Related Message
The 24/7 blog that we've called Resources is intended to be a multifaceted exploration of the Christian life. It is a place where we expand the conversation about what God is doing in our lives and in our community, and further reflect on what it looks like to live a life of full devotion to Christ, 24/7. This post is the first of a series of posts about interpreting the Bible. It was composed by Alley Vanden Bogert, a longtime member of Southridge.
The debate surrounding God and evolution has sparked an enormous amount of controversy and confusion in our culture. With such a wide variety of viewpoints, such as Ultra-Darwinism, Evolutionary Creationism, Young Earth Creationism and more, it’s no wonder that it can be a challenging conversation for people both in the Christian faith and outside if it. In the book “The Reason for God” Timothy Keller even quotes a few scientifically-minded people that feel their only option is to reject Christianity and the Bible because of their understanding that the natural world cannot be reconciled with the supernatural. After all, if you can’t measure a miracle, how do you know it really happened?
So where does this leave us, as Christ followers? How do we navigate through this fiery debate, when outside the Church, Christianity lacks credibility and inside the Church there is disagreement as to how life on earth came about? While it is important to critically consider the evidence (of which there is no shortage) and decide your position for yourself, it may also be practical to take a step back and sort through the implications this debate has on our faith and God’s kingdom. This debate has created so much conflict inside and outside Christianity that it has reduced the universe, a physical expression of God’s love and character, to an argument that has the power to push people away from God and each other. It is a conflict that we would be wise to deconstruct in favour of a dialogue that allows us to pursue truth collaboratively. As we heard on Sunday morning, evolution and creation do not need to be at odds with each other – and if you really want to challenge your understanding of history of this debate, check out the BBC documentary, Did Darwin Kill God?, posted on southridge.cc earlier this week.
When it comes to the disunity this conflict has created, what would you be willing to do to contribute to reconciliation? Timothy Keller encourages us to appreciate the difficulty of choosing to believe and have faith in the miraculous, as he points out that in Matthew 28:17 that even after Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to the apostles, some doubted. In a sermon series that addresses Atheist Fundamentalism, Bruxy Cavey suggests that we should think of ourselves as ambassadors of reconciliation on this topic. And Augustine points to a need for us to hold loosely to our interpretations of such complex things, in this quote:
In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture, passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudices to the faith we have received. In such cases we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it.
Consider how you are contributing to this conversation. As you speak with believers and non-believers, as you engage in discussion in Life Group, as you interact with others in every facet of your life, are you bringing humility, grace and healing to this conflict? Are you allowing those you talk with the freedom to grapple with this openly, without feeling the need to correct them? Can you recognize that it is in the searching that we honour and worship God, not in our ability to have the right answer? Can you affirm someone’s effort to seek truth, even if they do not share the same conclusion as you?
While people decide to commit to a life of faith based on many different things, there are people, like those in Keller’s book, for whom this debate prevents any possibility of entertaining faith in God. This debate does not have to be the barrier that it has become. As we move forward with this and many other challenging questions in this series, take the opportunity to evaluate how your actions can encourage others to look beyond the need to figure it all out, to overcome conflict, and understand that our universe reflects a God who longs to show us how awesome, beautiful and loving He is.
