For context, my dad is a pastor of many years (20+ at this point), and our family grew up very conservative (think Bible belt conservative where they don’t believe in climate change or vaccines).
I thought like this as well because you are a function of your environment. My views started to shift after taking AP Bio in high school and now as a senior in biology at university.
I had to tackle what evolution and all these new sciences were teaching me and how they intermeshed with my preconceived notions of Christianity. Now I have very different views than my family: Adam and Eve sinned and caused spiritual death, not physical death (because death is a natural process); God created the earth through natural processes that we can study instead of magic or supernatural abilities (i.e., like simply talking the universe into existence in 6 literal days); and that God created all of life through evolutionary processes instead of making a clay sculpture of a human and breathing on it.
How do I tell my family that what I believe isn’t crazy and that these beliefs will send me to hell? I’m scared I might get in trouble or be shunned if I keep believing what I believe. They think that college is just liberal indoctrination and that what I believe are lies made up by crazy people.
I don’t have the time to study theology and science to a degree where I can explain it simply to my parents, and even if I could, I doubt they would believe it because they think that their visions from God outweigh the years of study that people do in their PHDs.
Why do you need to tell them? Or if they know, why should it matter? Your faith is between you and God and their’s likewise. So unless any of you think that the view of Genesis or Science is a barrier to God there is no need to confront it. And if someone does think it is a barrier to God they should consider what Scripture, and specifically Paul says about personal faith and belief starting with Romans 14.
There is no need for you to “convert” then to Evolution, or for them to “cleanse” you of it..
There is something to be said for the notion of “What the eye can’t see, or the ear can’t hear the heart can’t grieve over”
I agree with Richard. Some battles are not worth fighting. Many, many of them are unwinable. People often think they know rock solid facts, because something they heard resonates with their thinking, or because they have heard it enough times, that it “must be” true.
If you are put on the spot, you can say that the things they say don’t describe your experience and then mention “the right” football game. You are not preparing for confirmation or ordination and to be examined by your family.
It’s a hard position to be in. All kinds of things are wedges that work to destroy families.
Gently. And when your dad is ready to hear it - i.e. if or when he asks you about it. It helps me to remember that I’ve had a lifetime to grow into my present views, and God will probably not leave me where I am now either. So it helps me have patience with the same long process for other people who’ve long been in environments that trained them up in certain ways of thinking that they think are mandated straight from God.
Speaking also a bit from the other side, I want to be involved in the lives of my own grown children. I.e. - I want them to be able to trust me enough to talk to me and share with me about things - even or especially things where their journeys may look different than my own faith journey. So I hope that I’ve never pressed on them any messaging that my love for them is contingent on their adherence to exactly all the same ways of thinking about everything that they learned from us when they were children. Paul gives more than a nod to the importance of “growing up” in 1 Corinthians 13. He considers it a good thing that he no longer thinks like he did when he was a child. What good parent would want their child to remain stuck in their childhood? Well - okay - sometimes we do wish that, but not in our better parenting moments I would say. And even more seriously, we long for our children to stick with the most important things we try to impart to them - matters of faith and who is at the center of that. But even regarding those important matters, it’s also important that grown children evaluate and make their own decisions, especially in matters of faith. It needs to be your faith and not just your dad’s. So the fact that such faith apparently remains important to you should be a matter of immense satisfaction to him at some level, even if it may take him some time to see past some of these other hang-ups.
As far as specifics of how to do it, I would start with stuff that seems less threatening and is much less controversial. If or when he pushes you on science / faith issues, ask him if he believes that rain clouds come from temperature differences and relative humidities of colliding air masses. Presumably he’s okay with how meteorologists understand these things and use them to predict rain - which leads to the question, in accepting that those processes are useful to understand, does he feel like he’s turned his back on scriptures that clearly state that rain comes from God? It’s a rhetorical question of course. And it might help him begin to see how science can be accepted as an effective method for seeing how God has set up creation to work rather than seeing science as an alternative to God. But you can also patiently acknowledge that there have been many a scientist (and still are) who are happy to push science as just such an alternative narrative. So the reactionary views against that are understandable. But there are yet many more scientists that aren’t given media headline space who quietly practice their faith right alongside their science with no problem whatsoever. You yourself are part of that unheard majority. It will be good for you to be an ambassador of that very fact to your dad, or at least if or when the Spirit leads you to let him closer to that part of yourself. If he’s like most dads, I bet he wants to remain close to you. He may also have congregants or many other friends in his “in groups” who apply considerable pressure for him to keep his own thoughts and promotions aligned with group protocol, and those pressures must weigh immensely on a pastor too. So be patient in regard to things that for him may go so far as a question of whether he will remain a viable pastor who must satisfy some board of directors. There are many a church in the U.S. (and everywhere I’m sure) that insulate themselves well against any truth they may be most in need of hearing. We all suffer under that to varying extents, and we don’t know your dad’s situation like you do. As I heard recently “A man will not understand something if his salary depends on him not understanding it.” But that’s a cynical take. You may have access to your dad as a beloved child in deeper ways, and perhaps he can be privately reached by you even if he must remain publicly careful and guarded for other more external reasons. It sounds like you are still living by the same essential faith that he would have imparted to you, and if so, your reassurances of that to him will be a living testimony of the sufficiency of Christ without all the culture-war add-ons that so many in Bible-belt churches have mistakenly tried to attach to their gospel.
