What Difference Does It Make?

Several years ago, when we were all much younger, I was taking my older son, KC to his first cello lesson with a new teacher. I think he was in the third or fourth grade. That puts my younger son just a year behind him in second or third grade. If this hadn’t been the first lesson with this teacher, I would have just dropped him at the curb and waited outside, but because it was his first lesson, I walked him up to the door. I left Justin in the car. It was a typical day in San Antonio, hot and humid, so I left the engine running and the air on, and locked the car doors. (I know, I’m a terrible mother.)

Well, we got to the door and the teacher, by whom I was totally intimidated because he was the first chair cello in the San Antonio Symphony, asked me to step in so that I could give him some contact information and such. I turned and gave Justin the “stay-put” signal and stepped inside.

As this initial “interview” grew longer and longer, I was getting more and more uncomfortable about having left Justin in the car. And then, the doorbell rang. It was Justin who had become worried about me when I didn’t come right back out. I quickly apologized, finished giving the teacher the information and hurried outside.

I asked Justin for the keys and he indicated that they were still in the car. With sinking heart, I rushed to the car to find not only the keys still in the ignition, but the car still running…and all the doors carefully locked, even the back hatch that had saved us from being locked out on a couple of occasions before, because it had to be locked separately. Justin was very proud of himself because he had especially climbed over the backseat to make sure it was locked before he got out of the car.

So, at one end of the sidewalk, my car, keys in ignition, car running, air conditioner on high, and my purse/cell phone safely locked inside. At the other end of the sidewalk, the door to the cello teacher’s house with KC and his brand new teacher having their first hour lesson. In between, me and my seven or eight year old son, trying to figure out how much gasoline was in the tank and which was less scary, breaking a car window or ringing that scary man’s doorbell. (All these years later, I really don’t remember why I was so intimidated by that guy, but I was. As I recall, KC only had like two more lessons with him)

Anyway, there are so many ways a parent could handle a situation like that. What would you have done?

In the Garden of Eden, God gave Adam and Eve some instructions and left them on their own for a little while. They didn’t follow those directions, so when God came back, there was a problem. What was God going to do? Adam and Eve knew they were in trouble and hid.

God could have essentially hit “control-alt-delete” and completely rebooted the whole world. He could have zapped the serpent, Eve, Adam or any combination of those three. God could have come storming into the Garden, raging and angry, telling them how they’d messed everything up. He could have shrugged and told everybody it was no big deal, accidents happen. Or, He could have done what He did -- take the consequences of their disobedience on Himself.

What difference would it have made to the Universe if God had just wiped out Adam, Eve and the serpent and started over? It seems like that would have been the least troublesome way to clean up the mess that they had made of God’s Creation.

If, as many folks believe, Creation took place over an extended length of time through the process of stronger species surviving while weaker ones died off, then it would have made perfect sense for God to just let things be and let the process continue. Humans really aren’t the strongest species.

A raging, terrifying God would certainly have scared Adam and Eve straight, don’t you think? Lots of people portray God that way anyway – ready to punish us whenever we step out of line.

So of all the ways that God could have handled the Fall, why did He choose the one He did? Why would He come looking for Adam and Eve when He already knew where they were? Why would He have asked them questions to which He already knew the answers? Why would He give us the freedom to reject everything He’s done for us?

“The death of Christ upon the cross made sure the destruction of him who has the power of death, who was the originator of sin. When Satan is destroyed, there will be none to tempt to evil; the atonement will never need to be repeated; and there will be no danger of another rebellion in the universe of God. That which alone can effectually restrain from sin in this world of darkness, will prevent sin in heaven. The significance of the death of Christ will be seen by saints and angels. Fallen men could not have a home in the paradise of God without the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Shall we not then exalt the cross of Christ? The angels ascribe honor and glory to Christ, for even they are not secure except by looking to the sufferings of the Son of God. …  Angelic perfection failed in heaven. Human perfection failed in Eden, the paradise of bliss. All who wish for security in earth or heaven must look to the Lamb of God. The plan of salvation, making manifest the justice and love of God, provides an eternal safeguard against defection in unfallen worlds, as well as among those who shall be redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. Our only hope is perfect trust in the blood of Him who can save to the uttermost all that come unto God by Him. The death of Christ on the cross of Calvary is our only hope in this world, and it will be our theme in the world to come. … The gift of God in his beloved Son was the expression of an incomprehensible love. It was the utmost that God could do to preserve the honor of his law, and still save the transgressor.  … There are many who will be lost, because they depend on legal religion, or mere repentance for sin. But repentance for sin alone cannot work the salvation of any soul. Man cannot be saved by his own works. Without Christ it is impossible for him to render perfect obedience to the law of God; and heaven can never be gained by an imperfect obedience; for this would place all heaven in jeopardy, and make possible a second rebellion. (E.G. White, Signs of the Times, December 30, 1889)

