A poem by Wendell Berry, featured in yesterday’s Common Prayer
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Young Earth Creationism is not the Problem
[Update: Louis responded to Ham's post this morning]
After all the discussion of evolution and creationism lately, I thought I would clarify something – I don’t think that Young Earth Creationism (YEC) is the problem, at least not in and of itself.
I may not personally find the science or theology behind YEC persuasive any longer, but if you do that’s fine, and really not something I feel like picking a fight over. There are many people who have wrestled with this question and come to a YEC position for perfectly understandable reasons, and I respect that.
What I’m frustrated with is how some YEC proponents have turned their position into something that is causing harm and division in the church, and needlessly driving away scores of people from the faith.
See I have spent most of my life among Christians for whom YEC was not only a majority opinion, but something of a badge of orthodoxy.
In classrooms, textbooks, and Sunday school lessons, the YEC position has been co-opted by Ham, AIG, Bob Jones, etc., and kids are taught from a young age that evolutionists are the bad-guys, that it is inherently anti-biblical, that evolution is really a way to justify sin and not have to believe in God, and that deep down even scientists know evolution has no real evidence behind it and the Bible clearly disproves it.
I’m speaking from experience here, because growing up that is the narrative I was sold by pastors, teachers, and peers.
Yet none of that is necessarily inherent to YEC, so why have we allowed such divisive voices to define the YEC conversation? Do we not see the damage that it is doing; to individuals, to theology, to education, to the way people understand the Christian faith, even to the place of YEC in the larger theological dialogue?
I’m tired of the narrative that evolution and Christian faith are inherently opposed and the entire conversation is off-limits, of hearing that yet another brilliant Old Testament professor was fired over their views on evolution, and of seeing the personal attacks on people I know and respect.
But most of all I’m tired of the way this false dichotomy creates an unnecessary crisis of faith for countless believers and a needless obstacle to the Gospel for those who are seeking God.
I’ve had my own crisis of faith, my own baggage that I’m still working through after being immersed in that narrative for far too long. And honestly, it didn’t have to be that way. [You can read some of that story here]. Yes I have residual frustrations, this debate can strike a nerve still. But looking back, YEC wasn’t the problem, it was the way YEC was held as an absolute on par with the Gospel, and the way it was taught as the only way to faithfully follow God.
Whatever position you take on creation, evolution, or the age of the earth, can’t we agree that faithful Christians come to many different conclusions on these issues, and have the actual debate over the science and the text, instead of turning it into a propaganda war?
When Hams Attack
Recently a friend of mine, Louis at Baker Book House, was the subject of a post by Ken Ham.
Since Louis has been discussing his journey of making peace with evolution on his Church Connection blog, as you might expect Ham’s post was… well lets says “less than complementary.”
And by “less than complementary” I mean Louis was accused of apostatizing from his faith, compromising clear biblical truths, and promoting heresy – so nothing dramatic then.
Here are a couple excerpts.
“You probably have already read the blog of Louis, who reviews books for Baker Book House (including The Evolution of Adam by Peter Enns), but I found it interesting to see the steps to apostasy eroding at this man’s (Louis) faith… Although I hate to see this happening before my eyes, I am reminded of the original sin where Satan tempted Eve with the heretical and evolutionary** ideas of becoming like God and not trusting the words of God completely. We are still falling for these “lies” today.”
“We can clearly see the seeds of doubt leading to unbelief operating in this employee at a Christian book publisher as the influence of compromising with evolution and millions of years takes its toll. We already see the sad result of compromise with a once theologically conservative Christian book publisher now publishing a heretical book like that of Peter Enns.”
This sort of personal attack is a perfect example of why I’m tired of how evangelicals continue to listen to Ham and AIG. There are certainly people I know personally who hold a YEC position graciously and for admirable reasons, but tolerating such vitriolic nonsense is doing nothing to further the Church’s mission or unity..
When I read posts like this I can’t help thinking that for Ham and AIG it’s no longer about debating the science, and its not really even about biblical faithfulness anymore, even if it perhaps began that way.
Now it has become about defending one specific theory about what the bible must be, and militantly protecting the identity, security, power, fame, and yes, money, that come along with promoting that theory by attacking anyone who disagrees.
Louis is anything but apostate or unorthodox, his faith in Christ and passion for the Bible is clear to everyone who knows him. And when someone lowers themselves to disgraceful personal attacks on a man like that, I think it says far more about the fear, and anger, and strong-arm tactics of the person making the attack than any problem with Louis’ journey.
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**[The serpent tempting Eve to believe in an “evolutionary” idea - “And lo the serpent spoke unto Eve and said ‘thou art descended from millions of years of a biological process called evolution’ and Eve, deceived by the serpent, began to share this loathsome error with Adam under the guise of ‘teaching the controversy,’ and they both became atheists.” That’s in there, right?]
