New Year, New Beginnings

God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.” God also said, “Look, I have given you every seed-bearing plant on the surface of the entire earth and every tree whose fruit contains seed. This will be food for you, for all the wildlife of the earth, for every bird of the sky, and for every creature that crawls on the earth—everything having the breath of life in it—I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. -Genesis 1:28-30

This time of year is often associated with new beginnings. I saw it said on one post that since New Year's Day falls on a Monday, this year is the ultimate fresh start: new year, new week, yada yada. 

I personally love the new year because I tend to be a list-making, goal-setting, type-A sort of person. This time of year is made for someone like me: I can make all kinds of lists and goals and organizational charts, and it's culturally acceptable to do so (instead of simply just nerdy)! 

Here's the thing, though: I am not always super hot at following through on all my plans. I tend to start well, and then stumble and bumble along my way until December 31 rolls around, and then I start again.

This is not dissimilar to how Adam and Eve handled God's plans for them at the ultimate beginning, back at the beginning of creation. God laid out for them some very simple commands and guidelines, and Adam and Eve did well with them...until they didn't.

That's how sin entered the world. It's how everything got all topsy-turvy, and following God's commands has been a tricky enterprise ever since. We are by nature inclined to disobey and rebel against His good plans for us, and that's why all of us needed Jesus to save us from our rebellion through His death and resurrection.

That's the good news, though: through Christ, there is grace for us! Adam and Eve may have fallen short of following God's commands, but that doesn't mean that they were cut off from following God after their first failure. They were not out of opportunities for obedience.

God graciously gave Adam and Eve further chances to fill the Earth and subdue it, and they did. There is evidence in Genesis 4 that Adam raised his two sons to be a shepherd and a farmer, thus subduing the earth and everything in it (both plants and animals!). Further, Eve gave birth to these two boys, and several other children, thus doing her part to be fruitful and fill the Earth.

Adam and Eve may have failed to follow the Lord perfectly when the serpent tempted, but they did not fail forever. God had enough grace to give them further opportunities to obey, and He has enough grace for you and I as we start the new year. We will set our goals and resolutions, and we will likely fall short of them. I will probably not go to the gym as much as I should, and I will probably not make my quiet time every day, but you know what: God has grace for me. 

We do not become perfect overnight upon our salvation; rather, we become more like Christ through daily dying to self, repenting when we stumble, and leaning on the God of grace to give us strength to grow closer to Him. 

So don't quit on your resolution to take care of your body this year when you miss a day or two at the gym. Don't give up on starting a Bible reading or prayer habit. Don't surrender to laziness when you miss church one Sunday. Instead, remember the grace of God and continue on. That's what the daily Christian life is about: continually striving toward holiness while clinging to His grace when we inevitably fall short. That is the God-glorifying life, and that's how we need to spend our 2018. 

Love, Persecution, Creation, Faith, and the Reasonable, Natural Man: My Thoughts Following the Nye-Ham Debate

Last night, and honestly most of today, the Internet and media has been consumed in many ways with a debate that occurred at the Creation Museum in Northern Kentucky. The persons debating were Bill Nye, famous for his work educating children about science, and Ken Ham, founder of the Creation Museum and head honcho at www.answersingenesis.org. The question was "Is Creation a Viable Model of Origins?" Since this has been such a big deal, here are a few thoughts I had following my viewing of the debate:

• I am most certainly a Young Earth Creationist (YEC). For years, I wavered back and forth between the Young Earth approach to creation (that the Earth was created approximately 6,000 years ago) and the Old Earth (OEC) approach (that God has been sovereignly guiding the development of the Earth since the Big Bang and made natural selection occur in a way that He approved). I never fully committed to an OEC stance, but always kept it as an option. I am a student in the psychology department of the University of Kentucky, and have taken a few science classes outside of that realm (including geographical and astronomical science). The "evidence" for an OEC stance seems overwhelming at times, and we've all heard the argument about whether Genesis 1-2 means an actual, literal six-day creation.