Our perfect God picked the perfect response to the first sin and it makes all the difference. He picked the only sure way to keep sin from happening ever again and guarantee us the opportunity to spend eternity with Him.

Did I pick the perfect response to Justin locking my keys inside my running car? Probably not, I remember it took a couple of hours for the guy to come unlock the car and cost more than I thought a minute and a half of work was worth. I remember the inside of the car was practically frosty by the time we got back in. And, it’s made a great story to tell and laugh about.

Disobedience makes a mess of God’s plans, but He has a perfect plan for cleaning it up. God is good.c

The Revisionist Bible

Thoughts on the Sabbath School Lesson fr 1.19.13

Once upon a time, the world happened, possibly with the help of some Higher Being. Finally, men and women came along. They began to worship the Higher Being and to tell and to write down stories about It (the Higher Being). In some of the stories, the Higher Being was called God. One of the stories described how some of the people thought God created the world and all the animals and people in six days. Another story was about a flood that God sent when the people weren’t paying enough attention to Him.     After that the stories were about lots of people who tried to do the right things to make God happy but they kept messing up so He gave them a set of rules that they had to follow. There are stories about wars and people who were good and people who were not.  The people wrote some poems to God. Some people wrote about things they said God told them were going to happen in the future.

After a long time, a baby named Jesus was born and he grew up and was a good man. He made some of the people who believed in God so angry that they killed him. But some people thought he was sent by God and they worshiped him and wrote about the things Jesus said and did while he was on Earth. Finally the people wrote a book about how God would get revenge on all the people who didn’t follow His rules. The End.

I just found out that Thomas Jefferson actually put together his own version of the Gospels. He called it, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. What he did was, he took six bibles – two in English, two in French and two that were in Greek and Latin. Then he actually cut passages out of the Gospels and pasted them back in another book, in chronological order. He put the same passages in English, French, Latin and Greek next to each other so he could compare them.

The final book, called The Jefferson Bible, is 86 pages long and is still around. The Smithsonian bought it from Jefferson’s great-granddaughter in 1895 for the huge sum of $400.

Pretty cool, right? Well, it was a good idea. But what Jefferson actually did while he was cutting and pasting was take out everything except 

“those parts that can be identified through reason and thought, … So out goes [sic] the miracles, out goes [sic] the resurrections and what remains is what he thinks is the life and morals of Jesus, the true teachings."
Jefferson even changed the grammar at one point. “On one page, he apparently didn't like the number of prepositions in a verse from Matthew that started, ‘For as in the days that were before the flood ...’ He cut out the word ‘as,’ changing the scripture to ‘For in the days that were before the flood ..."[1]

Here’s the whole text: 

“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only. But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.” Matthew 24:36-39

I don’t know, maybe leaving out a word here or there isn’t that big of a deal, but leaving out anything that can’t be “identified through reason and thought?” (Well, right off the bat, I object to the assertion that things that require faith exclude both reason and thought, but that’s a whole different article.)

What was Jefferson really trying to do though? The same thing people have been trying to do since just about right after the Fall. He was trying to take the “Godness” out of God.

If God is just a social construct (something that humans made up) and Jesus was just a really good guy, then we don’t have to believe in anything hard like a real six day creation, a catastrophic flood, a virgin birth, or a resurrection. If we can look at the Bible as a compilation of some really good stories that teach some good lessons, then we don’t have to believe anything that makes us uncomfortable like the Ten Commandments or a final accounting for the way we’ve lived our lives. We don’t have to be changed by a relationship with the God who made us … because, “if we admit that He made us,” as a friend of mine said, “we have to admit that He can tell us what to do – He has a right to be interested/involved in our lives.” That makes a whole lot of people really uncomfortable.