Peter Rollins – The Embrace of Unknowing
As we wrestle with difficult questions like evolution, I thought it might be worthwhile to reflect on Rollins’ video, which encourages us to acknowledge that these debates are about more than texts and traditions; they are about identity and the stories we tell ourselves.
Stories of who’s good and who’s bad, who’s in and who’s out, and how the Bible we so value happens to reinforce those narratives, giving them divine sanction.
Like his book Insurrection [you can read my review here] I’m wary of the way the video ends up deconstructing without offering something constructive in return, but it is an important reminder nonetheless – those stories that shape our identity may play a larger role in our supposedly objective theological and ethical debates than we’d like to admit.
Peter Enns on HuffPo – Evolution and the Bible
Enns has an interesting essay in the Huffington Post today, Once More, With Feeling: Adam, Evolution and Evangelicals.
As you might expect from the title of his latest book, Enns is particularly interested in the Adam question, which is probably the most heated and controversial part of the conversation between evolutionary science and Christian theology.
And what he says is spot on, this has everything to do with what sort of book we imagine the Bible to be. That doesn’t make one side correct, but I do think it points us to the real crux of the matter – like a host of other pressing issues in Evangelicalism this is not simply a matter of my lining my verses up against yours.
The battle for the Bible centered on inerrancy and inspiration for quite a long time, but when people on both sides of most Evangelical debates believe in the truth and authority of Scripture it should become apparent to us that agreement on the right “in-“ terms does little to ensure agreement on what the text actually means – and so we must discuss the real point of tension, hermeneutics.
Below is a selection from Enns’ essay [I would love to hear your thoughts on it], and you can read the rest here.
“Evangelicals have been butting heads with evolution for 150 years. A lot is at stake.
If evolution is right about how humans came to be, then the biblical story of Adam and Eve isn’t. If you believe, as evangelicals do, that God himself is responsible for what’s in the Bible, you have a problem on your hands. Once you open the door to the possibility that God’s version of human origins isn’t what actually happened — well, the dominoes start unraveling down the slippery slope. The next step is uncertainty, chaos and despair about one’s personal faith.
That, more or less, is the evangelical log flume of fear, and I have seen it played out again and again.
In recent years, the matter has gotten far worse. Popular figures like Richard Dawkins have done an in-your-face-break-the-backboard-slam-dunk over the heads of defenders of the biblical story. They’ve taken great delight in making sure Main Street knows evolution is true, and therefore the Bible is “God’s big book of bad ideas” (Bill Maher) and Christians are morons for taking it seriously. Evangelicals have been on high alert damage control mode.
Then you have the mapping of the human genome. It’s a done deal: humans and primates are 90-something percent related genetically. The best explanation for it, geneticists tell us, is that humans evolved from primates. …
…Evolution is a threat, and many evangelicals are fighting to keep Adam in the family photo album. But in their rush to save Christianity, some evangelicals have been guilty of all sorts of strained, idiosyncratic or obscurantist tactics: massaging or distorting the data, manipulating the legal system, scaring their constituencies and strong-arming those of their own camp who raise questions.
These sorts of tactics get a lot of press, but behind them is a deeper problem — a problem that gets close to the heart of evangelicalism itself and hampers any true dialogue.
It has to do with what evangelicals expect from the Bible.”
Paul, Homosexuality, and a Narrative of Love
“A Christian culture dominated by believing the right things about Jesus too often forgets that believing in Christ and walking in love are inseparable. In this case, followers of Jesus have too often forgotten that articulating a position on homosexuality does not in itself answer the questions: What does it mean to love my homosexual neighbor as myself? What does it look like for me to do unto my homosexual neighbor as I would have done to myself?”
For quite a while now Daniel Kirk’s Storied Theology has been one of my favorite blogs [really, you should be bookmarking it now, I’ll wait], so I was excited to learn he was going to share some of his work in narrative theology and Pauline studies in the book Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul?
The chapter I’m reflecting on is “Homosexuality Under the Reign of Christ” No easy task, as this is proving to be one of the most difficult issues facing the church today.
Daniel starts by laying out what the biblical text says about homosexuality, and honestly it’s not that much – far less than one would assume when you consider how much evangelicals in particular have tended to obsess over the issue.
Granted, what is said is uniformly negative, but even that is less straightforward than it might first appear. The infamous “abomination” line in Leviticus for example is hardly useable in current debates, as it comes in the midst of a whole list of other national laws that we no longer consider relevant, including another “abomination,” eating unclean foods (so next time you see someone eating a cheeseburger, haul out the protest signs).
The New Testament statements, almost exclusively from Paul, come in the midst of vice lists that lay out a classically Jewish diatribe against practices that seen as the symptoms of paganism and idolatry. They do indeed portray homosexual acts in a negative light, a fact which Daniel insists we refuse to brush aside, but there is more going on linguistically and hermeneutically than we often want to admit.
