Creation

There is no doubt in my mind that someone can be a sincere Christian and not be a creationist. Many people view Genesis 1-2 as a poetic account explaining the purpose of humanity, and see no conflict between this and the Big Bang theory. Perhaps God created a Big Bang. Either that, or Christians feel unsure what to think, how to reconcile the Bible account of creation with scientific theory.

I want to suggest that the creation controversy has many far-reaching implications in a Christian's worldview and life, and encourage Christians to prioritise what the Bible teaches above what men theorize.

Firstly, the whole apprach of marrying evolution and the Bible shows our human tendency to patronise our ancestors and believe that future = progress = better. We like to smile and say knowingly, "Yes but the people who wrote the Bible were unscientific. They didn't know all that we know now." I think it's a mistake to dismiss the intellect of people from Bible times. Cain built a city with no precedent! (Gen 4:17) If humans are inventive and intelligent now, they certainly were from the beginning- after all, we were made in the image of God and He is the ultimate Inventor and intelligent One.

Secondly I think it's dangerous to bring human ideas to the Bible, and try to squash the Bible to fit them- or worse, ignore what the Bible says, in favour of a human idea. The Bible was certainly written by men at a specific time in history where they didn't have space travel and electric power etc, but it was ultimately God-breathed (2 Tim 3:16). It is God's book about Himself and the world He created. It is His gracious revelation to us. It defines wisdom.

We, as flawed and sinful human beings, are not smarter than God. We weren't there when the universe was created. God was. Our puny human ideas don't touch a smidgen of the immense capacity of God's mind. He has NO LIMITATIONS!

Many people cling to evolution because they have rejected God and want to find a way of explaining the universe without Him in the picture. Many non-Christians scoff at a creationist: 'How can you believer that the universe was created in six days?' Their worldview does not include a God who is all-powerful, all-knowing and 100% good.

The crux of the matter is this: if you are a Christian and believe in a God who can raise from the dead, then you believe in a God who is the author and giver of life, who is perfectly capable of creating a universe in six days. And if you believe in this God, what exactly is so ludicrous about creationism? If you believe that God IS capable of a six day creation (which Genesis 1 asserts that He is), and yet choose to believe that He chose instead to form the world over millions of years from tiny cells, why exactly are you making that decision? What motivates you? If it's social acceptance, then surely you're valuing the theories of men above the Word of God?

Wayne Grudem in Systematic Theology points out that there are a number of problems with being a theistic evolutionary:

• Randomness vs God's clear purpose. 'after three hundred eighty-seven million four hundred ninety-two thousand eight hundred seventy-one attempts, God finally made a mouse that worked'.
• Scripture says God's word has immediate response
• Scripture says God made different species
• Adam and Eve were specially created to be different from other animals
• The New Testament affirms the historicity of Adam and Eve as real people (Rom 5, 1 Cor 15, Lk 3:38 etc)
  

Christians who support evolution have some seriously tricky issues and questions to grapple with, such as:

1. When did humans first exist? When did a Neanderthal become a human being with a soul?

2. Who were Adam and Eve? Two of many people who had all evolved at the same time? Mythological characters? If so, how much else of the Bible is mere mythology?

3. When did the Fall happen? There has to be a Fall, because even if you don't believe God created the world in six days, you have to believe that God created the world good-unless ou have God create something imperfect which throws open a whole other can of worms.

4. When did death enter the world? Evolutionary theory is based upon survival of the fittest, and the development of species over generations. The Bible teaches that death is a consequence of sin. No sin = no death. God HATES death. It is the antithesis of who He is- the life-giver. It makes no sense that He would create death as part of His perfect world. Any thinking which suggests death is necessary is only based on the world we see today- we cannot imagine a world without death. Yet that is what Jesus came to save us from, and the future we have to look forward to in heaven.

There are many things I don't understand about the world, the universe and the Bible. But I believe that God created everything and knows best:

'By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.' Hebrews 11:3

I don't want to bury my head in the sand and ignore science completely. But I feel happier taking God at His word and waiting for heaven where I'll understand much better! I'd rather stand before God and have Him say, 'You fool, Sophie, for taking Genesis 1 literally!' than to have Him say, 'Why did you believe what men said above what My word revealed to you?' And judging on Jesus' reaction to His contemporaries ('for they loved praise from men more than praise from God' Jn 12:43; 'You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men' Mk 7:8), I think the latter is more likely than the former.