The truth is, whether we like it or not – whether we can understand it or not, the Bible is true. God created the world in six days and rested on the Sabbath. If we discount the Genesis account of Creation, then what’s to stop us from discounting any other part of the Bible that we can’t understand? And, once we start cutting and pasting only the parts we can understand, we’ll find that we’ve cut out God. After that, there’s nothing left.  

“God is the foundation of everything. All true science is in harmony with his works; all true education leads to obedience to his government. Science opens new wonders to our view; she soars high, and explores new depths; but she brings nothing from her research that conflicts with divine revelation. Ignorance may seek to support false views of God by appeals to science; but the book of nature and the written word shed light upon each other. We are thus led to adore the Creator, and to have an intelligent trust in his word.” E.G. White, Christian Education, p 196

"In the beginning [before all time] was the Word (Christ), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God Himself. He was present originally with God. All things were made and came into existence through Him; and without Him was not even one thing made that has come into being. In Him was Life, and the Life was the Light of men.  And the Light shines on in the darkness, for the darkness has never overpowered it [put it out or absorbed it or appropriated it, and is unreceptive to it]." John 1:1-5AMP

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[1] Sally Holland, “Saving Thomas Jefferson's scrapbook Bible,” CNN, http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/11/thomas-jeffersons-scrapbook-bible/

Chicken vs. Egg?

I can remember really puzzling over that question, wondering how a person could actually know which came first. I believe I was well into my teens before I realized that, for a Christian who believed in the six days of Creation, it was a no-brainer.

The God Who created the world in six real, twenty-four hour days did everything in a carefully ordered way. He didn’t just start creating things willy-nilly – He followed a meticulously thought out plan. How do I know? Because 7,000 plus years since the Fall of Adam and Eve, the world is still so orderly that almost every part of it can be described in mathematical formulas.

Do you realize that almost everything in our world can be described by a single set of numbers? They’re called the Fibonacci numbers and the visual equivalent, the Golden Mean and is a sequence of numbers, starting with 0, 1 and continuing 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13. Each new number equals the two numbers before it. This is only the first few numbers – they go on forever, but the ratio is 1.618033988749895… The whole concept gets pretty math heavy and I get pretty lost, but when I can see that rose petals wrap around their stem using that pattern, sea shells follow the Golden spiral, and so many things in nature contain the same ratio over and over again, I’m led to the conclusion that God laid out our world along very strict guidelines.

“John Polkinghorne, a theoretical physicist and a minister, claims that the equations that guide physics point to a Creator. Polkinhorne said, ‘Physicists are deeply impressed with the order of the world. It is rationally beautiful and structured, and the feeling that there is a mind behind it is a very natural feeling to have …. I think the feeling of wonder, which is fundamental to the experience of physicists … is fundamentally a religious experience, whether people recognize it or not.’”[1]

In Genesis 1, God worked from general to specific. He didn’t create an living thing until He had created a place where it could survive.

“Then God said, ‘Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear’; and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas. And God saw that it was good.
“Then God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth’; and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. So the evening and the morning were the third day.” Genesis 1:9-13

The whole Genesis account of Creation shows a thoughtful and concerned Creator who carefully built a beautiful home for His creations. Not even a blade of grass was created until the system to keep it alive was in place.

On the other hand, we have the theories of Charles Darwin built around his research on the Galapagos Islands. His ideas involve natural selection and don’t describe any logic or purpose just an on-going struggle for survival. If God were to use a theory like the one described by Darwin, He would have to be described as careless, wasteful and cruel to just pitch ideas for creatures out into the planet and see which ones survived.

That would be like me deciding to plant a garden in my backyard so I just gathered up a whole bunch of seed of all different kinds and just pitched them out into the yard. Then I just watched to see what would come up. I didn’t prepare the ground for the seeds or make sure the seeds went into the right kind of soil or in the right amount of sunlight. I didn’t worry about whether or not the seeds could even grow in my area of the country. If the plants made it, great, but if the weeds took over and none of them made it, that’s ok too. In my backyard, that would mean I’d end up with very little of anything edible, just Johnson grass and sticker burs. I would have wasted a lot of seeds.

