St. John Studies

“So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” Matthew 20: 16

“Anyone who has been forgiven for only a little will show only a little love.” Luke 7: 47

“I am here to give sight to the blind and to make blind everyone who can see.” John 10: 39

Words from Jesus.

Words that are not easy to understand sometimes.

Words which can be twisted and utilized for selfish purposes.

Some people who read the Bible love to think they know what Jesus intended with His words. However, there is a possibility they may not know His every intention.

Intentional fallacy is a term used in 20th-century literary criticism to describe the problem inherent in trying to judge a work of art by assuming the intent or purpose of the artist who created it.

Does the intentional fallacy apply to the Bible?

Are we willing to admit that it does?

People who need Jesus to be on their side make bold statements about His intentions. In a post on June 17^th, I wrote that liberal democrats see Jesus as a revolutionary.  Conservative republicans see Jesus as a personal Savior who has come to save the world from sin.

But who is right? What was Jesus’ purpose for coming to earth?

Pastor Adam Hamilton feels that “Jesus preached one gospel that has, unfortunately, been split by the church into two: the social gospel and the personal evangelical gospel” [Seeing Gray in A World of Black and White].

And after it was split, it was high-jacked by competing political parties.

Do you think Jesus intended to pit Christian against Christian?

Do you think Jesus intended to champion one political party’s claims and not another’s?

I think not. I think the title of Chapter Eleven is very appropriate, “Is Your Jesus Too Small?”

Yes people are making Him too small.

I guess it was inevitable. We are after all, only human.  We are limited in our intelligence.  Couple that with our out-of-control sense of pride and you have a dangerous combination.

Twisting and utilizing Scripture for selfish purposes.

Jesus did not really give any indication that He was a big social reformer. Yes, He had a place for women in His ministry but He did not speak specifically about women’s rights.  Jesus called on us to care for the hungry, sick and naked but He did not specifically wage war on poverty.

What did He do?

He gave us words that implied we should tackle issues like caring for others regardless of their skin color or social background, or avoiding the use of violence or maybe even helping the homeless by building shelters or helping the sick by building hospitals.

I believe the nature of Jesus’s words were inspirational.

Have you ever spent time with a visionary? Visionaries hate to be pinned down.  They hate to be pinned down with a question like “how are you going to do that” or “this is a very real problem that you need to address.”  I see Jesus as a visionary who wants us to act on His words but He did not come to spend time with us, giving us all the details.

We will address the details as we submit to the reign of God and allow the Holy Spirit to work within us, leading us to do the work of God, Jesus and the church.

I wonder what Jesus would think of a liberal or a conservative, claiming that He was on their side. I wonder what Jesus would think of a social justice democrat, claiming that He was a revolutionary or a personal relationship republican, claiming that He was here just to forgive our sins.

I sing in the choir at my church. I am a “newbie”.  I have heard choir members talk about their view from the loft for years and did not make a big deal about it.  But now that I am in the choir, my perspective of church is really different.  I see people looking at the pastor, the choir, and “other things”.

I was in the choir last Sunday and I saw a strange man come in the back entrance of the church. He looked like he had just come in off the street.  He was a good fifty yards away from me so I did not get a close look at him.  He looked like he may have been a person of color and he was not dressed in his “Sunday” best.  Immediately I wanted an usher to approach him and give him an information packet about our church but I did not see that happen.

The choir had to sing our “special” for the service and I focused my attention on the music and the choir director.

When we were through, I sat back down and looked at the back of the church.

He was gone.

I know this sounds crazy but what if that man was Jesus? What if He came to church and saw what we have done to His life-giving message and left…disappointed.

He found out His words were twisted and utilized for selfish purposes.

Generalization: a wide-sweeping statement or conclusion drawn from specific cases.

What can we say about generalizations?

We don’t agree with them sometimes because we have specific experiences that differ from the generalization.

When generalizations result in labels we don’t like, they can make us mad.