Bible bashing

I typed 'Bible basher' into Google and the Urban Dictionary gave me these definitions:

A Bible Basher is someone who constantly goes around forcing the word of the bible on everyone else, and claims that everything BUT the Bible is evil.

A religious person who is obsessively you could say, and insanely into his or her religion. They tend to 'bash on' about their religion and try to feed it to you. No disrespect to their religious beliefs, but knowing a bible basher can sometimes get sticky. They tend to be very protective over their religion, and know nearly everything about it. They will argue the point, and during times of bashing, can become quite violent.

A bible basher is one who lives their life by the bible, and tries to force the bible upon all they meet.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bible+basher

Wow! I'm guessing all these people have had a pretty negative experience with Christians. Faced with this definition, who wants to be a 'Bible basher'?

Well in this post I want to try to explain why the Bible is so important to me (and therefore why so much of my blog is based on the Bible), and also try to explain how I have no intention of bludgeoning people in an insensitive and emotionally detached manner, but I do want to confront people with the truth that the Bible claims has relevance for their life as much as mine.

The Bible is a unique book. It's made up of many different types of literature, written by different people at different times in history. It makes astonishing claims about who we are, why we are here, who God is, and how we can know Him. Many people look at the world around and think 'There must be a God behind all this'. But it's only in the Bible that we find out exactly who this God is. I believe this because, having read the Bible over and over since my childhood, I have never found a book like it which holds together so well, considering it was written under so many different circumstances as I mentioned above.

I love reading. I studied English at university and read many books by the same author (Dickens and Eliot being my favourites). What has always interested me is the way that a writer's ideas change over time. Even when you find ten books written by the same author, they will not always be consistent in ideology and morality or politics. And yet, despite the fact that so many different individuals contributed to the Bible, there is a striking coherence and unity throughout the various books. The main idea is that God is real, He made everything and wants to know us. Over the centuries that the Bible texts cover, there is a recurring cycle of people turning away from God to 'do their own thing' and live life the way they want to. God is never happy with that. He keeps on calling people to follow Him and go his way. But man's disobedience has separated him from God, so God sent Jesus, His Son, to come into the world and die on the cross to be punished for the sins of the world. He raised Jesus to life and calls people everywhere to follow Him and believe that their sins can be forgiven through Jesus.

All the Bible books in some way contribute to this message. They could be establishing the fundamental disobedience of humanity, as seen in Genesis. They could be calling men back to follow God, as seen in the prophets such as Isaiah. They could be predicting the coming of Jesus, such as the prophet Micah. They could be telling the story of Jesus' life, like the gospel of Matthew. All of the books in the Bible provide a piece to the puzzle. Together, they give a wholistic picture of who God is and how we can know Him.

So really, you have to read the Bible through and through before you judge it. So many people have said to me that the Bible is not trustworthy, that it's full of contradictions. But many of these people have not read it thoroughly. Perhaps their knowledge is based on taking some words out of context. The Bible is not always easy to understand, but I have found that the more I study it, the more it makes sense. It really does fit with what I see around me: people suffering with broken lives, desperate for meaning, but unable to find that meaning in human relationships, money and status. I see a world that needs Jesus. I can testify to how He has changed my life, and the lives of many others too.

Ultimately, I follow the Bible because Jesus did. Jesus is the most impressive person that ever existed, to me. He had an astounding impact on history and on the lives of those who met Him. And He identified the scriptures as the indestructible and authoritative word of God. He upheld the Bible at every turn, as an authority about God (Mt 21:42, Mt 22:29), as true promises which will always be fulfilled (Mt 26:54), as never becoming void (Jn 10:35, Mt 5:18). He saw the Bible as coming from God, revealing the truth and being utterly reliable. His life was based on scripture, and His life was amazing. Therefore I decided to follow Jesus, and so I am trying to base my life on scripture too.