Anyway, how would you feel about God if He was so indifferent about how things went on His planet? Would you be interested in worshipping Him? or praying to Him?

I believe that the way we picture Creation has everything to do with the way we picture God.

“Some theologians argue that God is not indifferent to natural evil, but, rather, God is limited in His very nature so that He is good but limited in power. Hence, while He desires to do something about the pain and suffering in the world, He is unable.
“A second option offered asserts that while God is all-powerful, His greatest desire is the complete freedom of the cosmos to self-create and self-determine. This freedom is said to be more important to God than imposing some kind of order or design on the universe. Advocates of this view tend to express God as being in a power-sharing relationship with the universe, with the universe participating in its own creation.
“A third option is Deism. In this view, God launches all the natural processes and then absents Himself like a disinterested, absentee landlord. While this God may have all power, He shows little or no personal interest in the affairs of humankind. In this construct, God is highly unlikely to personally interact or intervene with any particularity in the affairs of earth’s history.”[2]

What a blessing to know that our God is not limited in any way, that He maintains His control over the universe, and that He cares about each and every one of us.

I know I end with John 3:16-17 often, but I just don’t believe we can be reminded enough of how involved God wants to be in every aspect of our lives and that, more than anything else, He wants to spend eternity with us. Take just a couple more seconds and really read and think about every word. Each one was written just for you and for me.

“For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world that He [even] gave up His only begotten (unique) Son, so that whoever believes in (trusts in, clings to, relies on) Him shall not perish (come to destruction, be lost) but have eternal (everlasting) life.
“For God did not send the Son into the world in order to judge (to reject, to condemn, to pass sentence on) the world, but that the world might find salvation and be made safe and sound through Him.” John 3:16-17AMP

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[1] Pallab Ghosh, "Historic Hunt for 'God Particle,'" BBC News (9-10-08)

[2] Stephen Bauer, PhD, The Lesson in Brief and Learning Cycle, Lesson 2, Origins-Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guide

An Accidental Life

When my sons were little, we spent a huge amount of time watching shows or videos about animals. And, initially that sounds awesome because then they were learning things instead of watching mindless kids’ shows (they watched those too). Nature shows are so much fun to watch – the photography is beautiful. Except that EVERY SINGLE ONE of them had to throw in its mandatory this-animal-evolved-from-that-animal line. At which point I would feel the need to disagree with the voice-over out loud so that my children would not get the idea that I agreed with those kinds of statements. I did it so often that we could all recite my various responses together.

I have a huge problem with the theory of evolution … well, I have several, but my biggest problem with it goes beyond all of the scientific impossibilities and unlikelihoods of life just popping up out of nowhere. My biggest problem with the theory of evolution is that believing it changes the way a person sees themselves and how they fit into the grand scheme of things. I believe that so many of the things for which we are trying to find solutions are outgrowths of believing that life is merely the result of a biological accident.

In the interest of full disclosure, I went to public schools for most of my academic life and I worked in public schools first as a teacher and then as a school psychologist. My children also went to public schools. I grew up in a time when only the theory of evolution was taught in science classes and formal prayer was not allowed. So, that may all flavor my opinions to some extent.

One of the first side effects of teaching our children that they are nothing but biological accidents is the loss of the knowledge that each individual is inherently valuable. If we can no longer believe that we were knit together in our mothers’ wombs by a loving Creator God, then who are we? And why are we here? To fill the void of our value through our Creator and Redeemer, educators started trying to artificially produce self-esteem in each student. The self-esteem movement has become almost a joke – everybody gets a trophy for participating, teachers shouldn’t use red ink, don’t tell a student they’re wrong – but has not been able to instill in anyone a healthy knowledge that they were created and loved by God. Artificial value then has to come from how we look and what we have.

Unfortunately not everyone is considered beautiful and not everyone has the funds to buy the things that will make them valuable – expensive athletic shoes, clothes, fancy cars or any other thing that is considered a symbol of a person’s importance in society.

In my opinion, one of the reasons that bullying has become such a devastating problem is that children who have been artificially infused with self-worth have no positive way to maintain it and so try to build themselves up by pushing others down. Those who are being pushed down have no resources with which to protect themselves and are emotionally devastated, sometimes to the point of suicide.

