by Calvin | Jul 30, 2015 | Uncategorized
It’s a scary situation. The idea of letting an adult with little time for the traditional understanding of Genesis teach Bible stories to a group of impressionable grade schoolers. Why not just boot them out of the minivan into the church parking lot with a note duct taped to their backside that reads “point me to the slaughterhouse”? I mean what parent in their right mind would allow some crazy who believes in evolution to teach sunday school? Or marry for that matter? But while keeping the size of the heretic herd down by discouraging procreation might seem well, productive, I suggest we try another approach.
I bring this up because I have “this friend” (really) an old testament scholar with letters, a Genesis genius by most standards, who is on pins and needles because he is about to wrap up the story of Noah’s Ark with his Sunday school class. Trouble is, his take on Noah is so well informed and foreign to most Christian parents that he’s conflicted about how to carry out the assigned task. He knows that the Hebrew version of the Ark story is mirrored in the histories of other ancient cultures. Older cultures. Babylon, where the Hebrews had spent several decades in exile, was one of those cultures.
My friend understands how vital it was that the Hebrews reframe that ancient story showing how Yahweh, Israel’s God was really in control. Their Babylonian neighbours only knew of a world with anaemic, impulsive gods who were incapable of accomplishing much. Israel knew better. So, whenever they retold the old story of the great flood to their children, Yahweh was given a central role. My friend is passionate about Biblical truth and kids and faith but telling that familiar Bible story as he understands it will freak out the parents. If he does this the wrong way he’s likely to get thrown under the sunday school bus.
As I write this, thousands of kids who’ve grown up in church and been taught that the earth is 10,000 years old and that Noah’s flood covered the entire planet are being introduced to Darwin’s little idea in a college lecture theatre not too far from home. They are hearing much of it for the first time and according to the statistics, they are mostly being taught by individuals opposed to Christianity.
Here’s the real problem: We have been telling our kids for decades that a career in the sciences might be dangerous to their faith. Why are we surprised that so few college faculty consider themselves believers. We did this to ourselves. In our efforts to keep one generation out of the frying pan of Godless scientific thought, we’ve unwittingly tossed the next generation into the bunsen burner. Today’s confrontations with unbelieving professors are happening because the only candidates qualified to fill those job postings years ago didn’t have a Christian worldview. And we were unqualified to apply for those jobs because we we’r wearing ourselves out running away from science.
It will take a decade to reverse this trend but we can do something about it. How’s this for a radical idea? Let’s introduce alternate ways of thinking about creation and the Genesis story IN our sunday schools. Let’s take the lead in an environment where we can thoughtfully and prayerfully discuss how faith, science and world history mesh. It might just result in more informed kids (and teachers) and a new generation of Jesus followers less afraid of “secular” learning and more prepared to enter the real world.
(Whenever I get the chance I refer people to biologos.org – a great site to discover resources for learning about faith and science. Have a look, and you’ll discover that this limb I am out on, is getting more crowded everyday.)
by Calvin | Jul 17, 2015 | Uncategorized
Some things in life mix better than others. Take macaroni and cheese, as a case in point. For a guy like myself, who can’t assemble a four course meal without sweating all day before I give up and order a pizza, there’s something wondrous, about those curly, starch encrusted noodles in the familiar blue and white box with the orange trim.
If I can be considered an expert in any one dish, this is it. But it’s not the noodles that make for such a powerful rush of culinary adrenaline (my wife Arlene, an astounding chef has just left the room in tears). Not until you take the effort to add some hormone riddled homogenized milk, pour in a couple of orange spoonfuls of “I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-toxic” from the envelope, does Mac and Cheese takes on its familiar alien glow and become everything you knew it would be.
But somewhere, in the ancient mists of kitchens long since renovated (and untraceable with current tools of cookbook archaeology) a bankrupt soul, ravenous beyond the edge of reason, reached for a ketchup bottle.
And what started out as good (and it was very good) was forever ruined.
This is the way I’ve always viewed my faith. There are certain flavors and textures in life that mesh with my understanding of God, and some that don’t. Majestic concepts like order and grace, virtues like patience and contentment, or the necessities of morality, duty and serving all make sense to me from a faith perspective.
And then there is science.
I’ve always viewed science as trouble. Don’t get me wrong, I like science. If it helps us combat scurvy, download ring-tones, or cure flatulence bring it on. I totally respect Science – as long as it doesn’t touch anything else on my plate. But as soon as those star-bellied sneeches over at the lab start implying that their genetics or geology should impact my theology – well that’s where it starts to get a little heated in this kitchen.