We all use them because we like “wide-sweeping” statements that don’t get into details, which can 1.drive you crazy 2.bore you to death.

Let me make a generalization: it is tough to take individual people with individual life experiences and put them into a box, stick a label on them and basically say this label fits them all.

But that is the nature of politics.

People who run political campaigns try to get out ahead of large groups of people with generalizations.

It basically works like this. For thirty-six years, I taught my speech students this all the time. What is the core of your message?  Boil it down to a few words that reflect how you really feel about your topic.  If you speak to an audience and put on an act, they will know it.  If you speak from the heart, they will also know that.

Next and most importantly, how will that message resonate in your audience? Will they hate it?  Will they love it?  Will they respond somewhere in between hate or love?

This is important. How close to hate will their response be?

How close to love?

If you are speaking on something they hate, you have to make tough choices: toss the subject out completely or change your message to make it more positive. Remember it needs to reflect who you really are or it is just an act and the audience will know it.  Sometimes how we feel about a topic cannot be changed.  A speaker [or politician] is on the wrong side of a topic with an audience and they know it.  Avoiding the topic altogether is the best policy.

Or if you are forced to comment on the tough subject…use “political speak.”

I am not a politician but maybe I am. At times my wife would put that label on me.  She is a person who likes direct communication and fewer words rather than more words.   When she asks me a question, she would like for me to “say what I mean and mean what I say”.  She would like for me to use ten words in my reply instead of one hundred and fifty.

Instead I use “political speak” too much.

She asks, “what are you doing in the back yard” and I say, “I am busy.” Did I answer her question?  Not really.  “What are you doing in the back yard” and I say “I am so busy with the seasonal needs of the composition of our two acres; they require so much of my time and attention and on top of that several costly trips to the store to maintain the soils and upgrade the area.”  Now I have not answered her question and I have used a large number of vague words to obfuscate my message.  How did you like that one…obfuscate?

If I was a real politician, I would repeat a lot.

When politicians face tough questions they tend to rely on what are called “talking points”. Talking points are phrases that politicians memorize and then use when they are confronted by issues that are hard to address.  We see it all the time in television interviews.  An interviewer asks the question and the politician responds with a talking point.  The interviewer knows that that yields little information because it may be so vague or it could be “canned.”  That answer is the same answer that all the people in that person’s political party are giving on the subject.  So the interviewer asks again.  Here comes the same talking point with a little different phrasing but basically it is the same answer.

If I was a real politician I would use euphemisms.   Euphemisms are mild or indirect words or expressions substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing.  When they are used, you just shake your head and say “What does that mean?”

Here are some great examples based on one of the most negative messages we will ever hear. “You are fired” can become early retirement opportunity, employee transition, personnel realignment, staff reduction or workforce balance correction.  You get the point.  Clear communication becomes very unclear communication.

Let’s end this post with this thought.

Say you are a Christian.

A candidate for political office is going to speak to you. What is your Christian core, your view of the world?  What would you want that person to say to get your vote?  What are the key issues that really mean a lot to you?

We all know that Christianity and politics are “strange bedfellows” but there is very little in the Bible that would support the idea that we should turn our backs on our governmental processes and ignore our right to vote.

A prime example about Jesus’ attitude toward government is the episode in Mark 12 when the Pharisees try to trick Him into making an insurrectionist statement: “They came and said to Him, “Teacher, we know that You are truthful and defer to no one; for You are not partial to any, but teach the way of God in truth. Is it lawful to pay a poll-tax to Caesar, or not?   “Shall we pay or shall we not pay?” But He, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, “Why are you testing Me? Bring Me a denarius to look at.”   They brought one. And He said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” And they said to Him, “Caesar’s.”   And Jesus said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

The politician generalizes about you. You are a Christian.  What can I say to win this person’s vote?

The Christian generalizes about the politician. What do they have to say to win my vote?