A huge casualty of being taught we were accidents was morality. Teenagers who have been told they are nothing more than a step along the evolutionary ladder – just a little higher than monkeys, are no longer bound by the morals of individuals who were created just a little lower than angels.

“What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels, And You have crowned him with glory and honor. You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet,” Psalm 8:4-6

That’s a very different way of thinking of humans than most people use, isn’t it? A being just lower than an angel has value, and purpose. A being just higher than a monkey has neither of those things.

One of the most tragic and heartbreaking of the consequences of being taught we are nothing more than glorified monkeys and have no intrinsic value in and of ourselves, is the proliferation and acceptance of abortion.

We no longer think of life like King David did:

“For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.” Psalm 139:13-15

An inconvenient pregnancy is easily and thoughtlessly ended with little thought about what miracle is taking place. From there we can apply the same lack of value for life to so many other aspects of our society – school shootings jump immediately into my mind.

If we are nothing but biological accidents, where does that leave us? What is our purpose for being here? Who cares that we’re here? Our hearts and minds are essentially a vacuum that was supposed to be filled by God, but is now just empty and waiting for whatever comes along. 

“Those who leave the Word of God to account for His created works on scientific principles are drifting without chart or compass upon an unknown ocean. The greatest minds, if not guided by the Word of God in their research, become bewildered in their attempts to trace the relations of science and revelation. Those who doubt the records of the Old and New Testaments will be led to go a step further and doubt the existence of God. Then, having lost their anchor, they are left to beat about upon the rocks of infidelity.“The Bible is not to be tested by men’s ideas of science. Skeptics, through an imperfect comprehension of either science or revelation, claim to find contradictions between them; but rightly understood they are in perfect harmony. Moses wrote under the guidance of the Spirit of God, and a correct theory … will never claim discoveries that cannot be reconciled with his statements.” E.G. White, From Eternity Past, p.67

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.  And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” John 1:1-5

How would you rather live your life?

A Thin Green Line

Thoughts on the Sabbath School lesson for 2.25.12

I am a Christian who believes that God created everything in six literal days and then literally rested on the seventh day. Having said that, I’m not sure that I’ve spent enough time thinking about how that should shape my interactions with the things that God created in, say, the first five days of Creation week.

That doesn’t mean that I’m in favor of strip-mining or mowing down the rain forest or anything like that, it’s just that I’ve never really thought about EVERYTHING coming from God’s own hand. 

Think about it for a minute.  God made it and then asked Adam and Eve to take care of it.  What was there to take care of?  Adam and Eve hadn’t sinned yet, so what was there to tend? 

Then there are verses like this one: 

“Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” Genesis 1:26-28 NKJV

People read the words “have dominion over” and “subdue it” and decide that we have the right to do absolutely anything at all to the planet and not worry about what the consequences might be.  I’m pretty sure though, that showing Creation who’s boss, is not what the Creator had in mind..

On a very small scale, it might be like when my aunt and uncle would go on their medical missionary trips every year.  They would ask me to “take care of things” while they were gone.  That meant water the indoor plants, feed the cat, and generally keep an eye on things.

What if, while they were gone, I decided that they didn’t need all those plants and pulled up half of them or that they needed a dog instead of a cat?  My aunt and uncle would not be pleased with my stewardship of their home, would they?

Does being stewards of Creation mean that we should value it above other humans or even God, Himself?  It seems kind of odd that, in general, the environmentalist movement is primarily made up of individuals who believe that life is governed by belief in the phrase, “survival of the fittest.”  While those of us who believe a loving Creator made the earth and everything in it for us, His children, really don’t get too worked up over saving the snail darter or whatever.

Shouldn’t we be the leading advocates for Creation and caring for the planet?  Is there a way to honor God by taking good of everything He made without putting His creation ahead of Him?

“The message reverberates through culture beckons us to ‘go green’ because we will look better and feel better and fit in …. [But as followers of Christ] we have deeper reasons to go green. We serve the Creator of the planet …. He created the earth and took the time to tell us his plan for it. The God of the universe has given us the great task of caring for our planet …. We have an operating manual for our planet right in front of us in the Bible, and we must allow that manual to change our thinking and behavior.” [1]Do we consider ourselves part of God’s plan for taking care of His Creation? Or are we here to get all we can out of it?  Did you know that God gave instructions that would have helped avoid the dustbowl of the early twentieth century?  It’s called (Are you ready for this?) the “Law of the Sabbaths.”

