Hi Lynn: You seem like a very nice person and gracious in your comment here in response to a relatively heated discussion between folks of various viewpoints of creation vs. evolution, yet greatfully remaining in a faith and life perspective called Christianity. I will tell you that in this time of year many call “Christmas” I have such a spirit of thankfulness towards who I know to be Creator and Designer of this universe who sent His Son to be born, live a life of modesty and servanthood and to ultimately die in our place.
I know of a person who came to know this God whom I serve who was raised in a very different system of thought. Upon choosing to serve the God of the Christian Bible which caused him to have to give up fellowship with almost his entire family who resided in a different country, as he packed his things before his mom and some aunts at this location, he turned to them and asked them very kindly, “Do you think that a worldview that has at its crux a perspective that if a man sacrifices himself on behalf of this particular god that in response he gets a herem of female virgins in heaven sound like it is from God or something that a man (with an appetite) made up.” He said in response to him, where it would be disrespectful and even dangerous for his mom and aunts to respond verbally with any type of affirmation, instead the culmination of difficulty in these women’s lives engrained in such a worldview combined with ideas of judgement and hate trumping love caused them to look into his face and offer to him a half smile that, to him, seemed to be their affirmation of his wisdom to go towards faith in God who does not call us to judge, hate or destroy, but to love, affirm and encourage people in life and towards closer association to the very God who loves us and describes Himself in His Word.
Many good hearted people who believe in this Great God of love and not hate desire to appeal to the conscious of those who are searching for meaning and for God and yet have been through much indoctrination from science teachers in high school and into college who suggest that it is absolutely unscientific to consider the idea of God. However sometimes this appeal is made by sort of agreeing to the secular terms of evolution that does its best to disallow God from almost the entire terms of development of complex life by simply re labeling these same evolutionary principles that have no grounding in the Christian text with Christian semantics. I respectfully don’t agree because if God is God, then the foundation upon which the entire body of thought which science tries to explain could be completely obliterated by how God chose to begin life on earth and this is impossible to determine with confidence in science as we know it. For this, we need to think long and hard about what we believe.
As a sophomore in college I was a chemistry major and took a biology elective that honed in on the structure of the human brain. It was one of the most fascinating classes that I have ever taken! The prof was a brilliant scientist who was even a consultant to NASA at the time (he bragged often about this) and for whatever reason chose to devote a lot of time towards literally demeaning the idea of God in the classroom all the while pronouncing the validity of evolution. As a naïve Christian student with half the smarts of this professor,I became disoriented as I would hear Dr. Parker proclaim how incredibly complex the human brain is on one hand, then belittling God on the other. I honestly began to see him as rather unprofessional and pitifully insecure with such bantering.
I will never forget this for as long as I live what happened next…Dr. Parker in one particular class was explaining the part of the brain that was in charge of protecting the body in the case that a person began to twist their ankle. He said that as one loses control and the ankle is bent into a contorted position, the brain immediately sends a signal to the thigh muscle to relax it in order to save the ankle from further injury which a stiff leg would inevitably do. It was like a human shock absorber of sorts. Then to my surprise, within a couple of days after this teaching while playing a pretty intense game of basketball, I did this exact thing where as I came down onto the ankle sideways and my leg immediately let loose which caused by body to embarrassingly fall onto the court floor in a heap. I was sparred from bad injury.
Within a week of this event, I hobbled on this swollen ankle to this same class and somehow mustered up enough courage to approach this professor Parker. I said something like, “Dr… Parker: Your class is awesome. I just experienced the brain sending a signal to my thigh muscle in order to ward off further injury to my ankle and the illumination about the complexity of the brain came to life in this experience. But Dr. Parker, I am really contorted by the fact that on one hand you relay pretty terrific detail on the brain yet at the same time vocalize to this class of young folks that God cannot exist and evolution must be the only explanation. I went on to tell him that I was a Christian and that I believed that the idea of God is the only rational explanation for complexity and for this, every time you put down the idea of God as Creator and Designer, you bring confusion and insult to some of those in your class.” Dr. Parker replied very nicely and needless to say, from that day on, our science class never regressed into indoctrination into the belief system called atheism that seems to be to be the foundation upon which naturalistic evolution is based upon.
Sorry too for the length here yet again in this post… Christmas is a time of year of celebration. It is full of life, lights, trees, family, wrapping paper. For some not so much and sometimes bitterness. Whatever the case may be experientially should never dispose of what should make the front page news of our minds. It is the dogma that the God who created and designed the universe, in response to mankind turning their back on Him still chose to love us by sending His Son to die in our place. If the truth that God LITERALLY exists, that He created, that He designed, that He loves us enough to die in our place does not take ones breath away with awe and thankfulness that necessarily drowns the noise of the lights, trees, wrapping paper or the pain and lonliness for some the same, I encourage you to simply get on your knees and by faith thank Him for the true gift found in His Son! That is Christianity. He is real and He loves me and He loves YOU! I mean this statement not just in a frivolous greeting type of way like we say “God bless you” after a sneeze type of thing. No, God Himself who exists and designed us really loves the world. All nations, all people. He loves you! When we hear “Merry Christmas” at the next Christmas party, may we remember the literal God who made those stars and all those galaxies in heaven by a snap of His fingers is the God who cares for us in the details of our very lives. in this light, His Christmas blessings to you Lynn and everyone in earshot of this message. Greg