Month: February 2018

Fed Up With “Thoughts and Prayers”? I’m Glad!

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Victor Chininin Buele

We develop these platitudes that mean nothing. Let’s be honest. We want to be nice or to comfort somebody, but we have no clue whatsoever about what we should say or do. It happens. We are fallen humans.

Every time a mass shooting has happened, I observe my friends growing more and more fed up with the standard “thoughts and prayer” response. You may assume that I would say that being fed up with that is wrong. I’m actually quite glad this is happening. But obviously, most likely this is not for the reasons you think. It is not wrong to see another mass shooting and say, “Hey, these ‘thoughts and prayers’ thing is a bill of goods.”

Thoughts. For many years now, Americans have lived this practical theology of wishful thinking, or the power of positive thinking. We have at the White House a representative of this. We’ve started to see the folly of this notion that we can wish things with our thinking. That if we speak positively into our life things will happen. That our words have power to create reality. You can see that because Trump says something is the largest inauguration crowd in history doesn’t change the fact that it wasn’t. We can’t change reality with our thoughts.  Three hundred million people thinking that massive shootings need to stop has not changed the reality that these things keep happening.  Thinking about something is not enough.

Prayers. This is a perfect storm. In our secularist society, it is intellectually suspect to think that God exists. Even if you do think that God exists, it is almost a necessary conclusion to think that he is useless and powerless or bad. Then, when this narrative comes back to the news cycle—people say that they pray, and the shootings keep happening—our suspicions appear to be confirmed. There is no God. Or prayers are useless. What a big effin’ waste of time.

—So, Mr. Theologian Aficionado, what are you trying to get at? That you also believe that God is puny? Are you ready to come to your senses and step into the light, forsaking your dogmatic infancy of believing in God at all?

Not at all.

I would instead ask you, “Can’t you see that we are getting closer and closer to the moment where prayer for national repentance is the only way forward?”

Allow me to explain myself.

There is another possible conclusion here. We are not thinking the right thoughts to prompt us to the right actions through righteous prayer. That would also explain why “thoughts and prayers” have not resulted in an end to mass shootings.

We think too highly of ourselves. An underlying assumption to all the discussion about mass shootings goes around the idea that if there were the right controls and legislation, shootings wouldn’t happen. Cain killed his brother with a very low tech weapon. It’s part of our fallen nature. Jesus said that it is not just murder that is sin, but that which is just as much murder as murder itself—anger. My “losing it” at a poor clerk who has to inform me that a flight has been cancelled is just as sinful as the grabbing of an automated weapon to murder her. Both are reprehensible in the sight of a holy God. We must, therefore, spend our lives working on ways to govern life in this fallen world as to preserve life knowing full well that no matter what degree of deterrents are put in place, we have murderous hearts inside of us. We quarrel and fight, and that in due time arises to murder.  Whether it’s flipping the middle finger at the guy who cut you off (perhaps by accident) or by pushing him off the bridge with your car. This does not mean that we should not pursue deterrents and that we should not have vigorous discussion about what deterrents have the potential to save the most lives. We just can’t leave the discussion at that, thinking that legislation can change the human heart.

We don’t really pray. When people say, “You are in my thoughts and prayers,” most likely they walk away and never pray for you. Why do I say that? Because I’m a judgmental jerk? Not entirely. Because I know my weakness. I have to have lists of things I’m praying for because otherwise I’ll forget about them. I’m a weak human with a weak mind. I need lots of reminders. My prayers are often derailed by the smallest distractions. And that’s for the stuff I’m aware I need to be praying for. I wasn’t praying for Broward County, Florida, yesterday, or the day before, or even when I was working in Ft. Lauderdale several years ago, or when I was driving around the county looking for a wheelchair for my grandmother. I’m not that good of a person. And I’m a finite person.

We have this “I’m in the doghouse, save me,” theology of prayer.  We pray when we are in trouble. We don’t seem to really be much for prayer when things are going well.  A few years ago, our van started shaking up to about 50 mph. I remember that I had never been more aware in my life about the wonder of God allowing such a machine to move one revolution of the tires. I remember the wonder of praying and giving thanks for every rotation of the tires. All of a sudden, every mile was filled with miracles. Were the miracles not there before? I was just foolish to suppress my acknowledgement of them and my thanksgiving for them. When my mechanic fixed it, it didn’t take long for things to go back to the way they were before. Soon enough I wasn’t thanking God for holding this thing together when performing miraculous trips down I-70. We must have a more expansive theology of prayer.

