There needs to be something other than a ‘Like’ icon. I weep.
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I can understand your tiredness. To me, I find peace in knowing that there is no conflict in physical creation and scripture, so long as you interpret scripture properly as God’s revelation to us, not as a science textbook.
It may help to read different views on interpretation. Those have really no effect on discussions on evolution, other than leaving the door open for its possibility. If you find you can see scripture in a different light, at least to me that allows joy in new insights and meaning. Personally, I enjoy Walton’s and Enn’s writings, though may not agree with all they say. Also, learning that it is not necessary to always agree, and to have the humility to consider other views despite the disagreement is freeing.
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That can be very tough to put up with. But also keep in mind that church families are just that … families with a whole lot of the “stuff” families come with. You won’t find one anywhere where none of its members ever rub you the wrong way. People are often loudest about their affiliations and shunning of various things when they are wanting to virtue signal to the group about their bonafide credentials, and shore up any private misgivings they may have. A lot of us here can remember obnoxious pasts of our own where we could have been that member whose closed mind you bemoan. So also keep in mind there is always hope for folks. And most important of all … that hope is in Christ … not in their scientific (or even biblical) interpretation of origins. Even just getting your friends to sign on to that (and therefore at least be able to set all their agendas and politics aside when necessary) would be a victory even if they still hold on to their disagreement.
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Jeremy, I understand wanting to have more evidence of Jesus but it is clear in the scriptures, that most of the Jews who saw Him and heard Him and even heard of His resurrection, did not come to know Him. They saw the miracles and heard His words and yet they did not trust, love or obey Him. Why is that? It was because their hearts were hard and sinful.
So how can we KNOW Jesus, not just know about Him.
John 14:15 "If you love me, you will obey what I command . 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— 17 the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. 18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. 21 Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him." 22 Then Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, “But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?” 23 Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. 24 He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.
John 7:16"My teaching is not my own. It comes from him who sent me. 17 If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own
John 8:31 “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
Matt 11:27 "All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. 28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 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. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
If a person really wants to know Him, then we need to seek with all our heart for what He said and did. We need to turn away from all sin and turn towards Him. Fill our mind with His words, and then put them into practice. Walk in His shoes and we will experience knowing Him and the Father. Jesus said if you hunger and thirst for righteousness, you will be filled with it. Our trust is not in our ability to find Him, our trust is in the fact that the Father is not far from any of us and is willing to reveal Himself to anyone who turns away from sin and looks for Him. Our trust can be in Him to reveal Himself to us. Jesus said, “Fear not little flock, it is the Fathers pleasure to give you the kingdom”.
If we want to know the Father then we need to obey Jesus. As we trust, love and obey Him we will experience the Fathers ways and will. We will experience the same hatred that He did from those who loved wickedness. We will go through temptations as He did and come out of them as victors because of His Spirit living in us. If we obey Him out of love we will experience the approval and affection of the Father as He did. We will experience the grief that He did for all the sin that this present time is filled with and we will have the same compassion that He did for those who are slaves to that sin. And if we don’t love our life in this present age and we lay it down as the Father commanded Him to, then we will experience a resurrection unto eternal life and forever be in the Father’s presence.
Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. 24 He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.
My pastor, Andy Stanley of North Point Ministries, recently said in a sermon that evolution is a wonderful thing.
Google North Point Church and listen to the sermons there. You won’t be disappointed.
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Wow…what response did he get from that?
There aren’t any. Even the Biblical accounts are not exactly contemporary. However documentation from that era is scarce. For the record I’m not a Christian; however, I don’t go as far as the mythicists in thinking that there is no evidence that Jesus ever existed. What evidence do we have about Jesus? First the several accounts in the Bible. The earliest are generally considered to be the Pauline letters (the ones he actually wrote as opposed to some of the ones only attributed to him, scholars spend a lot of time on those). Though Paul never met Jesus before his death, he certainly met some of his immediate followers and at least one of his brothers, James. Then the writer of Mark and another common source (or sources) that both the writer of Matthew and the writer of Luke drew upon (generally called ‘Q’) and whatever sources Matthew and Luke drew upon independently. This gives us the synoptic gospels, Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Then whoever wrote John. Outside the Bible only two near contemporary writers whose writings have survived to the current day and are about 1st century Judea exist; these are Josephus and Philo. Josephus mentions Jesus twice though one of the mentions has almost certainly been modified (there are differences in the manuscript tradition); neither has anything on a resurrection. Philo does not have any mention of Jesus (unless he is in the group of anonymous Jews that Pilate executed unjustly according to Phile); however, what we have by Philo is a letter to persuade an emperor not to put up a statue of himself in the Temple at Jerusalem. He is depicting the Jews such as himself as obeying Rome except when it comes to desecration of the Temple; mentioning a Jew who was executed for claiming to be the king of the Jews, would defeat the purpose of the argument. In other words if you want to believe in a literal resurrection of Jesus, you are going to have to take it on faith. Myself I think an extraordinary event requires an extraordinary amount of evidence.