The knowledge today is based on the Truth of Repeatability which We call Science. Some do not want to see the 100% Truth because it isn’t. All of the Drugs/Compounds that are made today have side effects to some Bodies, so they’re not 100%. This causes refusal of advancements for they are not 100%.
This place of Discussion is like Group Therapy, We have all different Views, but We try to show Humility. Humility stems from wanting to be Together as this is a So Called Family. This Happens all the time With Governments disagreeing and then end up in a fight. Oh and then let’s have peace with no Hard Feelings. Jesus says always forgive, to me this is how We sustain Love and He showed it was Eternal with “Our Father”. He then included all of Us to be in the same Loving Family as I am in This Family of Forgiveness to Sustain Love. The Beatles(Beatitudes) sang “ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE”, to forgive and Sustain Love in Our Family.
I think you need to explain it in a way that they dont need to abandon belief in the Bible as the inspired word of God… and you as well.
It still can be physical death as well which happens outside the Garden. The Garden represents the unseen microscopic world of single-celled organisms. Under the right conditions (in the Garden - which means “to hedge about”) they dont die of old age but are still susceptible to being killed.
Single-celled organisms do not have a natural old-age death, but they do not live forever. Instead of dying of old age, they split into two new cells through a process called binary fission. While this means the original cell becomes two “daughter” cells rather than dying, external threats still kill them. Google Search
The splitting into two new cells is described with God taking Adam’s side and making Eve from it. They live together as one flesh like a clonal colony, an evolutionary precursor to multicellularity.
God made Adam out of “dust”. The inspiration here… God has the author (Moses) think of the smallest thing that he can, and with the natural eye that would be a speck of dust. Today we can reinterpret this on the microscopic level.
Gen 2:7 is a summarized statement of what follows. There is process to Adam becoming a living soul (being) which was not completed until they were sent out of the Garden. Note that God places the “man whom He had formed” in the Garden, not the living being.
In Hebrew all animals are living souls but plants (which could be eaten in the Garden) are not, and neither are microscopic organisms. With limited Hebrew words to describe these things, the “beasts of the field” and “birds of the air” represent microbes in the soil and air. Adam was the first and like a father names his children, he names all of them.
Adam’s name means “mankind”. He is an archetype for the first kind of man that would lead to modern man. Adam and Eve were clothed with “animal skins” by God upon their departure from the Garden, and thereby became the first living souls with Eve being the mother of all.
When the times is right, just tell them you love Jesus with all your heart, mind and soul. But you don’t think Genesis 1-11 is all literal history and be done. Focus on what unites you and if they get pushy tell them they need to respect your beliefs on non-saltivic issues as you navigate the Bible. Hopefully you can avoid a headache this way.
I would also add that it is important to focus on the common ground that you have rather than the areas where you disagree. When I first become an evolutionary creationist I used to have a lot of arguments with my conservative family (which was pretty similar to yours politically at the time) about it until I realized that we actually agreed on 90% of our beliefs and we could choose to disagree on the remaining 10%. Now they don’t even care that I believe in evolution as long as I believe in the the core doctrines of the faith. Today, I just avoid talking to them about the current U.S. president, or climate change, or vaccines.
I agree. Especially because in no way evolution denies or contradicts any fundamental truth of the Faith. To be honest I’ve never understood what the fuss was all about, but that may be because literal creationism in Europe is basically unheard of.
OK so how do you rationalise God making a special case of Eve in terms of male and female? Why should God suggest buggery to satisfy the need for companionship of Adam? (parading animals before him like a line up at a brothel) Male and female was already a part of creation, How are we supposed to rectify this notion that Women were created out of men and are therefore automatcaly subservient to them.
Once you start reinterpreting Scripture to suit your Scientific or other needs then you come up against things that ae not so easily dismissed or explained away.
Scripture is male chauvinistic. That does not change whether you force science onto it or not. Likewise the notion about the Fall. The garden story does not make scientific sense yet the Fall is held onto like a security blanket. People even try to make a scientific argument to justify the fall!
This why many Christians claim that once you start dismissing one view of the words, you end up picking and choosing what you want to understand.
I think this is a really important point.
We should be growing and changing. Signs of life.
Unfortunately, this kind of growth is often seen as abberant. Often “conformity to Christ” is seen as “conforming one’s views to the established confession or statement belief.” If one isn’t doing that, they are seen as straying from the faith.
In my case, gender also matters. As a woman in a denominational world where the complementarian corset has been tightening most of my adult life, and I find myself often wondering “What the heck is going on?!” there isn’t a lot to say. To engage in some discussions is to lose and demonstrate oneself as pariah.