If we don’t get what we want, we conclude that prayer does not work. What do you want? Do you want people to stop shooting others? I suspect yes. Have you given thanks for the family who welcomed this broken human being who held the gun in this incident? They welcomed this troubled young man after he lost even his mother. Have you considered praying for them? I can’t quite relate to the type of hurt they may be going through right now.  Do you want peace and harmony? Do you want safety? Do you want to be able to send your child to school and not feel like your treasure could be snatched away from you at any moment?

What do you want?

I want people to be convicted of their sin, to repent of it, and to turn to the Lord. We are all murderers, or do you presume to tell me that you have never sinned against anyone in your anger? I once had a terrible manager. This man was worse than the pointed-hair boss from Dilbert. My wife was in terrible pain, and he demanded that I be in his office immediately regardless of the difficult time we were going through. That day I had a clear choice. Would I look at this man and do what my flesh wanted? Would I murder this man in my heart and see my every subsequent day destroyed and tainted by my hatred and the grudges I was holding against him? Or would I pray for this man, as Jesus taught me to do? Would I pray for this man and bless him? Not just say a blessing upon him but actually bless him? Do my best work for him? Treat him with utmost respect? This changed my heart about him over time. I can look at him in the eye now and have no hatred of him. That was not ME, that was the work of God in me. Imagine the implications of national repentance! Imagine if our sad divisions do indeed cease. You are right about something, platitudes, empty thinking, and pretend prayers won’t get us there.  But prayers of repentance, prayers that push aside the sin that has eaten away so much good from our lives, families, homes, neighborhoods, schools, places of business, churches, cities, states…

I want people who seek God’s wisdom and guidance for all of life. What is God’s best for us to discern for how to best protect life this side of eternity? How do we genuinely care for those in the fringes? How do we care for those with depression and anxiety? How do we care for those who return from serving this nation with profound brokenness? How do we care for those struggling with mental illnesses? How do we care for the practical orphans raised in this culture of broken promises and broken families?

I want us to understand that there is a gospel that is more powerful than behavior modification.  If we seek to change our behavior, sooner or later we will crack, and our final lash will be worse than any of the little lashes.  Only the gospel has the power to arrest our mind, our soul, our heart, our lives, and to push us upward through the process.  Have you ever genuinely been in a true Christian community? If God has gifted you with that privilege you will know what I’m talking about.  There is a mingling of souls that could never come together apart from the Spirit of God rescuing them from their filth and binding them together into the image of Christ.

America, we can mourn together. We can grow together. We can understand one another. We can pray together. We can think together.

Think what you ask? “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” (Philippians 4:8 ESV)

I’m glad you’re done with the platitude of “thoughts and prayers.”

Will you repent? Change has to start somewhere.  Let it start with you.

Love Is The Only Way: The Death of Storytelling in the Twenty-First Century

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Victor Chininin Buele

My wife and I were invited to a screening of Paul, Apostle of Christ.  I walked away from the movie deeply saddened. There are a ton of thoughts I have about the movie, but the one that is most important is the death of storytelling in the twenty-first century.  With The Fate of the Furious and Toy Story 4 and every possible franchise coming to a similar predicament, I find myself more and more frustrated by movies.  We have lost storytelling.

I would not recommend the movie Paul, Apostle of Christ at all.  It fails to tell the story.  I understand that you have to build screenplays and more “robust” stories to keep an audience’s attention.  I understand that there are 10,000 details that are not present in the pages of scripture.  We don’t know what clothes Paul wore, we don’t know the physical details of the jail where he was, we don’t really know Aquilla and Priscilla.  Pictures were not included.

So, there is a lot of room for the imagination.  And that’s fine.  And understood.  My commentary does not come from that.  Creativity must be exercised when trying to bring a story from the page to the big screen.

My commentary relates to bad storytelling.

What we do know is that Paul died preaching the gospel he once opposed.  Paul died proclaiming the Messiah he had once persecuted.  He died because he believed that God sent His Son Jesus Christ to become a man, to live a perfect life, to die a brutal death, to rise three days later, and to be raised up in glory.  He died because he proclaimed his witness of this message throughout the Ancient World.  He died because his Spirit-given boldness could not be silenced.  He died with a certainty that he had finished the race.  He died without fear of not being accepted by Christ.