Somewhere the two individuals need to intersect and American government happens.

“In God We Trust”…our national motto.

How does it feel being “used”?

You know, manipulated for someone else’s benefit.

I am thinking that most of us don’t like this but this is how some Christians intersect with politics.

They feel used.

It does not sound very good as politicians talk about “rounding up” the evangelical vote. It sounds like we are just a prize that a politician wants, a demographic they need to appeal to and if they say the right thing, propose the right ideas, we automatically reward them with our vote.

Why is it so tough to figure out our place in today’s political world?

Let’s lay aside not being able to relate due to candidate behaviors and beliefs and let’s try to discuss this on a higher plane.

Evan Koons explores this idea in a lighthearted way in his film “For the Life of the World.” As a Christian he agonizes about where he fits in.  He does not see a place for his Christian belief in a world that divides itself into red states and blue states and pro this and anti that.

And yet we see Jesus making statements like this in Matthew 5: “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

That hardly sounds like we are supposed to go “underground” with our faith but that is what some Christians do. They build walls and work hard to shut the world out.  Rather than thinking about what to do, they would rather ignore the world and not make the choices that require a lot of thinking, like how we are to intersect with the world of politics.

Then there are those that just condemn everything that does not fit their “Christian worldview.” These Christians feel like they are supposed to dig in on their positions and never budge.  They are the types of folks who can be very extreme in their positions and they wind up angering so many people due to their constant evaluation of others’ points of view.

The third group goes the opposite direction. They work hard to fit in, so hard that they compromise on any issue in order to be a part of whatever is popular at the time.  At times it seems like their Christian values don’t exist because they have blended in so well.

In the Old Testament, God repeatedly told the Israelites to set themselves apart from the world. Have different eating restrictions, don’t intermarry, avoid the influence of worshipping other gods etc.  God had a different agenda for these people as they were supposed to be His “chosen people.”

Then we have Jesus and things get a little more murky.

What Jesus says in Matthew 5 does not sound like disengagement does it?

Many in Jesus’ day would have liked Him to be a major political leader to take on Roman domination of their land and restore it to Hebrew autonomy but He seemed to have little interest in a direct confrontation of the Roman occupying army. When the Pharisees asked Him the tricky question about taxes [hoping He would advocate non-payment], He said “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s” [Mark 12:17].

These don’t sound like words from a man who is intent on changing the political climate.

This still leaves us mired in our problem. As Christians how do we participate in politics today without feeling we have literally cast aside all our convictions?

Let’s go to an even higher plane.

Psalm 24:1 “The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.”

That is a perspective that may help us with our dilemma. What we offer to God by how we live our lives is our gift to Him. We can offer our gifts to Him in everything we do and every thought we express.  We don’t have to avoid the world just because people in the world behave in ways that we find abhorrent.  I firmly believe my job is to be here right now and do what I can do to make things better.  I do this through God’s grace as He takes a very imperfect person like me and tries to work through me.

Yes, there will always be people who don’t want to relate to you on any level other than what you can do for them. It is sad that the world is full of manipulators.  But it is.  The political world is truly a poor fit for many Christians but don’t go underground, get so sour that people don’t want to be around you or toss aside your values just to fit it.

Give some attention to what is going on in politics even though the issues are so very ephemeral at times. Engage. Be a light.

Think of your intelligent engagement as your gift…your effort to make the world a better place.

Have you ever seen kids fighting over something they all desire?

Maybe they want to be on the “best” ball team and sides are being chosen. One side is much better than the other and everyone knows it.  Of course everyone wants to be on the “best” team.

Maybe one group of kids seems to know something that the other kids don’t and the kids in the know are not going to tell anyone their secrets. Everyone wants to know the secrets.

Maybe one kid has something special, the best bike, the fanciest toy, the most exciting game and the other kids want that game too. Some can afford the best but some cannot.  Some are members of the in-crowd and some are not.

