Spent the morning trying to decide if/how to write about my daughter, Livie's week at Baptist summer camp.
It's just so weird to me ...
I read verses like this, and they humble me: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+55%3A9-10&version=NIV
But, in spite of such reminders, we try so hard to make the working of the cosmos fit our strict cosmological views.
I've heard the idea expressed, again and again, by people of great
faith, that their entire faith somehow falls flat on its face if the
first couple chapters of Genesis are not a literal, accurate historical
record.
Wait; what? Why?
Because the Holy Spirit could
never inspire an allegory or morality tale that, while holding great
Truth, nonetheless wasn't literal, historical fact? (See parables of
Jesus)
Because we know the mind of God, and he would never
bring to fruition His great Creative Work through a process so
unintuitive as billions of years of the emergence of Life through a bottom-up process, rather than sort of drawing us in the dirt like a back-yard football play?
Because
the Spirit of the Living God could not possibly be present in the very
cells and subatomic structures and the fundamental Nature of living beings
as they grow and change and reproduce as the eons go by?
Because it would be so sensible for an omnipotent God to create men with
curious nature, put them in a garden, give them infinite time, access
to sin, and the presence of a tempter; and then say "Woah, what? Boy, didn't see THAT coming." when
they ate ... what was it? Not the fruit of the icky awful nasty
sinfulness? No, the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. There's a
fruit for that? A literal fruit for that? OK...
Look, I respect that you believe that.
I really do. For all I know, you could be right, and it really went
down in exactly that way. I'm not saying it DIDN'T happen, just that I
find it unlikely.
Neither am I saying that I believe in a godless
form of evolution. Science doesn't talk about God because it's
limitations prevent it from doing so. It's not designed for intuitive
speculation, and it's not any good at discussing what it can't measure
or observe.
What I AM SAYING is that it's so weird that we
limit God in the ways we do. The argument I hear is "Jesus quoted from
Genesis, so if Genesis isn't true (historical fact), then my entire
faith collapses." My response: Jesus told parables. There's no reason Jesus couldn't use Genesis if it's a morality tale, or an allegory.
Why does science have to be the enemy? Why can
science, in its limited but rather thrilling way, not be, after all these eons, finally giving us our first tentative
glimpses into how God did what God did?
You don't have to buy that. You probably won't even actually hear it, if history is any guide.
But, please, please, please, do me this one favor:
Don't persecute and vilify those who really, truly do love Jesus and work hard every day to be His disciple, but don't buy into your version.
Especially my kids.
It's just so weird to me...