“Six years you shall sow your land and gather in its produce, but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave, the beasts of the field may eat. In like manner you shall do with your vineyard and your olive grove.” Exodus 23:10-11

Verse 12 goes on to remind folks to let their work animals rest on the weekly Sabbaths as well.  Interesting, the Sabbath is made for man, and man is then supposed to make sure that that little piece of creation stays healthy by sharing Sabbath rest with his animals and his land.

Imagine what might happen if one day out of seven, all unnecessary worked stopped.  What effect would that have on energy consumption and air pollution? Do you think it would be significant?  I don’t know, maybe?  I’m pretty sure it won’t happen, though.  Why? The same reason it quit happening in the first place.  Humans are selfish.

“Selfishness consists in dethroning reason from the seat of government and enthroning blind desire in opposition to it. Selfishness is always and by necessity unreasonable. It is a denial of that divine attribute that allies human beings to God and makes us capable of virtue. Selfishness dethrones reason and sinks human beings to the level of a brute. ...“It is a contempt for the voice of God within in him, and a deliberate trampling down of the sovereignty of his own intelligence. Shame on selfishness! It dethrones human reason, would dethrone the Divine mind and would place blind lust upon the throne of the universe.”[2]

Selfishness causes us to abuse the gifts God has given us, even the planet we live on.  Our selfishness has brought us to a place where we value ourselves, our wants and desires about anyone or anything else. We value our planet only for what we can get out of it. We don’t even value human life if it stands between us and something we want.  Our greed even causes us to injure our own bodies as we consume too much of the wrong things just because we want them, not because we need them.

As Christians we are in the unique position of protecting God’s Creation.  We know its true importance.  We aren’t caring for one random rock floating in random galaxy formed when a random star exploded.  We are stewards of an extravagant gift made especially for us by our God who loves us.  Every atom, every molecule was formed by His own hand and still bear His finger prints.

“… it was sin which marred God’s perfect work; …thorns and thistles, sorrow and pain and death, are all the result of disobedience to God. … see how the earth, though marred with the curse of sin, still reveals God’s goodness. The green fields, the lofty trees, the glad sunshine, the clouds, the dew, the solemn stillness of the night, the glory of the starry heavens, and the moon in its beauty all bear witness of the Creator. Not a drop of rain falls, not a ray of light is shed on our unthankful world, but it testifies to the forbearance and love of God.”[3]

Many of us would like to think that we don’t have to worry about the world around us because Jesus is coming soon.  But even before sin, Adam and Eve were to tend the Garden, what makes us think that we are any less responsible now?

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[1] Jonathon Merritt, Green Like God (FaithWords, 2010)

[2] Charles G. Finney in Principles of Love. Christianity Today, Vol. 36, no. 4.

[3] Ellen G. White, Testimonies of the Church, Volume 6, p 358

Happy Accidents

Thoughts on the Sabbath School Lesson for 1.14.12

Has this ever happened to you?  You’re watching a wonderful nature program with fantastic film of some animal, all up close and personal.  The voice over is calming, resonant and sincere:

“Hummingbirds are the lightest birds in the sky. Of their roughly 240 species … the largest, an Andean ‘giant,’ is only eight inches long; the smallest, the bee hummingbird of Cuba, is just over two inches long and weighs a single gram.
“Delicacy is the trade-off that hummingbirds have made for their unrivaled powers of flight. Alone among birds, they can hover, fly backward, even fly upside down. For such small birds, their speed is astonishing: in his courtship display to impress a female, a male Allen's hummingbird, for instance, can dive out of the sky at sixty-one miles per hour … (Diving at 385 body-lengths per second, this hummer beats the peregrine falcon's dives … and even bests the space shuttle as it screams down through the atmosphere at 207 body lengths per second.)
“Hummingbirds' wings beat at a rate that makes them a blur to human eyes, more than sixty times a second …. They are little more than bubbles fringed with iridescent feathers—air wrapped in light …. In most birds, 15 to 25 percent of the body is given over to flying muscles. In a hummingbird's body, flight muscles account for 35 percent. An enormous heart constitutes up to 2.5 percent of its body weight—the largest per body weight of all vertebrates …. A person as active as a hummingbird would need 155,000 calories a day …. Each [hummingbird] is just a speck … yet each is an infinite mystery.”[1]

And then the voice says something like, “Millions of years of evolution have brought the hummingbird to where it is today.”  Essentially saying that this amazing and complex creature is nothing more than a happy biological accident. 

