That’s it. I quit. I give in. Yesterday the pastor preached through the science portion of Focus on the Family’s Truth Project, and hammered those who, like me, hold to an old-earth creation view.
I’ve got no beef with the Truth Project. It’s a DVD-based small group series that provides a Scripture-based response to the secular worldviews. Overall, it’s a well-produced survey of the issues of truth, theology (who is God?), anthropology (who is man?) and a number of other cultural topics. Even the science portion is well-balanced, focusing primarily on evolution vs creation issues. I would recommend the series to anyone looking for a solid small-group curriculum.
To his credit, the pastor pulled me aside before the service and warned me that he would be covering the material from a young earth view. Overall, I have no beef with young-earth creationists, so long as they recognize that their view is one of many, and that holding something other than a young-earth view does not invalidate one’s salvation. Unfortunately, that seems to be the direction many YECers want to take it. I heard yesterday, and I’ve heard it many times before, the implication that “if old-earth creationists don’t trust Genesis, then they don’t trust the rest of Scripture.”
Horse hockey. I trust every word of Genesis, and the rest of Scripture to boot. I just don’t hold to that particular interpretation of the Creation account.
My spousal unit is the lone Protestant in Catholic Bible study. She has frequently been told that Protestants are ‘incomplete’ Christians. That’s what I’m taking from the young-earth crowd, as well – old-earth creationists ‘are still Christians, but….’
That’s a big but.
Here’s the question: how do I respond? In every other respect, I am in complete agreement with the pastor’s teaching. Do I suck it up and seek to respond in grace, knowing that I’m viewed as a tainted Christian? Walk off in a huff?
March 10th, 2008 13:34 pm
I would challenge any of the young earth crowd to show me where the scripture says evolution does not occur. We have carbon dating that goes back before the scripture account. I frankly believe that during the six days of creation dinosaurs walked the earth and evolution did occur and the timeline was considerably different than our current day. However, on the sixth day (could be late in the day), God created man and later created woman. I also have no problem reconcilling the big bang theory. If my God speaks, I would expect a big bang.
March 10th, 2008 14:45 pm
God can do whatever He wants and is not bound by my understanding of Him.
February 9th, 2009 10:45 am
This is a very difficult situation that many of us who are Christians and study science find ourselves in with regularity. First, in the long run it does quite a bit of harm to stay silent. In the next 50 years, I think it will become clear to most educated people that it is impossible to hold an orthodox theology of general revelation (we can trust our observations to show us God’s truth through His creation) along with young earth creationism. If we just stand by and let people equate Christian belief with a single interpretation of Genesis, we are letting them head toward a train wreck that we can clearly see coming. On the other hand, we don’t often have the time to help fellow believers understand the issues and the evidence. So the result of bringing up these issues can be conflict without growth. Praying that you will know how to respond.
February 9th, 2009 20:59 pm
ganv,
Thanks for your wisdom. Yeah, it’s troubling to see Christianity equated with a blind anti-intellectualism. “The World” is never going to appreciate, understand or embrace Christianity – I accept that and I don’t look for the world’s acceptance. Still, we don’t need to give them reason to ridicule the faith.
June 11th, 2009 10:18 am
Probably way too late for your class, but for future reference and for your readers who may come up on the problem, you sort of skirt a clear statement of the problem, and I would like to clarify. The point of young earth believers is that they assume that Genesis, at least this part of it, is History with a capital h. There are other forms of literature in which the Genesis account can be taken faithfully as metaphoric explanation of events for which the people for whom Genesis was written could not comprehend. This is an unnecessary extension of the doctrine of inerrancy.
In His Love,
Nate