The Paul portrayed in this movie was not the man I have admired, respected, hated at times, been instructed by, been convicted by.  The Paul portrayed in this movie was not the Paul that wrote the words that were put at times in the mouth of the actor.  The Paul of this movie dispensed wishy-washy Oprah advice to a suffering people.  The words of the Paul of this movie (or the lack of words) brought about division, anxiety, fear, and death, rather than the comfort and peace that the words of Paul in Scripture bring to us even today.

**SPOILER**
Paul is in prison in the movie, and the Roman prefect in charge of the prison has a daughter.  This girl is dying.  The prefect obeys all the rituals to the gods and goddesses to ensure his girl would live.  He is having marital problems because his wife blames him for their girl’s illness saying he is angering the gods by being a little lenient with Paul and Luke (who in this movie sneaked in the prison to write the Acts of the Apostles from Paul’s stories).  As anyone could predict, eventually the illness gets so bad that the prefect calls for Luke.  Luke comes and the girl is healed.  All the Christians end up praying for the girl.  The girl goes from being dead to being radiant.  So, this gets Paul some time alone with the prefect under the sun.  The Paul of the Bible would have been gracious, humble, and bold to proclaim the gospel to this prefect.  Acts 26 comes to mind and his defense portrayed there before King Agrippa.  The Paul of this movie gave a somewhat decent metaphor about water that I predict will be used in many sermons in the years to come.  Then he said a couple of platitudes.  A sentence of comedy relief.  He said, “I’m not trying to convince you.”  The whole theater laughed.  I don’t think Paul would have laughed at that.  In verse 28, Agrippa asks Paul, “In a short time would you persuade me to be a Christian?” Paul responds in verse 29, “Whether short or long, I would to God that not only you but also all who hear me this day might become such as I am–except for these chains.”  Paul was most definitely trying to convince Agrippa.

Sure, you can argue that you don’t want to alienate people who want to watch the movie for entertainment purposes.  You can argue that you are building a bridge.  You can argue a lot of things.  But make up a story for that.  Put the words you want in the mouth of a police officer or a football player or a firefighter.  If you are going to take the life of a man from the pages of Scripture whose life is a manifestation of human weakness magnifying the power of God, tell the story.  Add your art.  Add your music.  Add extra-scriptural details.  But don’t change the character of the man.

Summarizing the theology of Paul as “Love is the only way” falls far short.  While I was thankful for the glimpses of the tragic persecution our forefathers faced and for the reminder of the blood that was spilled to guard the treasure that we now get to buy and carry and read and share freely, the portrayal of Christians as belligerent, vengeful, and defeated left me pondering the consequences of storytelling like this.  People who have never read the Bible and people who may never read the Bible and people who read the Bible can take bits and pieces of this and strengthen what they want to hear instead of sound doctrine.  That would have grieved Paul gravely.  Yes, the story arc of Luke having to overcome the temptation to not seek to heal the daughter of the prefect, even as many brothers and sisters were being thrown to the beasts at the Coliseum, is an important one.  The triumph of love over hate.  The triumph of love over abuse and violence.

But the movie never defined the source of this Love.  Yes, there is 1 Corinthians 13.  But that Love, that Love needs to be defined.  We can’t leave it to the imagination or to whatever feels right to us in the moment

The movie was left with these empty pockets for you to fill in with whatever makes it work for you.  I was really confused to hear pastors speak of the prefect’s conversion.  The prefect never proclaimed Christ as Lord.  He stood by as Paul was killed.  We saw a bit of a happy ending in this life for the prefect and his family, but we weren’t told anything.

They had Paul speak parts of his epistles as he would move through the movie.

We keep doing violence to storytelling when we take our view of the world and our feelings and our agenda into stories from the past.  We need to let stories be the stories they are.  We don’t get to rewrite history.  The subject of the married life of Aquila and Priscilla as portrayed in the picture is highly anachronistic and Scripturally suspect. That can be a conversation for another time.

The biggest disappointment of this movie was that the gospel was never proclaimed.  There is not a letter of Paul that does not proclaim the gospel.  This was clearly a case of bad storytelling.

It was so strange to walk into a movie theater and see you’re being (1) manipulated (constant repetition of “Love is the only way”), and (2) treated as a gullible demographic.  Because actor x is in a movie you all went crazy about years ago, we are sure you’re going to love this movie.  Because it barely touches upon the Bible, we are certain you are all going to come in and hand over your money, bring your friends and all.  People were clapping in the end.  People laughed at the comedy relief thrown sporadically.  People left ready to bring their churches in to watch this.  It’s been released right before Easter so I’m sure many will think this is the next big thing that will bring the world to the gospel.