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I have no trouble with that! God’s providence is a wonderful thing, and evolution is a subset of that.
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There is a vast quantity of evidence to produce trust (faith) in a person that Jesus is who He said He is and that He rose from the dead. From Genesis to the times of the patriarchs before Moses, from Moses to the prophets all the way to Malachi you have God foretelling (prophesying) the coming of Jesus. We have Jesus telling us He would die and raise up from the dead, just as the scripture tells us.Then we have all the historical accounts from those who were witnesses of His coming, and the fact that many lost their lives because of their testifying of Him. The evidence is of such a great volume and so much of it is God foretelling the future so that when it happens as He said, it would cause us to believe.
But we will only truly believe in His coming when we understand how valuable it is and what it accomplished for us. It is all just an interesting discussion until we allow ourselves to be convicted of all the wicked things we have thought, said and done, and that because of our wickedness; we deserve God’s wrath and judgment. At that point we will look for a way of escape and the good news of Jesus death and resurrection will not be a point of discussion, it will be our salvation.
I did not hear any negative response, although I am sure some people outside the church were bothered.
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Me too!
I’m in tears for you Jeremy. That’s far more severe than my experience, over 50 years under cultic influence, over 20 in total immersion (you had to fight to get in, very clever), 20 since it deconstructed and reconstructed itself, with all manner of issues (having been complicit in the abuse, family breakdown, psychological scarring; shame), including 10 in evangelical-charismatic Anglicanism (=Episcopalian, Church of England - CoE, where, surprisingly, it is almost impossible to have any kind of deep, open, free conversation; it has been occasionally as toxic as the cult, more acutely so even, as your experience - although evolution is never an issue! - there are more important things…). What a business eh? The only fellowship we feel free and included in is over a hundred miles away in London. At least we can attend on Facebook!
Covid should be giving you a break? For a year and more? Time to heal? Deconstruct and reconstruct? Including here?
I’m a dangerous raving liberal as you can tell, but I yearn for fellowship. I’m only outspoken here believe it or not. And on Ship Of Fools. The great thing about the CoE is that they are socially active, they serve the needy. Getting as involved in that as much as possible makes the rest tolerable. But Covid stops me and my wife doing that now.
Keep coming here Jeremy. Say anything and everything.
Let the dead bury their dead. And forgive them, they not what they do.
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Hello, @Jeremy_Lee. Glad to have you here. I hope you’re able to find a safe spot here for your voice, since it doesn’t sound as if your church is much of a safe spot at the moment. Most people here have questions and struggles and a refreshing lack of absolute certainty. Fortunately, this leaves room for faith, for a trusting relationship with God, which often isn’t the same thing as religion.
Sometimes we have to choose between walking a path of faith and walking a path of religion. The lucky people are the ones who can find a religious community that lifts people up in their relationship with God instead of crushing people’s hearts and making them feel hopeless about God.
I’m pretty sure Jesus wanted to lift us up, not crush us, so a possible starting point on the journey of healing your faith is to remind yourself as often as possible that it’s God who is God, not the preachers who insist they have the one true truth. This is harder than it sounds, in large part because of the way the human brain tends to wire itself in response to claims of authority. But Jesus understood – and taught us through his Kingdom teachings – that God reaches out a hand to each one of us as individuals, no matter how idiotic our preachers think we are.
Be kind to yourself, be patient, and trust that God is with you even when you’re in the throes of doubt and confusion. You can’t make God stop loving you no matter how many mistakes you make along the way, and knowing this (even if you don’t know all the historical facts about the resurrection) helps you put one foot in front of the other, one day at a time.
It’s the best any of us can do.
