes place.
9 comments:
http://www.creationmuseum.org/
Check this out. It is opening this month I think. It is already stirring up controversy. We did not come from Monkeys unless God made a monkey for practice before he made us. You know Adam may have lived 30,000 years before he sinned. Were they babies in he beginning and the Lord took care of them. The lamb could lay down with the Lion in Eden. There is no evidence that I have seen that proves to me anything is evolving. Changing yes but that is not evolving. That dog won't hunt!
By the way could you put a fig leaf on Adam and grape leaves on Eve.
Well, you already know how this discussion went with Clive, who got rather livid about this Adam thing. And I appreciated that. It made me think about it.
What stimulated me about the evolution thing was seeing the Big Bang diagram in TIME. I could see the logic of it up next to the first chapter of Genesis.
Of course, God could certainly have created the world in 6 days or 14 billion years or whatever. Nothing is impossible with God. Also, He created today. Now that's a big thing right there.
The problem classical Creationists are going to face now is credibility and embarassment. It appears to me, and I was wrong once or twice before (boy, was I), that the evolutionary info coming in now is increasingly, overwhelmingly clear. They now have the stronger argument. So, I got brave and said, "What if God did it that way? Does it matter, really? What is all the fuss about?" But it was because I was afraid that evolution was demonic and God would roast us in hell for even entertaining the idea.
But what does the murky past really have to do with what Jesus did on the cross? Nothing.
If I'm seeing this ~ and not going into an antiChrist apostasy ~ I'm sure that other Christians are going to slowly get off this really absurd culture-war. We might even get a few of these atheists and hard-core evolutionists saved. But we have to stop saying, "To be saved you have to believe in a six-day creation!" It's a ship that's going down, brother.
Ken and Barbie in the Garden look like they need some clothes. But they're hippies.
If you don't believe Genesis then why do you believe John 3:16? Same bible. It does say He made the heaven and earth on the first day. Could not God in his foolishness allow man to thing Carbon dating is real? Maybe the scientists are wrong. I know God is right and what he actually said is Truth so there must be Godical explanation for it all. Science can only prove God it can't disprove him. Did not some scientist prove that the earth did stand still and even go back on the sundial?
Evolutionists could be wrong. So could Creationists. Not about whether there is a Creator or not, but about how they think He did it.
Both sides of the question are looking at pretty much the same data. If I'm a Creationist, I am going to argue in a way that will make the facts fit the outcome I want. I know, I've been there.
If I believe in the Big Bang thing, of course, I will be doing the same thing.
The problem for Creationists is I think they're losing the battle in the public square. Their arguments are less convincing; and the weight of increasing evidence is making the Big Bang picture more and more convincing. Where many Creationists are at is, do they still want to push the idea that the earth is flat in the face of mounting evidence that it isn't? In other words, some Christians once were adamant about the flat earth. Now it is only the domain of kooks and the mentally ill.
So up come the newer ideas based on "Intelligent Design", with the main argument there coming more from law than science. ID people aren't so much trying to debunk the theory of evolution and make the scientific evidence fit the Creationist model, they are trying to change the public opinion about whether to teach in school the alternative to blind evolution, which is that the evidence points to an intelligence behind the way the cosmos was made.
No liberals have been fooled by this, and most of the scientists, even Christian ones, were just plain frustrated by it.
But what can they do if Christians step up and say, "Okay, we were wrong about what the evidence says, but it doesn't mean it wasn't created?"
Being fools for Christ doesn't mean we have to be boneheads. I understand that it is difficult for people to believe Jesus was resurrected and that he is God. That is provable, but it is still a leap of faith. But for us to stand around and obviously fit the enormous evidence of science into a dubious, "biblical" framework, is akin to looking like flat-earthers. Is that really going to help the cause of Christ in the future? I think it is more likely to hinder.
So I'm in some transition here in my thinking. Suddenly, I'm confronted with another way of looking at it, and I haven't processed it all yet. But, in my feeble brain, the Adam thing is not solved for me yet.
I'll take the bible over people who descended from apes. God made everything in 6 days then he rested. That’s good enough for me. My job is not to convince anybody he did this. I preach Jesus Christ is the Son of God and Salvation is by no other. For there is no other name giving under heaven where by we must be saved. I am a witness unto Him. That’s it. I am not the Holy Ghost who reveals truth, sin conviction and Judgment. By the way everybody thought the world was flat you make it sound like only Christians believed that. In fact Christians who read Isaiah about the circle of the earth. It s there somewhere. God does not need to be proved by any of us. It’s by Faith. This is not a cop out but I can see that spirit in Topeka worships the mind and the intellect. I think you are being influenced by that ruling spirit there. On the other hand knowing what I know about you I am convinced that nothing will separate you from the Love of God that is in Christ Jesus and you will actually come back to the simplicity of the Gospel. After all it really is quite simple. I am a fool for Christ. Maybe a bonehead
I think what you're saying is similar to what I'm saying, no matter what each of us ends up believing about origins (and what does that matter?).
When it comes to the simplicity of the gospel, I've never been simpler. Faith + nothing = salvation. It just gets trickier when you start dealing with all the convolutions men have come up with over the centuries.
I receive the correction about the flat-world. You're right. Just about everyone believed that, and some in the church did not, like Augustine. I was trying to point out that believing in the Creationist constructs could wind up in the dust-bin of history, like the idea that the earth was flat. I mean, it made sense back then. But God can reveal new information through science as much as any other means. Thank God He gave us electricity for one.
I no longer identify scientific curiosity as a spirit, as if it came from the demonic realm. What some Christians who are involved in science say is that science will ultimately prove God right. God is in the facts. He made the facts.
But I'm just exploring things with the blog. By the way, have you ever gone blog surfing? There's an ocean out there. Just click where it says "Next Blog" at the top. It is never the same blog and they are from all over the world. So I try to comment on some of them, to see if they will visit me.
I have spent a lot of time checking out what people put out. There are also some seedy things you run into. It usually is just sex stuff but also some middle east stuff that is real interesting. I was blogging with a gut from Lebanon who was sending blogs when Israel invaded. some oof the people writing into that were very extream one way or the other. But it was eye opening if you kept a open mind and waded throught the malarkey.
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