But when we step back, we find that the most wonderful story, the one that our souls long for, and the only story that makes sense of our existence was never mentioned.

The trailer mentioned this, but it wasn’t in the movie:

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. (1 Timothy 1:15–17 ESV)

Revisiting Presuppositions Always Pays Off

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Victor Chininin Buele

Before moving on to the second installment on the series about secularism as religion, we need to pause and revisit my presuppositions.  We often ignore how much we fill in the gaps.  Honest dialog requires careful examination.  After all, the underlying implication of the first installment was that there are gaps, and that these gaps are filled with faith.

A dear friend was gracious to me to comment the following:

A good start to what will surely be a valiant effort. However, you make a huge presupposition that people that don’t believe have an answer for creation. I know that I don’t know how the universe was created. I can read theories and evidentiary points to attempt to draw a conclusion supported by the evidence, but you are absolutely correct that there are gaps in the scientific explanations. Further, it seems that the more evidence we find, the more questions it raises. Human knowledge is like a balloon inside a box; the volume of the balloon represents what we know, the inner layer of latex is where that knowledge is pointing, the outer layer of latex is what we understand as unknown, but the rest of the volume of the box is the unknown. As we add air to the balloon by increasing our collective knowledge, we have more that points to what we don’t know, but what we know that we don’t know also grows. Now, I have no idea if we as a species can ever know everything, but I don’t presuppose to have an answer to anything that I don’t know. This, in my opinion, is the challenge to your stance.

I profoundly appreciate the honesty, candor, and the intelligence of this response.  We must take a moment to be thankful that we can still begin to voice our opinions with an affirmation of the good we see in others.  What a blessing this friend has been to me.  I thank my friend for affirming my efforts.  This examination wouldn’t be happening if he had not taken the time to further the discussion.  In that way, this is different than a book.  I love books, but there is something about riding this wave of iterations in epistemology that are open to us via the dynamic nature of the internet today.

Do People That Don’t Believe Have an Answer for Creation?

“I know that I don’t know how the universe was created.”  This level of honesty is worthy of admiration and imitation.  I must apologize for only addressing at first the ends of the spectrum.  The point of the original article was that I believe that God created the world while many of my humanist/atheist/agnostic/secularist friends believe the world started at the Big Bang and we are the result of Darwinian evolution and Chance.  A couple of friends rightly followed up with comments about what I call the line between science and scientism. A Christian who ignores science needs to go back to read the Bible because Adam was a scientist given the serious task of taxonomy by his Creator (Gen. 2:19).  Adam could have only gotten so far by digging holes with bare hands.  Understanding how the world works and how it can be used to guide us to human flourishing (even as we groan the consequences of the Fall) is a scientific effort (Gen. 1:28).  A Christian can not, by definition, be against science.

But a Christian is also by definition against scientism.  What do I mean by this made up word? I mean the blind faith of the cult of Science as god.  That science has the ultimat answers and is the maximum authority over all things.  While my friend must forgive me for implying that he has an answer for creation (that was painting with broad strokes), there are many fellow human beings out there who ascribe to Science the same attributes of “godness” or deity that are God’s by right.  There is such a dogmatic dualism out there in our world where God and Science are pitted against each other.  My initial point was to show through that sharp contrast that both groups do the same thing–they fill the gaps by faith with something.

After we revisit this fundamental presupposition, though, we still walk away with creation (or the uncertainty of creation as it may be) as a fundamental piece of every person’s worldview.  However we see this, it will have massive impacts to how we see all of life.

Yes, There are Gaps.

This is another area of great excitement to me as I read my friend’s response.  We must be intellectually honest.  Again, I have spent many nights talking with friends who overlook the gaps in their positions.  My point was that when we do that, we take “godness” upon ourselves.  We decide what makes a cogent argument.  We decide what is a gap or not.  Cognitive dissonance is in the air.  We become god.

The More Evidence We Find, The More Questions It Raises

Ultimately, as we fulfill our God-given task to study more and more of the world that was given to us, we have questions.  We face the limits of our finitude. We are not God.  And we can’t explain everything.  We learn something, and it opens another Pandora’s box.  We have to go revisit what we thought was true, we have to go rethink everything.  The Copernican Revolution wouldn’t be a revolution if it didn’t require to shift wrong thinking into right thinking.  We are humans.  When we admit we can be wrong, we are walking towards humility.  When we act as god, pride gets the upper hand.  Hurt is left in the trail.  We hurt those we love.

Epistemology – Is it Possible? Or Is It Just Hot Air?