At that point I want to throw something at the television!  Don’t misunderstand, I believe the world is full of happy accidents:  hitting all green lights on the way to work, the elevator doors opening just as you get there,  and being able to get your phone out of your purse/pocket before it stops ringing.  Those could all be described as happy accidents, but a miraculous creature like the hummingbird?  I don’t think so.

The problem, for me, isn’t creationist or evolutionist, it’s who you believe came first – God or man? 

“[In his talks, author Phillip Johnson quotes] the Gospel of John, which states: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.’
“After reading this, Johnson asks: ‘Is that true or false?’
“Then he turns this Scripture inside out and creates a credo for use in sanctuaries aligned with the National Center for Science Education. It sounds like this: ‘In the beginning were the particles and the particles somehow became complex, living stuff. And the stuff imagined God.’
“After reading this, Johnson again asks: ‘Is that true or false?’
“Johnson argues that today's debates over science, creation and morality are, literally, clashes between people who believe there is scientific evidence that God created man and those who believe there is scientific evidence that man created God.
“‘If there is no Creator who has a purpose for your life, then there is no such thing as sin,’ he said. ‘Sin would mean that you are in a wrong relationship to your Creator. Well, you can't be in the wrong relationship with the particles. They don't care. So you don't need a Savior to save you from the consequences of your wrong relationship with the particles. …
“‘When you give away creation, you have given away everything.’”[2]

I’ve never heard the creation/evolution debate brought down to such a clear line before, but I believe he’s right.  If you give up the Creator, you also give up the Redeemer.  You also end up losing a clear cut reason for being here, and if you have no reason for being, no purpose, what’s left? 

But if God put us here because He has something for us to accomplish, that puts a whole new slant on things.

“Man is allotted a part in this great struggle for everlasting life; he must respond to the working of the Holy Spirit. It will require a struggle to break through the powers of darkness, but the Spirit that works in him can and will accomplish this. But man is no passive instrument to be saved in indolence. He is called upon to strain every muscle in the struggle for immortality, yet it is God that supplies the efficiency.”[3]

What would you rather believe, that you and I are the result of biological mutations that happily mutated their way into human beings or that a God who wanted companionship placed us on a planet made just for us?

“Dr. Seth Shostak, an astronomer with the SETI Institute, points out in his course ‘The Search for Intelligent Life in Space’ what conditions favor the development of life in the universe:  The system's star ("sun") must not be a giant star, because these burn out too quickly before life can fully develop.  The system's star must not be a dwarf star, because such a star locks in the close planets, meaning ‘one side of the planet forever faces its sun, resulting in horrific weather and unlikely venues for life.’  The system's star cannot be a double star, because the unusual gravitational forces created by a double-star sun might not allow stable planetary systems.  The system's star must not be a young star, because stars less than 1 billion years old have not had enough time, so astronomers think, for life to develop.
“Ideally, the planet would have a large moon, which creates active tides.
“The planet should have tectonic activity, which causes metals to be pushed up to the surface, since metals are valuable to technological civilization.
“The planet should have a large planet farther out in its solar system, which by its great gravitational pull cleans the inner solar system of deadly asteroids and comets.
“The planet should not have a highly elliptical orbit, which is unsuitable for incubating life.
“For life to live on the surface, the planet must have an atmosphere. ‘Very small planets lose their air, and very large planets tend to sport poisonous atmosphere. Earth-sized planets are ideal.’
“And it just so happens that all these conditions fit our earth!”[4]

Hmmmm, the creation of a loving God or a happy accident…I choose God; what about you?

---

[1] Sy Montgomery, Birdology (Free Press, 2010), pp. 78-103

[2] Terry Mattingly, senior fellow for journalism at the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities, from his column “Phillip E.”

