Knowledge: Nothing to Fear

For a long time, the church has been in the business of suppressing and denying truth as revealed by science. It's time for something different.

Here is at great example. In the 17th century Galileo lived the last years of his life under House arrest for advancing the "hypothesis" that the Earth moved around the Sun, because it contradicted their strict literal interpretation of Scripture (Chronicles 16:30, Psalm 104:5, Ecclesiastes 1:5). In fact, the church actively opposed heliocentric "theory" well into the 18th century, and it wasn't until the early 19th century (1822) that the Roman Catholic Church allowed the printing of heliocentric books in Rome.

Fear always supports the goals of the enemy; this is especially so when it comes to fear of knowledge. If the Church acts as if knowledge as something to fear, the non-believer will reason that Christianity is just like other religions--a set of superstitions, eventually to be undermined by the onslaught of ever-increasing knowledge.

Contrast this to the believer who, through humility and faith experiences a powerful and personal relationship with the Creator on a daily basis. He knows that God cannot be undermined. He knows that what may appear to contradictory to God's word can be reconciled by the power of the Holy Spirit. When faced with new truths that seem contrary to established doctrine, he will respond with utter fearlessness.

When the non-believer sees that response, he will be intrigued. He might even start seeing Christ as somebody worth knowing.

Our Mission, Should We Choose to Accept It

The greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. The second is to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus says, “All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments”. So LOVE is what all righteousness (law) and revelation (prophets) depend upon and stem from, first of God and then of each other. Without this love, we miss the whole point of our creation. It stands to reason that the Holy Spirit wouldn’t inspire one to break these two commandments, so we can assume that any action or thought that breaks these commandments is not inspired by God.

"No one who is speaking by the spirit of God says ‘Jesus be cursed’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the spirit" (1 Corinthians 12:3). That which glorifies God, bearing witness to His supremacy, is of the Spirit, and that which vilifies Him is not. Scripture can be God-glorifying or it can be used (improperly) as a condemnation of God, so it really depends on the context; neither the written word nor the findings of science are of themselves holy or unholy.

Many people, including myself before I became a Christian, see the book of Genesis and its obviously flawed cosmology as a barrier between themselves and Christianity. I found the way through, but the barrier still isolates many people from the message of Christ and the salvation found in Him. This is the greatest of tragedies and must be resolved.

We must realize that adherence to a literal interpretation of Genesis is not central to Christian theology, and isn’t the pill that must be swallowed to be saved. Rather, the divinity of Christ, His sacrifice for the sake of our salvation, His resurrection and ascension are, cumulatively, the pill, and it’s a much smaller pill when one doesn’t have to simultaneously throw up centuries worth of brilliant and honest work from the best scientific minds.

Biblical literalists may want to pick nits and posit stale arguments about some aspect of the scientific perspective on the origins of the universe, but the conflict basically boils down to one group of people that want to hold up a literal interpretation of the Bible and make science adhere to it, and another group of people who want to destroy God and start from scratch. Neither of those positions is satisfactory; we must find a middle ground that moderates on both sides can not only accept, but relish.

In fact I think plenty of people would stand in the center of those two extreme positions, thinking there is a middle ground, knowing that Genesis is not literally true, possibly even suspecting that the story of Jesus is in some ways embellished beyond His own intent. But in spite of all that, they sense a deeper truth that their spirit cannot and will not deny.

These half-Christians may identify themselves as atheists, Christians, or "just spiritual", they might believe in God--maybe a few even go to church--but they also know there’s something undeniable about evolution. They might think God created the universe at the point of the Big Bang, but the Big Bang doesn’t answer their questions: Where did we come from? Why? They know intuitively that no matter how deep we go with science, it will never answer these questions, yet we will still need answers. The spiritual realm has always been the place we look for those answers, and it will always be so.

As Christians, we need to recognize these half-Christians as our neighbors, love them, and stop trying to make them give up Darwin for Genesis. Get to know and love Darwin and the 14 billion year epic of Creation. Praise God! What they really need to understand is that God gave His Son so that they would not perish in an unjust universe, but that they would live, justified, in His Grace.

Who's with me?

No Soul Left Behind?

I was talking to Joe Luna today and brought up this idea I had about the devil. I had been thinking about this for a while: will Satan ultimately be redeemed? I can't imagine God as a hypocrite (love your enemy, right?), so certainly His love extends to the adversary, but has God written the Devil off, or does His elaborate plan ultimately bring Satan to salvation in Christ, setting free all the imprisoned souls in the process? I'd like to write a book about that! I hope I didn't give away His secret!

Discovering the Power of Prayer

I didn't exactly start praying the first day I became a Christian. Leading up to that day I'd been moved by other people's prayers and I felt the power of the Holy Spirit; that power is what brought me to that moment of giving myself to Jesus Christ. You could say I was in the habit of thinking prayer was foolish; you know, talking to the wall and expecting it to help you is kind of ridiculous, especially when there is no wall.

Even though I had gone through the stages of realization that first an omnipotent, omnicient, and involved Being was possible, then likely, then evident by virtue of the very nature of existence--having come to feel in the depths of my soul that the wall was all ears--even though the foolish had become wise to my eyes and the wise had become foolish, I wasn't ready to be one of those people.

But privately I tried it, not out loud mind you. (I wouldn't anyone to hear me acting foolish, least of all myself!) I mean God's supposed to hear even silent prayers, right? So I tried it. I privately asked God to help me navigate some small obstacle in life. No big deal. But the crazy thing was...it helped. It's like God heard me ask and He said, "Sure. Don't worry about it. I've got this." So I started doing it more. Even sitting at work when I felt unmotivated, I asked God to help me find the strength to keep pushing forward, and He said, "You have it." and I did. It was trivial but apparently He didn't mind.

Maybe it's foolish to think at the mind-reading wall, but deluded or not, when the wall starts helping me out, I'm going to gratefully accept. There's something very powerful about just the asking, which is not to say there's not something wonderful in the receiving.