We keep talking about God in 2018.  Whether you oppose Him and spend your time making arguments for His nonexistence, or whether you proclaim with your mouth and actions that you ignore such a stupid idea, or whether you bow down and worship Him, or whether you say it’s all a Big Elephant and that you are perfectly happy worshiping the trunk while I worship a leg, we keep finding ourselves by our nature still talking about God.  Natural revelation necessitates that we realize that we are not all that there is here.  We are creative beings, not creator beings.  That is, we cannot make something come out of nothing (ex nihilo).  We are always taking something that already exists and we make it something else.

And that’s where epistemology becomes a fascinating point.  Can we know anything?  Can we know everything?  We most definitely can not know everything.  We can, however, know.

What is the Bible but a finite revelation of the Infinite God for finite creatures.  It is a spectacular text that has the writing of the Creator all over it, and if that’s something we would want to discuss, there are just some fascinating things we could talk about (like Reading the Bible in 3D for example).  The point for now is this–both Christianity and science are founded upon the fact of knowability.  We can know.  We must start there.  We don’t have an Ultra HD 4K movie in the pages of the Bible about the Infinite God.  There are gaps.  The only starting point of the first post was to get us started in seeing that this is not something that is exclusively a “religious issue of the Christians,” but that all humans have this tension in epistemology.  We can know, but we can’t know everything.  And thus, every argument is eventually a circular argument (and I would say even to the disagreement of many readers, that every argument takes us to God).  God is the reason for the circularity.  “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen” (Rom 11:36).

What Do I Do With the Gap?

That’s a great question. We must deal with the gap somehow.  And that’s what we have mislabeled as religion and have called as the opium of the infirm fueling the sense of superiority.  It’s not that some less sophisticated, or less evolved, creatures need to feel better and make up stuff.  We all deal with the gap.  We are all religious.  Deeply religious.

A friend, wiser than I, has said (edited for brevity):

We still need “seers” — the culture nearly reveres science. So that the definitive answer to any argument is, “Scientists say…” So what’s going on with that? What is a scientist? A person with tools that help them see things that cannot be seen. We trust what science says because we trust that they see what we cannot.
“I also could speak as you do, if you were in my place; I could join words together against you and shake my head at you” (Job 16:4).

At the end of the day, you can walk away unpersuaded.  You can walk away certainly persuaded that Christianity is nonsense.  That’s a great place to start.  But how we fill the gap has massive impacts to how you live your life.  We see this in our daily life now.  People fill the gap with empty promises from a compulsive liar who tapes his ties.  People fill the gap with the promise of freedom from gurus that will happily collect our cash but will not deliver the relief, peace, and comfort that our anxious, fearful hearts long for.

I’m profoundly thankful for this request to examine my presuppositions.  I hope it helps us advance the dialog.  Yes, we can know God.  It may seem like a book full of nonsense at first, and especially since the efforts of many are keeping hungry souls from it.  No, we cannot know everything.  Yes, we can know.  Our hearts cry out for truth.  We see it every day–the lies we’ve been fed that there is no truth keep going down the drain.  They told us that morality was relative.  Well, Donald has had a way to show us that when things get really bad, there is no relativism in morality.  They told us that we are fundamentally good and that we excel at all what we do, and we turn around and find that our heroes are no better than us–rampant sexual depravity and oppression of the weak.  I also “don’t presuppose,” like my friend, “to have an answer to anything that I don’t know.”

And because of that, he is in not far from the path to the humility shown in Philippians 2.

I fail to see the challenge in his comment.  There is no challenge.  An apology for painting with broad strokes, yes.  But no challenge.

Thank you for your grace.

The Religion of Secularism: Towards a Better Understanding of Ourselves

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Victor Chininin Buele

One of the most common assumptions behind nearly every argument being made today is the idea that secularism is free of religion and that its arguments are rational (if not the definition of true rational thought) and thus devoid of metaphysical assumptions and blind spots.

Allow me to illustrate: If a person says that abortion on demand should not be permitted, that is immediately considered a religious and metaphysical argument in our public square. If a person says that a woman has a fundamental right to choose abortion on demand, that is not considered to be a religious argument.  It is accepted even in the academic world to be a rational argument.

Since a rational argument is clearly considered to be superior to a religious argument in our public square, this assumption ought to be carefully considered and probed.

I don’t write this to argue.  I write it because I want everyone to have joy.

My thesis is that all arguments are religious: that everyone has an authoritative, divine, inspired source for right and wrong; that everyone is a theologian; that everyone worships; and that everyone believes a gospel that he is passionate to proclaim to a lost world in desperate need for light.