Well, today it seems like this is what is happening with Christianity. Everyone wants to have Jesus on their side.  Here are the sides.

You have the liberals and their Jesus.

You have the conservatives and their Jesus.

We are getting ready to plunge headlong into generalizations; for that I must apologize, but hang on; there is a point in all of this.

For you see, the liberal Jesus and the conservative Jesus don’t seem to be the same person.

Really…

In Pastor Hamilton’s book, this is the key point in why we have a lack of understanding in our culture today. It is a black and white issue so we think, but is it really?  Maybe this could be a gray area.  Pastor Hamilton addresses this division in his chapter entitled “Is Your Jesus Too Small.”

How do liberals see Jesus? He was a revolutionary.  He came to earth to upend the social order.  He wanted to lead people to justice and had a very radical idea of obedience to the will of God.  His prime focus was helping those who were poor; those who were in need.  When Jesus washed the feet of His Disciples, He was demonstrating radical servanthood.  Liberals acknowledge Jesus as someone who sought to love others and in doing so He challenged society’s idea of racism and classism.    Jesus went out of His way to associate with the outcasts of society.  He invited women into His ministry which was a radical notion in His time.  Liberals say He calls us to fight our sin of apathy, materialism and bigotry.  Pastor Hamilton says what lots of liberals believe:  “Of our two political parties in the United States today, Jesus would be most inclined to be a democrat” [Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White, 90].

For the liberal democrat, having this social justice Jesus on your side makes all the difference. As they read the Bible, they see Jesus quoting Luke 4:18 where He refers to Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim the release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.”  Clearly the liberal pounces on the words “poor,” “release the captives,”  “recovery of sight to the blind,” and “the oppressed go free.”

How do conservatives see Jesus? For them He is a personal Savior.  He came to seek and save lost people, to die for the sins of the world.  He offered His life that we might be forgiven and made right with God.  They tend to focus on Jesus’ teaching that we must be “born again.”  For conservative Christians, being a Christian starts with having a personal relationship with Jesus, a relationship that changes our hearts.  While the liberal focuses almost exclusively on societal ills, the conservative [especially white conservative] worries about sexual sins, sexual purity, abortion, homosexuality and pornography.  Especially since the 1980’s a large number of conservative Christians have believed that if Jesus was a registered voter in America today, He would be a republican.

Conservative Christians look at the Scripture from Matthew 11: 28-30: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.   For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

I think it is very unusual that people in this country all read the same Bible and they come to two very different conclusions.

But who is Jesus?

Is He the liberal champion of the downtrodden, the upholder of social justice?

Is He the Christ who came to earth to save our souls from sexual sin, abortion, homosexuality and pornography?

Well, in the next series of posts we will explore who has Jesus on their side; the liberal democrats or the conservative republicans.

Or just maybe all the kids have got it wrong…

Adam Hamilton entitles chapter ten of his book Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White “Apes, Evolution and Adam and Eve.” I would imagine he is trying to show the problems associated with this controversial idea of how we evolved.

For the evolutionists, we are descended from apes; for the Christian, we are descended from Adam and Eve.

In the post “One Christian Response to Evolution”, we explored the idea of scientific creationism and say that it is based on a young earth [10,000 years old], a literal interpretation of the Bible, and the idea that Scripture is history.

Now let’s look at “Another Christian Response to Evolution”: intelligent design.

Christians who believe in intelligent design agree with scientific creationists that whole-hearted acceptance of Darwinian evolution is not viable. However, they don’t throw Darwin away completely. They admit that some of Darwin’s ideas may be correct.  On the intelligent design website it states “through the study and analysis of a system’s components, a design theorist is able to determine whether various natural structures are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent design, or some combination thereof.”  Some structures may have evolved by chance but not all.   Unlike scientific creationists, they do not argue that the earth is only ten thousand years old; they admit it is much older.  Also they are not trying to fit the idea of creation into a literal reading of the Book of Genesis.  They see the complexity of this world and don’t think it can be explained totally by evolution.