[3] E.G.White, Our High Calling (1961), page 91.

[4] From "The Search for Intelligent Life in Space" course outline (The Teaching Company Limited Partnership, 1999); submitted by Kevin A. Miller, Vice President, Christianity Today International

We’re Descended from Monkeys

Do you believe that?  If you do, do you remember when you figured out whether you believed in creation or evolution?  I have to say I was pretty much grown.  Somehow, for my whole childhood, I held parallel truths.  I had been taught evolution at school and creation at church.  I’d seen Walt Disney’s Fantasia and hadn’t noticed anything wrong with it.  Then, one day, it hit me.  They can’t both be true.  As soon as I realized that, though, the rest was easy.  I knew that I believed in Creation.  And sometimes, even though my belief has never wavered, it has landed me in some uncomfortable spots.  When I taught, one of the units in the 4^th grade curriculum was “Dinosaurs”.  Thankfully it was a unit in reading, not in science, but it still produced some challenges.  How does one stand in front of 25 4^th graders and “teach” something, in which you don’t believe.  I was not allowed to present an opposing theory.  And I absolutely refused to use any sentence containing “millions of years” in it without making sure no one thought I believed that. 

I made it through.  I must say I made it a very short unit.  I managed to always preface what I considered the “lies” with disclaimers like, “some people believe,” or “according to this story” and so forth.  Things were going pretty well, I thought, until one day one of my students raised her hand and asked, “But Mrs. Lopez, what do you believe?”  I tried, “This isn’t about what I believe; let’s read on” along with several other deflections, but she would not be sidetracked.  I finally shrugged, took a deep breath and told the class what I believed.  Then I waited to be called into the principal’s office because I had discussed **gasp** creationism in a public school classroom.  I was amazed though; nothing more ever popped up.

I don’t believe my own kids have ever not known what I believe.  They were both dinosaur freaks, much to my frustration.  Their obsession, though, gave us lots and lots (!) of opportunities to discuss both evolution and creationism even before they were old enough for school.  I wasn’t sure if they were getting it, until one day one of them came home with a story entitled, “Archaeopteryx and other evolutionary malarkey”.  In which, he proceeded to debunk evolutionary theory.  I was really proud of him for having the guts to write a dissenting opinion in the 3^rd grade.  God had made sure the message was getting through.  What a relief!

Do you think people who believe in creation view life, the world and everything, differently than people who believe in evolution?

Hey, if creation is intelligent design, would that make evolution, Stupid Design?  I’m just askin’. 

Do you think these different beliefs make people act in different ways? 

I heard someone (sorry, can’t remember who) theorize once that we could trace the loosening morals of America to the Scopes trial and evolution being taught in public school.  I’m pretty sure loosening morals go on back to Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit, but this person’s theory did have some good points.  The main one being that, if a person thinks of themselves as just a highly functioning animal, then his/her actions will reflect that.  Reasoning becomes less important than instincts and feelings.  Truth becomes relative.  What’s right becomes anything that feels good…to me.  And wrong becomes anything that I don’t like.  Emotions rule our everyday lives, and restraint almost never comes into play.  Everyday is all about what we want; how we feel; what we deserve.  When we think this way, our world becomes smaller and smaller.  Water circling a drain. 

This belief system then affects everything about me – I’m not responsible for my thoughts or actions because I’m just doing what comes naturally. 

You probably know people who are searching for meaning in a life without God.  That’s not something I’ve ever experienced, so I don’t know what it’s like, but it seems like it would be a hopeless way to live.  Maybe I’m wrong; I don’t know.

But I do know this:  I believe in a loving and creative God, and I’m not just a tailless monkey.  Psalm 8:5 tells me, “For You have made him a little lower than the angels, And You have crowned him with glory and honor.”  That verse is telling me exactly where I belong in the classification system of heaven! 

What a relief!  We’re not just a little higher than the monkeys; we’re a little lower than the angels.  We’re NOT genetic accidents; we are the sons and daughters of God.  And that makes all the difference!  We are the children of a God who loves us so much that He’s been counting the days until we can be together forever since Eve took her first bite of forbidden fruit.

Which would you rather believe?  I’d rather believe that I carry “the fingerprints of God.”