All our stories are a flavor of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. And all arguments are circular–they do and must reference the higher authority ruling our thinking.

I keep finding that in many conversations, my challenges to this prevalent assumption keep causing unbelief to my beloved atheist, humanist, agnostic, secular friends.  When I say or infer that they are just as religious as I am, my statement is often considered to be nonsensical.

“I don’t believe in God, I believe in Science” is Esqueleto’s response to Nacho’s call to baptism in the highly sophisticated film Nacho Libre.  Since one post would never get us close to reaching our goal, this will be a series of posts where we discuss:

  • The Christian and Secular Account of Creation
  • The Christian and Secular Concept of Sin
  • The Christian and Secular View of Redemption
  • The Christian and Secular Gospel of Restoration
  • The Christian and Secular Understanding of Choice
  • The Christian and Secular Call to Repentance
  • The Christian and Secular Desire for Reconciliation
  • The Christian and Secular Future

Allow me to explain myself.

In arguing that secularism is a religion, my goal is very simple.  Allow me to quote from An Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, Virginia, 1777:

That therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence, by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages, to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right,

And,

And finally, that Truth is great, and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them: […] that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities.

I believe it is essential that you understand that you are a worshiper, not only because that will be miles closer to a place of understanding your need for Jesus (which is my ultimate goal), but in a selfish way (for you), it will help you to actually get on the path towards becoming the rational person you are already convinced that you are.

For both of us, it will help us to truly enjoy, celebrate, and practice religious freedom as we finally stop snubbing each other’s arguments and engage in serious, truly equal discussion in the public square for the good of all rather than just for seeking our own interests.

I choose to be transparent.  I want you to see Jesus. But that shouldn’t keep you from reading on. Please, don’t let it keep you from reading on.  And I welcome all the discussion necessary to refine the arguments brought forth.  Do not write me off as being “unworthy [of] the public confidence.”

Creation

I am often mocked for believing that God created the World in six days and rested on the seventh day.  I am often mocked for believing what the Bible tells me.  I have read countless books on every position on creation: biblical and unbiblical, old earth and young earth, scientific-sounding and propaganda-sounding. My point in bringing this up is this: I believe that God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) created the world and all that is in it ex nihilo (out of nothing).  I believe that because of the testimony of the Bible (and we can write another post about why the Bible is a trustworthy text), the testimony of natural revelation, and because of the conviction given to me by the Holy Spirit.  Faith and reason intersected.  Biological evidence and metaphysics.  Scientific observation and theological rigor.  This is not a position I have just swallowed whole without an ounce of thinking.  If you have questions about how a Christian could believe this, I would invite you to consider the work of Dr. Vern Poythress, a mathematician and a theologian with degrees from California Institute of Technology, Harvard, Westminster, the University of Cambridge and others.  I would recommend to you specifically (all free to download): Redeeming Science and Chance and the Sovereignty of God. Both of these works do a far better job than I ever will showing the serious, rigorous academic work of a scholar.

You can totally disagree with what I have said in the previous paragraph.  That’s the whole point of this.  But I don’t want you to walk away thinking that your creation story is superior to mine on the grounds of being the only explanation that is completely rational and admissible in the public square.  It is not.  There are gaps.  I can write about that some other time, and Dr. Stephen Meyer does a far better job than I ever will addressing the Cambrian explosion in his work Darwin’s Doubt.  I have considered these gaps seriously.  I am a thinker and a scientist.  Every Christian is called to good science.  We are to be good stewards and rulers of a beautiful world.  There are things for which a purely naturalistic evolutionary perspective cannot account.  Often the answer is, “Not yet.”  And that’s fine.  You can have that opinion.  You can bank on technology.  But let’s be honest and call it what it is, “By faith you choose to believe.” You are placing your faith in natural evolution or a subset of scientific principles that are cataloged under the word “evolution.”  While many of my friends are distinguished scientists, what I find most frustrating is the number of evolution-defenders who have not even read Darwin’s work themselves. Ultimately I don’t want anyone to parrot what others say.  The same feeling you have when you feel that I’m parroting whatever I’ve been told by “religious leaders” I feel when you parrot whatever you’ve been told.

I want us to move beyond indoctrination.  We both believe an account of how the world came to be.  We believe so by faith.  We hold the canon of the works that prove our point to be sacred and unquestionable.  We look past the gaps in faith.

And this is just the start of our worldview.  Everything hinges upon that.