Blessings,
Jen
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The most that I can tell you at this moment (This covid business has me quite busy) is:
We’ve all been there. I personally have been more busy with struggling keeping the faith than actually having it! Even now, and possibly forever! And so have the biblical authors and philosophers! Doubt is a requirement in faith. Otherwise it would be certainty.
I know out of experience though that you’re in good hands here. The people of Biologos are reasonable.
Good luck friend!
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It is not a topic that is prominent at the church I have attended for the last ten years. I mentioned something about the antiquity of the universe in a Sunday School class once and got some pushback from one woman, so I knew enough to drop it, since it can be so volatile (I’m glad it wasn’t nitro when I dropped it, though 
).
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Hello and welcome to the forum.
Outside of the New Testament there is not much, some have quoted Josephus but that’s about it. For me, the evidence of the life and resurrection of Christ is within the life and death of the apostles. Many of them died for what they believed in and I doubt any one will die for a lie they know is, well an outright lie. The conversion of Paul, a Jew who was hostile to the early Christian movement wouldn’t have just been like, “I will now be a apart of a apostate movement I know is wrong.” No! Paul had a radical encounter with the risen Lord and he was changed from it.
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Welcome Jeremy
What might be helpful is to check out the logical coherence of your worldview as God being the logos, as so beautifully stated by John has to make sense if you are a person who goes for logic that is your prime feature for your worldview. There are a lot of people who construct their God image from wishful thinking as God being a kind of Big Brother of Santa fulfilling their wishes upon prayer because he loves them and they are prepared to sacrifice logic for the random chance of wishes being fulfilled and suppress all the cases where that did not happen.
You may want to watch the video 10 questions every intelligent Christian must answer to see how Marshall Brains argues for God not to exist based on him not answering prayers. He postulates a God having to be Santa changing reality according to our wishes instead him changing us to change reality on his behalf, e.g. my will be done instead of thy will be done, and that healing is to give you the body you wish for instead of making you accept your body. Nick Vujicic is a good example to see how it works the other way round, gender reassignment with a 20-fold higher suicide rate is an example for how getting your wish fulfilled does not work.
If you consider that the story of Genesis was aimed at explaining the complexity of Genesis to the illiterate as well as the intellectuals using an open explanation written in poetic language that allowed both to give them a concept that allowed them a meaningful interaction with reality it is unsurpassed in its way.
To a child who has made mud pie objects or shaped thinks from clay the concept of God forming things out of the bits of the earth makes perfect sense. To a grown up intellectual the thought of God sitting by the riverbank making mudpie humans is not intellectually satisfying any more, but s/he can see the conceptual idea of all life on earth in it’s physical form being made from the elements as an intellectually coherent statement, however seeing him as a physical being making mudpie humans is less so.
The problem some people have with evolution is that they believe it disproves the existence of God as it is a random unguided process free of any intervention and without purpose. Whilst there is a random element in the genetic change with recombination and mutation the outcome is highly regulated by survival fitness, so guided by the purpose of sustaining live.
The next misunderstanding is the concept of survival fitness to be the ability to outcompete your resource competitor thus mistaking it for survival of the strongest. Whilst such misconception is understandable from an atheists perspective, as a Christian we should know better as the word of God has been presented to us as to love thy neighbour like thyselves. So we should know what survival fitness is, the ability to love others like your own lot, and that is what reality teaches us as well. If you support creation creation will support you, if you are detrimental to it you will be cleared out.
The interesting thing is, that survival fitness based on loving your neighbour leads to increase in complexity as it is an integrative way of advancing. This is most profoundly seen in the evolutionary jump from the procaryote to the eucaryote by cooperative symbiosis and in the complexity of ecosystems.
So yes, evolution is highly compatible with a belief in God as is science in general as it is based on the concept of ultimate causality and logic.
When it comes to the miracle accounts of Jesus and his resurrection you have to again go back to that worldview thing (see worldview analysis by Sarah Clifton and think if your interpretation of the gospel accounts matches up with your view of reality and your thinking of physical and metaphysical concepts. For my part that left me quite far of what is the classical interpretation of the biblical tests as I want a logical coherent God and not a God that fulfills my desires.