At least that’s the way I used to think. Recently I’ve been reading and researching the troubled history between the community of faith and the community of science and do you know what I’ve learned?
Science hasn’t always been considered the enemy. In fact, St. Augustine showed a lot more respect for the scientific elite in his day than many evangelical Christians do today. In The Literal Meaning of Genesis he wrote:
“If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?”
And Augustine was just getting started.
“Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books…”
Obviously, as early as the fourth century, some of the faithful had decided that it was better to oppose science than embrace it. Race ahead, 1500 years, and it doesn’t look like much has changed. a quick perusal of the life of Galileo or Newton seem to indicate that Christians are categorically suspect of scientific advancement. And then along came Charles Darwin with those ridiculous sideburns and an absurd notion that all of life – ferns, reptiles, lemurs, and even scrabble players developed over millions of years from the same primordial broth. Most Christians, find Darwin’s theory so distasteful, that even a single mention of his name, has been known to turn a pleasant sunday school picnic into a tribal council bloodletting.
Is it possible that the line in the sand between science and faith can be rubbed out without causing irreparable damage?
While I have always had some use for ketchup, I have only recently discovered that mixing ketchup with Mac and cheese isn’t so bad after all. Once you got over the initial shock of color (your rods and cones stop fighting with each other and your optic nerve settles down) ketchup merges effortlessly with Mac and Cheese – the tangy aftertaste in the former actually compliments the familiar cheddery smoothness of the latter.
I bet St. Augustine would have loved this stuff.
Title Image: Painting by Claudio Coello
Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
by Calvin | Jun 15, 2015 | Uncategorized
This may be old news to many of you but I just learned that Cheetah, simian costar of the original Tarzan movies featuring Johnny Weissmeuller, died at his home in Palm Beach Florida. He was 80 years old. While there is a bit of controversy over the true identity of the chimp ( some aren’t sure he was the real Cheetah; his actors guild ID card looked forged) his caretakers are convinced. They maintain he came to them from Weissmeuller’s estate in 1960. Rumour has it he arrived with nothing but really big sunglasses and an autographed Ed Asner tie.
The part of the story that caught my eye was that this chimpanzee was very sensitive to human emotions and enjoyed tuning the radio station in his compound so he could listen to Christian music. While this news is less astounding than learning that some christian musicians flip through their iPods to listen to The Monkeys, I am still having trouble processing.
The real story here is not whether an ordinary chimp scammed Floridians into treating him like a celebrity. The real story is a twist on the age-old question of whether animals go to heaven. If indeed they do (as most of us secretly wish) than what on earth would have possessed this creature to listen to contemporary christian music by choice? You’re already in man. Don’t beat yourself up!
Now let’s assume for argument’s sake that animals do not go to heaven. Or should I say ALL animals. Does this open a narrow door for a chimp who can’t stomach country music down the dial to find MercyMe artistically compelling and theologically intriguing? Oh stop!
Can a monkey really be saved? And if so, does this prove that their chimp DNA (which is a 97% match with human DNA) makes them eligible to cast ballots for the Reader’s Choice Dove awards?
In light of this new data should christian songwriters rework their lyrics to make hymns and worship songs more inclusive of other species? Forget feminist language – lets start pandering to homo-sapians of every denomination. Examples that come to mind include George Beverly Shae’s crusade showstopper “Just As I Am Without One Flea” and Third Days’s “God of Wonders beyond Banana Tree”. You can likely think of a few others.
However, while the behaviour of this chimpanzee may explain the inexplicable rise of Hillsongs United (given that many wild animals now have universal access to satellite bundled with their mobile data plans) there is more at stake here than a shift in worship music. This startling news lends credence to the idea that, for the sake of evangelism, we should paint-over classic christian works of art depicting the fall of Adam and Eve with something a little more tempting than an apple? This will cost money. I wonder if Dole or Chiquita would pony up for the naming rights? So many things to consider. The fields are ripe and the labourers are only human.
Does this story do anything to convince you that evolution is true or just confirm that Christian music has wider audience APPEAL than we’ve been led to believe?
I need some clarity here people.
by Calvin | Jun 5, 2015 | Uncategorized
There’s been a lot talk these days about big brother wanting to wrestle control of the information superhighway back from the people. “Net neutrality” is the buzzword, and the argument is unsettling. Many are worried that our right to unfiltered online information is being threatened, or about to be legislated away by government agencies and big business. While most grassroots political groups are nervous about losing their main platform and now have their antennae’s up and tinfoil hats well-positioned to intercept communiques from Big Brother, most faith-based groups and theological think tanks have not been as swift to sound the alarm bells.