I’ve tried. I’ve lost. Avoiding the confrontation is sometimes a necessary strategy, when conformity is impossible. Imperfect as the strategy is.
Lots of good advice, especially from Mervin. My addition is to focus on the things you believe in common. Jesus. Love. Grace. Salvation. Redemption. Make no attempt to “convert” them to your way of thinking. If they have questions, acknowledge the struggle, and answer honestly. Relationships are more important. No doubt they have lives that would be ripped apart to abandon their positions, and it is not loving to try to force that.
One thing you might do to help them understand your position is to share good books from respected authors who take a different approach to biblical interpretation without really addressing the side issues of evolution. I just finished Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis and it was excellent. It looks at Genesis pretty much from a literary viewpoint, and she makes some excellent observations, but only has a few side comments regarding age of earth stuff. John Walton and N. T. Wright are also good, though they are a little more closely associated with evolutionary thought, and have been demonized somewhat by the AIG crowd.
Prayers in your journey, just keep your eyes on Jesus and it will be fine.
Vaccines too? That’s not Bible belt Christianity, that’s a politico-religio cult living in a Facebook bubble. Even Jehovah’s Witnesses aren’t anti-vaccine…
Just meet them where they can and love your family as they are.
Welcome! I struggle with that, too. I think I was originally very pro YEC myself; it was when a kind biology teacher pointed out that my position was fairly cynical, that I opened up to the other point of view. Everyone has their weak point–my family are all YEC except for my children, and I think that they would not rethink their position for the same reasons I started to However, my brother came to acknowledge the same thing that I think much of my family (and church) now do–it’s not a salvation issue, so not something to worry about. I try not to bring it up to them, as they’re not ready to discuss it more, but I don’t hide my beliefs if they ask.
Genesis 2 takes us back to Day 1, the day God created the heavens and the earth.
Gen 2:4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,
These are the generations of the heavens and the earth… is detailed in what follows. Compare with Gen 5:1 (the generations of Adam), 6:9 (generations of Noah), 10:1 (generations of the sons of Noah), 11:10 (generations of Shem), and 11:27 (generations of Terah). The account of the generations of the heavens and the earth follows and this account begins starting in 2:4 where we are back on Day 1 filling in details summarized in Genesis 1. The first of mankind (Adam) was made of “dust”, a unicelled organism.
Adam and Eve are the first case of male and female and the first of the animal kingdom represented by God clothing them with animal skins before leaving the Garden. Everything created up until that point was unicelled including the “beasts of the field” and “birds of the air” as I explained earlier.
Adam and Eve ate what they were told not to. The sin was as simple as that and represents the first act of animal like behavior in getting food by eating other living things, whereas plants produce their own food through photosynthesis.
So is God a male chauvinist for making men taller and physically stronger than woman? No, that is simply the nature of how He made us and has both genders better suited to certain roles in the relationship. We are also to love our wives as ourselves, which means not to talk down to them and act like pigs… which is really what male chauvinism is.
With the exception of single celled organisms, the cycle of life needs two parents to ensure diversity and completeness. The omission of male and female cannot be seen as definitive, just unimpotant.
Richard
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Male dominance is by no means universal in Nature and cannot be seen as a Godly preference or dictation.
There is (to my knowledge) no scientific circle or consensus that actively and explicitly excludes God as a factor of Creation. No one goes around saying that He didn’t have anything to say or do with it at all.
Us science people don’t spend our every waking hour dreaming of things to do against those Creationist people, Dag gum it!
The argument, if you could call it an argument, is only to what extent.
Lastly, the Bible and Scriptures have nothing within their texts, a direct call or refutation of science. Mostly because there was very little “science” at the time the Bibles were written and collated. That accusation came much, much later, and was only noticeable and gained any traction around the mid-point of the 20th century.
Not in the least. Adam is a type for the first life on earth (first kind) just as Abraham and Isaac are a types for the Father and Son. I believe all of the patriarchs are also historical figures. Adam’s name is a translation in Hebrew for the name Alulim, both names have a meaning of ‘red’. Alulim was the first king of Sumer who advanced agriculture practices with irrigation in the region of Mesopotamia. There is no record of who Alulim’s parents were or where he came from… he has been mythologized with a god-like reign of 28,800 years but still would have been based on a real person. Adam is also recorded as the ‘son of God’ in Luke with no other parentage.
That’s very interesting, the relationship between the Genesis patriarchs and the Sumerian Kings list. I have to study that more. I know that Abel shows up as Dumuzid, Enoch shows up as the 7th king who is taken to heaven, and Utnapishtim or his Sumerian equivalent is Noah (they would be using Sumerian names of course). The thing about irrigation and agricultural practices is fascinating seeing as Adam is cursed with farming and the story seems partly an allegory for the transition from hunter gathering to agriculture. Women would have been primary to the process of crop domestication as the gatherers. However the correspondence between kings on the Sumerian kings list and the pre flood patriarchs would seem to imply that the pre flood patriarchs were Sumerian pagans. Or no? What do you think?