For example my understanding of Jesus first miracle is that when he turned water into wine he did not change the OH molecules in the water to adhere to a materialistic value scale that claims wine to be the most valuable drink you can get, but that he changed the OH molecules in the wedding guests minds and made them realise that it is not a shame not to have excessive amounts of wine but is is a shame to come to the wedding to expect it. If presented with the cleanest of waters, good enough to be used as the water for ritual purification, and the words of the master of ceremony that you just been served the most valuable wine you could get, - unless you were already too drunk you would be left with a lesson that brought you back to reality thinking what the wedding was about. A Jesus that would defile the water of ritual purification, that which cleansed you to make you presentable in the eyes of God by turning it into alcohol - which does not tend to make people more presentable in any way - is to me logically incoherent. So is a Jesus that would allow the master of ceremony to create a fake reality in praising the groom for not cutting his wine to pretend being wealthy, as if he still had wine up his sleeve he would not have needed to. Putting myself in the shoes of his disciples wanting to follow a man who did signs of God I asked myself if I would have decided to follow Jesus because he did fantastic magic to impress me and others by fulfilling our materialistic expectations of because he boldly did the opposite and made sense to me by telling them that the water of purification was more valuable than any wine you could ever be and who’s action even made the master of ceremony stand up to reason.
Similar when it comes to the resurrection, out of the accounts do I need to believe in a “physical” resurrection? If so then Jesus could not have come alive inside me when I walked with him up to the cross and out of the grave. It took me more than 50 years to understand what was going on and at the funeral of my mother in law as the last of our parents I managed to put it in words
To live forever
is the art
to learn to live
in Jesus heart
The interesting thing is that it is reciprocal, if you let him live in yours it becomes like a tardis - much bigger in the inside, but it allows you to learn to live in his heart.
So if your faith in Christ is depending on a "physical " resurrection, ask yourself what body you would like to be resurrected in, what it should look like and why you would want to be in a body that is distinct from Jesus. Perhaps try to think of what feature you would want to be distinguishable by from him.
Considering the difficulty that those had, who encountered him but not recognised him by his looks but by his actions you might come to the conclusions that they saw him in the actions of people. Is there any action you would want to be distinguished by, if so, what would that be?
As Mitch quoted so adequately from 1Cor15:45 that Jesus became the life giving spirit.
Lord help us to receive that life in us that we may ever dwell in him and he in us.
You can find a church that is not so backward.
Right now, when in-person attendance is not advised, you can look anywhere in the world.
If you download the North Point app on your devices, you will find many good sermons without the silliness you have been hearing.
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Once again I looked to see if any of my ideas were offered to Jeremy. No.
Believing that the Bible is historically false is not the answer to YEC, it is finding a path to make it historicallly true that is the best path to walk. When I left YEC I felt adrift as well. IF Eden, the Fall, etc were not true, then what was the point of Christianity after all? That is why I worked so hard for 50 years to come up with a path that makes those stories true. And in 2-3 weeks I will have my book on this out, with an entirely NEW idea about the flood and Eden, and the curse, all of which is orthodox and stays within the boundaries of science. This struggling man deserves at least to know of all the possibilities, not just the ones you have informed him of, that the Bible supposedly wasn’t meant to be taken as historical truth, when the Bible itself makes no such claim. An alternative view of Genesis
Good luck Jeremy, all you will hear here is that the Bible doesn’t tell us history and that means that God wrote a book he meant to be untrue historicallly. Isn’t that a strange thing for a God to do?
You are correct, YECs have it wrong, but I bet only 2 or 3 people have any knowledge of geology higher than geo 101, in either camp, and to solve this problem requires knowledge of more than geo 487
Calm down buddy. Attacking everyone on here isn’t likely to bring me to your side.
Also, using the scientific method, my aim is to disprove my hypothesis. Only after I cannot disprove it can I be relatively certain that it’s true. These people understand that.
You keep saying that you’ve worked for 50 years to prove the bible; that’s an incredibly biased position, and one that’s unlikely to come to an accurate conclusion. I’m NOT saying your position is false, I’m just pointing out the optics of what you’re saying.
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Also, you asked “isn’t that a strange thing for God to do?” I mean… Jesus taught, almost entirely, in parables. That does seam like his character.
There’s more to this than geology, my friend. One of the most convincing pieces of evidence that Genesis 1 isn’t historical is found in genetics.
I’m also struggling with your timeline. Between the message you sent me and the post on here, you seem to believe that the flood accounts of Genesis happened around 5.3 million years ago. I’m struggling to fit that into the evidence that we have that humans have only been around in our current form for around 200,000 years.
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