Richard Dawkins, who is an English ethologist, evolutionary biologist, author, and an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, has a famous quote about intelligent design: “The likelihood of [evolution explaining the creation of the earth] was akin to a tornado blowing through a metal scrap yard, and leaving behind a perfectly formed Boeing jet in its wake.”

In other words, an intelligent Creator has to be behind it all. Unlike evolutionists who are convinced there is no God and human life is simply the result of random mutations with no purpose, intelligent design believers place God firmly within the evolutionary process. Unlike scientific creationists who start with the Bible and end up by explaining creation within a strict Biblical framework, intelligent designers start with nature and conclude that the complexity of nature cannot always be explained by randomness.

Intelligent design believers feel there is a purpose for God. On the “God Questions.org website”, it states that “while the Intelligent Design Theory does not presume to identify the source of intelligence (whether it be God or UFOs or something else), the vast majority of Intelligent Design theorists are theists. They see the appearance of design which pervades the biological world as evidence for the existence of God.”

All one has to do is ponder the wonderful complexity of this world and see that random chance is probably not going to account for the amazing types of life forms we have in the world today. Dr. Bill Harris, Professor of Metabolism and Vascular Research at the University of Missouri states that “We [intelligent designers] believe that there is evidence in biology, cosmology, in the natural world for the interaction with an Intelligence, both for its origin and its development and there are some pieces of the creation that call out for a Creator.”

Intelligent design is not evolutionary science; intelligent design is not scientific creationism and if you would like to find out more, I refer you to http://www.intelligentdesign.org/. There you will find more details about this Christian response to evolution.

There, you can begin to determine if this response to evolution is one that you can believe.

I am not a scientist. Anyone who knows me knows that.  In college, I avoided science as much as possible on my way to getting degrees in non-science majors.

That’s ok I guess.

We all have our gifts. Understanding science is not my gift.

However, I am aware of science and its impact on religion, especially the theory of evolution and the Genesis Scriptures. Evolution can cut God out of creation.

For some scientists, the theory of evolution disproves the role of God in creation. Pastor Adam Hamilton in his book Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White says that evolutionary scientists “suggest that creation has occurred without supervision and it was an impersonal process that excluded God in creation….If this is what the scientist is asking people of faith to believe, I cannot accept this, and this statement cannot be reconciled with the Bible or Christian Theology.”

It is important to get Hamilton’s point here. Evolutionary scientists are going beyond science when they says things like “No species, ours included, possesses a purpose beyond the imperatives created by its genetic history” [Edward Wilson].  “Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind” [George G. Simpson].  The universe “has no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference” [Richard Dawkins].

All three statements take God out of the mix when they say “no purpose.”

You see I believe and Pastor Hamilton believes that God has a purpose for man in this world. God is at work in life, supervising and injecting Himself into life at His will.

How do Christians respond to these ideas?

One way is the theory of creation science [sometimes referred to as Scientific Creationism].

Here are the key words for creation scientists: young earth, literal interpretation of Scripture, Scripture as history.

These Christians believe that the Genesis Scriptures are chronological and creation occurred in six twenty-four hour periods. By focusing on these time periods, they postulate that the earth is ten thousand years old and the flood that destroyed the earth was five thousand years ago.

With these time frames in place, they seek to develop theories as to how nature can fit into this ten thousand year parameter.

You may be thinking that “real scientists” do not belong to this group but it depends on how you define “real scientist.” The Institute of Creation Research has a current staff which includes Ph.D.s in physics, engineering science, nuclear physics, geology, genetics and astronomy.

How can they believe the way they do? They start with their faith and they have spent their lives trying to reconcile geology and biology to the Genesis story of creation.

I can imagine that other scientists regard them as unprofessional. They may say that their Christian agenda drives their research too much.  Science is science, facts are facts, and these Scientific Creationists are taking science to places where it should not go.