So we are left with a picture of the Biblical testimony that is far more nuanced, and gives no justification for singling out homosexuality as somehow different or worse than any other sexual sin, but is still essentially negative.
Where do we go from there?
In the aside “Arguing for Homosexual Practice,” which is directed at those who affirm homosexuality either for textual reasons or because they believe the Spirit is doing something new in our day, Daniel suggests that if you take this path it must go hand in hand with the Biblical narrative of fidelity and lifelong commitment. So that GLBT affirming churches should at the same time fight against the cultural trends towards easy divorce and casual hookups.
But the real thesis of the chapter, the theme that (rightly I think) trumps everything else, is love.
Central to our calling as Christians is love of others, and it is here that much of the church has failed spectacularly in its approach towards the GLBT community.
Jesus sums up the entire law with “Love the Lord your God with all your … and, love your neighbor as yourself” and then when asked who this neighbor might be, Jesus tells a parable which turns all the audience’s expectations upside-down and shows a hated outsider as more faithfully following the way of Jesus than the religious insiders.
“No clearer story could be told to show us that our predilection for keeping our love restricted to ourselves runs counter to the way of Jesus. When we restrict our love to those who roughly fall within the boundaries of those who are living lives pleasing to God, or when we use biblical regulations as reasons for excluding ourselves from the duty of providing for a person in need, we violoate the command to love our neighbor as ourselves.”
Daniel continues by bringing this story to bear on the discussion of homosexuality,
“the homosexual is the Christian’s neighbor, and Christian’s duty is to love homosexuals as ourselves. If the result of our biblical convictions is that we stand on the streets with “God Hates Fags” signs, we are not holding a Christian position but are using a Christian idea to prop up our rebellion against the life that Jesus calls us to.”
So what does it look like to love our homosexual neighbor as ourselves? The last few pages of the chapter wrestle with that admittedly complex question. I won’t delve into specifics at the moment, but the general thrust is this – is it loving the GLBT community as we would want to be loved if we deny them rights that we would never want others to deny to us?
We’ve failed miserably in our treatment this group of people, but the Christian narrative of love and self sacrifice might just point a way forward.
Daniel begins this chapter with a quote from Love, Love, Love by The Mountain Goats, and I can think of no better way to close out this post than by sharing that song with you as you perhaps wrestle anew with what it means to love others as a follower of Jesus.
*Baker sent me a free copy of this book as a participant in the blog tour – no stipulations were made on the content of my review, but if you think I can be bought off with free books then this information might be relevant to you. And with that I think I’ve fulfilled my FTC obligations.*
Certainty, Fear, and the Evolution of Adam
Old Testament scholar Peter Enns has been causing a stir with his latest book, The Evolution of Adam
It’s quite an interesting book, and in it he makes his case with the arguments of theology, science, and hermeneutics, and yet at the end turns to another element to the debate, that it challenges beliefs so deep they have become part of our identity. So that it’s not just a matter of science or theology, we have an emotional and psychological stake in the result.
“Evolution threatens the evangelical narrative. And it’s not a joke. The threat is real.
All of the rancor, posturing, and nervousness about evolution masks a deep fear: ”If the Bible is wrong here, there is no telling where this will go. Soon I may find myself adrift, no longer sure if I can trust anything the Bible says–no longer sure about how I should life my life and what will happen to me after I die.”
It really does come down to the the Bible: what is it and what does it mean to read it well? The evangelical movement has invested a lot of energy in building thick walls around the Bible, ready to defend it against challenges, real or perceived, that threaten its safety. (If you want to learn why that’s part of the evangelical legacy, Mark Noll will tell you here. I’ve never read anything that gets to the point as quickly and says it so well.)
The problem before us, however, is that evolution effectively challenges time-honored, bedrock, evangelical positions on how the Bible must be read. That’s why for some, even engaging evolution generously, let alone accepting it, simply means turning their back on their own evangelical heritage. The cost of doing so is often too high.
What is lost is the comfort of knowing that your reading of the Bible is right, which allows one to table doubt and mystery and embrace a (false sense of) absolute certainty.
Rewriting one’s theological narrative is threatening, but new narratives must be written, where openness to theological change when warranted is valued as part of the journey of faith rather than feared as a threat to faith…
The question of evolution is out in the open, it’s not going to go away, and it has implications for how evangelicals read their Bible and do theology. The only real question before us is how will we choose to address it.”
[For the rest of the quote, see this post which is a loose excerpt from his book]
What do you think?
Is Enns right that this can end up being about identity and emotion and our own personal narratives as much as science or theology?
If so, how might that influence the way we engage the discussion and the questions we are willing to ask?