Personally, I wasn’t feeling the slightest twinges of concern for my rights to a free internet. But that was last week. This week I became embroiled in a heated stand-off and only through dogged determination succeeded in my efforts to land this blog on a secure webserver. Yes, I’ve stared into the wild eyes of the insidious censorship beast and lived to tell the story. The name of this beast is… KEVIN.
KEVIN is an acronym for Kill Evolution & Vanquish Inquiry Now! The purpose of KEVIN is to harass anyone who want’s to ask questions that fall outside the spectrum of conservative christian orthodoxy.
Kevin is also the name of my webhost technician but this is purely coincidence.
Kevin was a nice guy at the beginning. Promised to keep my website from acting up and swore that no hackers or malcontents would be able to bring my site down just because they disagreed with my theology. Then Kevin uploaded my theology. Or should I say he accidentally crashed my website 17 times in the process. He had some lame excuse about God always knows our hearts and our passwords and it was out of his hands (Kevin’s not God’s).
This is my own fault. I should have known better than to hire a Christian to do the devil’s work.
It would have been so much easier to post an ad on Craigslist:
“Wanted – one highly motivated webtech with no moral compass or fear of eternal firewall separation to participate in online heresy. No References required. Budget: zero dollars but will trade site management duties for table grace by proxy (it couldn’t hurt).
While this minor dust-up with a deputized IT stormtrooper was frustrating, I did learn a valuable lesson. All this time i’ve been yearning to launch a blog so that i can engage with skeptics and disillusioned believers across the land and it turns out that my first victim, er prospect, has been right here the whole time, within a stones throw of my soapbox. Et tu Kevin? How wrong of me to assume that the people with different opinions also have different zip codes.
There’s an old proverb (sub-Biblical in stature) that talks about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer. “Hey Kevin!” This is me waving at you over the back fence! I know what you’re up to and you won’t succeed in your diabolical plot to rid the world of Christians bent on introducing real science to other believers. Oh, and let me know if you have trouble sleeping after accepting payment (30 pieces of Starbucks) for uploading my website.
(a word of warning to faithful readers of my blog: if the site goes down, or you discover all vowels in a new post have been replaced with Scottish diphthongs, you’ll know the minions over at KEVIN were at it again.)
Title Image: Stencil Graffitti in Catalonia
Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
by Calvin | May 10, 2015 | Uncategorized
I have been a Jesus Follower for most of my life unless you’re counting that six week stint in the ninth grade when I went to town with a mouthful of cusswords. In retrospect I think Jesus was okay with my juvenile outbursts. It was my conscience that couldn’t take the stress. So I repented. (Hardly a dramatic story of redemption – “Uhh… well… I accidentally listened to this George Carlin record 46 times and I memorized it. Uhh… and then I felt bad…” And now I wanna get baptized.) Back then, even at my worst, I knew that words were powerful and could be used for both good and evil.
Not much has changed in forty years. I am more convinced today than when I was a scrawny preachers kid that the Bible is an inspired book that can change the destiny of a person or even an entire community. However, I have also come to realize that the Bible can sometimes be a head-scratching summary of God’s attempt to communicate with His creation. And no, the most scrutinized collection of writings in the history of literature cannot be deciphered at first glance like a quick flip through an IHOP menu.
While I have always been able to defend my belief in the God of the Bible, I have sometimes struggled to make my faith fit with the God of Nature. That may sound odd, but I think this is true for many people who call themselves Christians. In the past, regardless of how fervently I held to my creationist perspective, I have often been met with blank stares by people outside of the faith. Trying to share my reasons for God, while pointing into the petri dish of Evangelical Bible Science (or Intelligent Design as it has been rebranded) made the task even tougher.
But in spite of this frustration, I am convinced that the universe makes sense because it was created by a sensible God. The Heavens do, without any doubt in my mind, declare the glory of a Creator. However, based on recent revelations (to me) I must confess to being deaf, blind and willfully ignorant of discerning the fingerprints of God within the framework of the Scientific method.
So… I’ve decided to record my findings and observations while I attempt to sort out the contentious issues that make the faith versus reason argument so compelling to some of us. I’m going to talk to experts and idiots alike. Eventually, I hope to be able to tell the difference between the two.
Your opinions are always welcome. Let me know what you think.