I have written about a good friend and colleague who was a scientific creationist. This person is very intelligent in her field which was botany but she was a believer first and a botanist second.  I had personal conversations with other scientists who thought that her focus on scientific creationism was not science at all.  They did not have high regard for her views as a scientist.

Was God a part in the process of the creation of man? You bet He was.  Scientific creationists think the Bible is a history book and the Word of God is literal [in other words, the Bible means what It says and says what It means].

Pastor Hamilton says of Scientific Creationism “The theories they have proposed are quite interesting, though I find them unconvincing” [Seeing, 84].

What about you? Go to the Institute for Creation Research at http://www.icr.org/.

Are you comfortable with their conceptions about how our world came about? They do put God in the creation process.  They believe that the earth is a young planet.  They think the Bible is a historical document.

Can you be a Scientific Creationist?

There are some words you can use that just cause problems.

One of those words is the word evolution.

In college I encountered the theory in some detail while working on a Master’s thesis about an obscure novelist named Samuel Butler. Why did I decide to study him?  In academic work, it is often important to study someone who is less well-known because you can become familiar with a body of work that is less developed.

But…

In studying Butler, I had to study Charles Darwin. Butler was a major fan of Darwin and his book Origin of the Species.  Darwin  began to get attention from the scientific community soon after Origin was published in 1859 and this book  can cause a good argument today, especially among Christians and non-Christians—scientists and theologians—creation scientists and evolutionary scientists.  Needless to say, Darwin’s body of work is well developed!

Pastor Hamilton in his book Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White  acknowledges this is a huge issue to discuss, and since it has generated such rancor, he feels it belongs in his book about the divisive nature of our world.  He wants us to understand the reason it divides us and he wants us to understand opposing views.

I remember that I encountered Origin of the Species as a church-going young man in the 70’s and I was malleable.  I may have been attending church all my life but I did not study God’s word the way I am now.  I did not really grapple with the idea of God’s creation of the universe in Genesis.  I knew of it of course but I did not revere it, maybe the way I should have.

When Darwin came along in my life, I thought his ideas made perfect sense but I did not see that the more I accepted his ideas, the more I began to put God’s ideas aside.

Genesis 1: 27, 31 “So God created humankind in His image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them….God saw everything that He had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day.”

I knew that life on earth had changed. Anyone who has been to school at any level knows that but the big questions were what caused those changes?  Who brought those changes about?

After Darwin’s book came out, by the 1870’s it was generally accepted in the scientific community as fact. General American society still struggled with the ideas and Pastor Hamilton explains why in this 1995 statement from the National Association of Biology Teachers:  “The diversity of life on earth is the outcome of evolution: an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments.”

I began this post with the idea that the word evolution can really get an argument started but can you guess which words in the quote above really rankle Christians?

Here they are: “unsupervised, impersonal and unpredictable.”

These words throw God out of the mix and Pastor Hamilton and I cannot go this far. Maybe I could as an impressionable college kid of the 70’s, but not now.

I have much greater knowledge of the word of God. I have life experience that tells me that the power of God is alive and well in this world today and I am no longer just a church attender:  I am a believer.

Today I will lay out the three common negative reactions that Christians have to Darwin and I will go further tomorrow by looking at more developed responses to his theory of evolution.

Some Christians just read the Genesis account as history. God created everything from nothing in six twenty-four-hour days. Evolution is impossible to reconcile with Genesis.

Others see evolutionary theory as a diminishment of the role of God in creation.  They understand mutation, adaptation and natural selection and wonder what role God played in that.

Third are the Christians who feel that if humans evolved from other life forms, then that means we have ancestors that come from the ape family.  Have you ever heard a Christian say “My Grandpa wasn’t an ape!”

With responses like these, you might think it is impossible to take evolution as a theory and apply it within a Christian’s view of the world.

Indeed, it is impossible for many.