The writer of Hebrews suggests that the word of God is 'living and active', 'Sharper than any double-edged sword... it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart' (Heb 4:12). I have always found this to be true. Paul writes in 2 Timothy 3:15-17 that scripture is 'God-breathed', and it certainly speaks with authority that seems to be more than human; divine. The Bible says many things which are difficult for us to accept -such as the existence of hell and the reality of God's judgement, which I have been blogging about recently- and I don't know why any human would make such terrifying stuff up! The Bible is full of genuine insight that makes sense with reality and does indeed judge the heart of anyone who reads it- again in a way that no human finds comfortable. Of course, humans physically wrote the Bible, but they were 'carried along by the Holy Spirit' (2 Peter 1:21), and it is God's words rather than the words of mere mortals.

The thing is, it's difficult to say that the Bible is only partially true and worship God. Surely you don't want to be friends with a liar? God has to be 'the true God' (Jer 10:10) or He is a false god. The Bible has to be truth, or lies. I don't think you can have it both ways.

The post-modern attitude towards texts and textual analysis is that there is no absolute truth and every reader brings something different to a text. For example, a Marxist will read Dickens and take away a Marxist message. English degrees are a lot about this! But I don't think you can approach the Bible as the same as any other text and just 'get something' from it. Either something is true, or it is false. If the Bible is true, it's worth building your life on it. If it's false, there is no point bothering.

And it follows that if the Bible is true, it is universally true. That means it's not just 'true for me'. It applies to everyone. That is why my blog is based on the Bible, and why I try to respond to people's questions, to the books I read, thinking about what the Bible says. I am sorry if it comes across as emotionally detached Bible-bashing! But in my view, what I personally say has very little value for the world. What God says does! That's why I look to Him for answers, rather than my own thinking.

Of course, I apply my thinking to the Bible. God doesn't ask us to switch our brains off when we open His word. But I think the tendency in our culture to come to the Bible with our own ideas of what is right and wrong, and judging its 'truth' on how it fits into our current worldview, is a fundamentally flawed concept. If it is the words of God, a God who is eternal and all-knowing and all-seeing, how can we possibly deem it our place to judge it against our standards? That would be like me handing my dissertation on George Eliot to a five year old who had just learned to read. My dissertation is nothing special, but I don't think the kid would have a chance of understanding it!

I don't want to bash the Bible, in both senses of the phrase. I don't want to crush people with it, but I don't want to under-value it and over-value my words and thoughts. I want people to know the truth, and I think the Bible contains better answers than my befuddled brain.

'The Reader' reviewed

Yesterday I took some students to a public-speaking competition in London. There was a lot of waiting around... But I managed to get through Bernhard Schlink's 'The Reader' AND do my marking, which was quite satisfying!

'The Reader' has recently been made into a film with Ralph Fiennes and Kate Winslet- I wanted to read the book before seeing the film because my friends recommended it. It is a very compelling read- all about how the protagonist struggles to come to terms with the fact that his past lover was an SS guard in Nazi Germany.

The book raises so many interesting questions. For example, Michael says 'I was guilty of having loved a criminal', but what he is really saying is that somehow his generation is implicated and involved in the Holocaust. He struggles to reconcile Hanna's crimes with the person he once knew, and it raises the issue, as the reading-group questions in the back articulate: 'How can we explain why ordinary people commit atrocities without resorting to calling them monsters?'

The Bible has an answer to this: it teaches that we often try to measure up ourselves against others in order to justify ourselves and pat ourselves on the back for our superior morality. Actually that is fruitless, because our righteousness is filthy rags to God (Isa 64:6). Instead of creating an 'us' and 'them' scenario where the murderers and rapists are on one side of the fence, ourselves on the other, we should accept that every single one of us is capable of 'atrocities' if placed in the right (or wrong) time or place. We should acknowledge that often our thoughts are atrocious, even if our deeds are respectable. And it is our sinfulness that sent Jesus to the cross, so that we could be forgiven.

Our human sense of justice -our desire to see Nazi war criminals pay for their deeds- is a gift from God. He will hold everyone accountable for the wrongs they have done- against other people but also against Him. If you're trusting in Jesus, be glad and look forward to the day when there will be no more injustice and no more suffering. If you're not trusting in Jesus, don't be too quick to call down the wrath of God upon the 'sinners' of our society. Get your rags replaced with the riches of Jesus Christ!