“I cannot live with or without you”
—U2, 1987
Sometimes I feel so distant from antievolutionists mentally at this point as a historian of Enlightenment science at age 48 that I forget mercy.
But I forget we are siblings in Christ.
This “in Christ” thing is a mystery that transcends what can be communicated in BioLogos post, and the best I can do, as a single that lives alone, is sit in my condo in solitude with God at night and wonder what is happening to neighborhood evangelism. In a polarized nation that is getting more polarized by the day.
I have come to realize that I lack mercy for those who didn’t have the education and exposure and time that I have had. These factors are what create divergence. And alienation.
Including from siblings in Christ.
What is it with this alienation deal? It started the Civil War between North and South.
To which Lincoln said, “Let us not forget the better angels, those mystic chords of memory” that bound us once together, or something like that I should remember.
Anyway, sitting alone in all that silence in my condo pushed me to listen to Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Carnegie makes this point about getting people to say “yes, yes” to draw strangers to you.
So here is what I think I can get antievolutionist pastors in my neighborhood to say “yes, yes” to…
The Great Commandment
The Great Commission
Becoming all things to all people in order to save some
Not putting stumbling blocks in nonbelievers’ way as they move toward the Gospel, as some once wanted to demand circumcision
the need to be “in the world, but not of the world” as salt and light
that God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance
I think this will open up the possibility of talking about siblings in Christ who have lost their way in evangelism, as I believe the Discovery Institute has. That will require a proof adroitly delivered.
If you have any thoughts about how to begin a conversation with pastors to generate this “yes, yes” common ground thing, I am thinking of beginning a letter writing effort that will lead to face to face meetings during their office hours. Including pastors of Dallas’s urban megachurches that invite Discovery to come speak. But not first.
I am thinking of small church pastors in small town environments first.
If I fail to get a hearing with the latter, I will have to go back to the drawing board.
Discovery began as an effort in the early 1990s to respond to Richard Dawkins and the Inherit the Wind stereotype. But I think by the year 2000 it started to lose its way.
These Dallas pastors are super nervous American Christian youth are going down the moral tubes.
They need mercy. And truth. I suppose it will all have to be a work of the Spirit.
I need a hobby to get my mind off this polarization topic, but it is hard without a wife.
Josh