But Pastor Hamilton states that there is a way.

Today, I have just introduced the dilemma; or maybe you might say I have “opened the can of worms.”

In upcoming days, I will address the most dominant responses that Christians have to evolution and see if Pastor Hamilton explains “that way.”

The way a Christian can use the word evolution and not ignite a firestorm.

My community lost one of its most interesting characters last year: concert pianist Marshall Butler.

So many people knew him and he touched the lives of so many; I wish I could have known him better. He was a colleague in the Humanities Department at my college [I taught communications and he taught music]; he was a fellow traveler to England in 1983.  I had the pleasure of walking all over London with him, he was a dedicated walker.  I never saw him behind the wheel of a car; he walked all over Hopkinsville.  Naturally, he wanted to walk all over London when we were there. He was 68; I was 32.  He walked my legs off.

I visited him a few times at his home. It was in a run-down part of town but when you went inside his house, you forgot the neighborhood.  The inside of his home had a debonair quality about it, sophisticated with a bachelor’s flair.  That means it looked cultured but don’t look in the dark corners because Marshall did not worry too much about cleaning.

We walked out in the back yard on one visit and I was amazed by his garden. I have always liked landscaping, especially mixing colors and types of plants.  He had a beautiful array of plants.  I was so amazed that I was emboldened to ask how long it took to get his garden the way it was.  I remember what he said: “forty years.”

Not the response I was looking for.

I wanted a quick fix solution. I wanted “instant garden.”  I wanted garden in a box.

He explained it took years of experimentation, learning, making mistakes and finally he was able to put some things together. He did not see himself as a horticulture expert.

Why do I lead with this?

I am trying to highlight the role of the mind in the Christian life.

Pastor Hamilton in his Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White speaks of his own encounter with a wise man who put ships in bottles.  Instead of explaining to young Hamilton how the process works, the wise man let him try to figure it out on his own.

I think God is like that with our use of intelligence.   He is the “wise man” who expects us to figure it out.  I think God has given us a mind to use and He wants us to use it.  I think He looks down on our efforts to understand the world and He is delighted.  If there is a problem, He wants us to tackle it.  He wants us to try different ideas to solve problems until we get it right.  I don’t think God is pleased by man’s efforts to deny solutions to problems when the problems are real and they need solutions.  I don’t think God is pleased when we don’t even bother to use our minds.

Luke 10:27, Matthew 22:37 and Deuteronomy 6:5 all say that we are to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.”

To me that means that we are supposed to find a way to solve our problems using our minds.

I find it hard to believe that some would use the Bible as the source to tamp down man’s efforts to learn.

For me, it is all about not being confused about what the Bible is. Pastor Hamilton states “the Bible was written to reveal who God is, and to teach us something about ourselves.  It was not written to reveal the fundamental laws of physics, chemistry or biology.”

How does this impact our world?

The most qualified people to evaluate physics, chemistry and biology are physicists, chemists and biologists, not theologians.

I don’t often express my personal stand on issues, choosing to comment on Adam Hamilton’s thoughts more than my own but I see God delighting in the efforts of scientists to theorize, hypothesize and test their theories. I see God delighting in the working of their minds, their God-given gifts.

As Christians we should be thankful for their work and know that it is not our job to evaluate their results. There is a large scientific community out there to do that—scientists evaluating scientists.

All I have to do is believe that God is pleased—looking down on man and taking “delight in our intense desire to know how the ship got inside of the bottle.”

Students of the Bible say the Bible is many things: the Bible is a book of history, it is a book of poetry, and it is a book of prophecy. It is a Book of testimony as the New Testament reveals the words and deeds of Jesus of Nazareth, the deeds He did while on earth and the work His Apostles continued to do after He returned to His Father.

One of the major ongoing battles in our world today is between the segment of Christians who believe that the Bible is a science textbook and people who think it is not.

I don’t think that it is.

Pastor Adam Hamilton in his book Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White begins his chapters on science and the Bible by recounting the famous story of Galileo, who lived in the 17^th century in Italy and discovered the idea that the earth was not the center of the universe.

This discovery rocked the world in Galileo’s day and especially the Christian world, the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church. Galileo was charged with heresy and was brought before the Roman Catholic Church’s Inquisition.  He was asked to repudiate his ideas because they challenged Scripture.

Here Pastor Hamilton makes his major point.

The church made a big mistake. Church leaders evaluated a scientific theory based on the literal reading of scripture.

Was Galileo correct?

Of course he was.

No scientist today holds to the idea that the earth is the center of the universe. We know that the sun is the center of our universe.

How is this episode in the history of mankind relevant to anything that is going on today?

Christians are still making this mistake.

Today our world is grappling with new science that seeks to explain why things happen. How we handle this new knowledge is very important.

I believe that God wants man to use his mind to study, explore and try to explain. God gave man this ability for a reason.  Let me give you an example from everyday life.  Say you are facing a medical problem and you require surgery or some medical procedure that requires current medical technology to overcome your problem.  Would you turn down the chance you have for a better life?  Would you deny that doctors could cure you by using the technology they have available?

Or would you accept their knowledge and ask God to guide them as they seek to heal your body?

I think I know what most Christians would do.

Recently, I saw something I figured I would never see. I saw glaciers.

The local guides that commented on the glaciers explained what has happened to them. They stated that the glaciers are “retreating” or losing their length and have been doing so for some time.  Since 1958 the Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau Alaska has lost 1.75 miles of its length.  They report that it will continue to lose its length in the foreseeable future.

They skirted the hot issue of “climate change”.

I realize that climate change does not exactly parallel the discovery of Galileo but it rankles many Christians because in Genesis it states that God has given man the world and God expects us to care for it. Climate change science says we are not.

It is hard to discuss such a complex issue in a short blog post but the basics of climate change are the byproducts of fossil fuel consumption have changed the earth’s atmosphere, causing increased warming that results in glacier melt [among other things]. Ashley Portero in her online article entitled “What Do Christians Have Against Climate Science?” cites climate scientist and Christian evangelical Katherine Hayhoe.  Hayhoe is the director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University and she is in the middle of this debate.  She states “increased education is needed to refute the perception that combating climate change — through investments in renewable energy and a reduction of fossil fuels — will be worse than the problem itself.  We tend to prefer the status quo, but it’s like Alcoholics Anonymous — the first step is admitting there is a problem. Admitting that we, as a nation, are addicted to fossil fuels.”

Admitting that we as a nation are hurting our earth.

Do Christians push back against science? Yes they do.

They did it in the 17^th century and some are doing it today.

Instead of trying to fix a problem, it is much easier to turn a blind eye to it. Instead of trying to fix a problem it is much easier to attribute it to “other causes”.

Even though Alaskan guides are instructed to avoid the hot button issue of climate change, the US Forest Service has written material that does not.

“The US Forest Service, which manages the Mendenhall Glacier, says ‘because glaciers are a product of climate, they respond to climate change.’ The Mendenhall Glacier has been in retreat since the end of the Little Ice Age in the 1700s.  In a joint article for the Juneau Empire Geologist Cathy Connor and Geophysicist Roman Motyka, both professors of the University of Alaska said “climatic warming coupled with ice loss through iceberg calving are the reasons the Mendenhall Glacier is retreating and shrinking.” [“Wikipedia”, Mendenhall Glacier].

The statistics don’t seem initially to make sense, Hayhoe said. “Unless you’re living someplace like Alaska, where glaciers are obviously melting, we don’t necessarily see climate change directly occurring.”

Make a trip to Alaska.   See the melt and then say it is not real.   See the melt and then say that science is all wrong.

Maybe as Christians we should accept the problem, try to understand the science and then use our God-given gifts to find workable solutions.