          Now that I have pondered on this debate, I have realized that I must accept the YEC stance, and this is why: I wish to be consistent in my interpretation of Scripture. The Bible is written in different genres, and the book of Genesis is considered to be a "historical narrative." This means that, as Christians, we believe that stories such as David and Goliath, Jericho, and yes, the Creation story are written as they happened. They are featuring real people and real time periods. My reading yesterday in Genesis 31 talked about how Jacob had been working alongside his father-in-law Laban for 20 years. Never once have I wondered if this was a literal 20 years, nor have I wondered about the actual length of any other time span in Scripture that is a historical narrative. Therefore, to be consistent, I must assume that when Genesis 1 talks about six days, it is actually six days. There is no reason to think otherwise. Scripture must interpret Scripture. We cannot bring anything else in first.

[Note: it has rightly been brought to my attention that Genesis one is more than just historical narrative; it is also prose, a more lyrical style. This is what has allowed for some to come to the OEC conclusion. I maintain my YEC stance for two reasons: it is simpler/more straightforward and it also avoids getting into trouble trying to match up with an evolutionary stance. If God is truly all powerful, then I have no issue believing that He made the Earth in six days. Regardless, Scripture speaks truth. However you interpret this passage, as long as it is centered on Him, I have no serious problem with it.]

• The debate won't save any people. This seems like a bold statement, but it really isn't. No one is saved through logic. We are saved by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ. That is the only way to the Father. The benefit of this debate was not saving people. I doubt many people even were shaken in their stance by the debate. I believe that because this debate hit on something very deep in the human way of thinking.

• Every person is in a faith-based religion. It is in human nature to put our faith in something beyond ourselves. The creationist puts their faith in God or some other deity, and the naturalist/evolutionist/atheist puts their faith in logic, reason and science. There is no real way to "prove" either of them. Mr. Nye said last night that he had no idea how the Big Bang was started; he also couldn't say how language, life or logic came to be. Mr. Ham had no way to tangibly prove that God exists. There is no possible way for us to find it all out. We cannot go back and see the past for ourselves. Therefore, we cannot use observable proof to say one way or the other on this debate. Instead, all people must put their faith in something, and that something is usually what we believe is the most likely to be true. We're all trusting in something we cannot see. 

• God is truth. That being said, I do believe in the triune God and His creation. In fact, I would go so far as to say that He is the truth. Why? Two things have lead me to believe this:

1. Logic: There are simply too many things that point to Him for me to deny it. Even in my high school days when I was a functional agnostic, I could not accept an atheistic or naturalistic approach to Creation. Something or someone had to have made it all. Life cannot spontaneously occur. Language requires intelligence to develop, and despite careers devoted to the field, not a single animal species has been able to be taught to truly use language in a cognitive manner. Morals and ethics came from somewhere; if we are all merely the product of natural selection, then how do we have any kind of altruistic attitude at all? What would be the point of good deeds and helping those in trouble? Why mourn the dead, or save the sick? Let 'em die. Sure, they're humans, but carp are fish that shouldn't be in most ponds, either. Kick them out of the gene pool and let us improve as a race! Yet, we know this is not how we work. Atheists and Christians united alongside each other in New Orleans after Katrina, and people have always done humanitarian works, no matter their belief system. This all only points to a greater something. 
2. The Spirit: This is the big one. I can use logic, reason, mathematics and observation until I'm blue in the face, only to never come to faith. That's because the scientific method (which, as a psychology student/researcher and lover of the sciences, I have used and support in many instances) falls tragically short when it cannot predict a result. The scientific method, in all of its genius, requires a testable subject. We must be able to hypothesize and make theories (testable predictions), set up and experiment of some kind, gather data, record the results and interpret the data in order to draw any conclusion from the scientific method. Yet, there is no way to do this with things we cannot test, which includes the existence of God and the deity of Jesus Christ. 

This is where we must rely on the Spirit of God to do the saving. We can have rational arguments, but only God can make a dead heart new. Check out 1 Corinthians 2:12-16 here:

Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.“For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

You see, there are two kinds of people in the world: natural people and spiritual people. By natural, Paul (this passage's author) means one who is as they were born: lost, sinful, rebellious and on a path to an eternal Hell. By spiritual, he is not speaking of anyone who has a religion, but instead of someone who has the Spirit of God. This is also where the distinction between human wisdom and spiritual wisdom comes down. It's all about who has the Spirit and who doesn't. 

It is because of the Spirit that anyone can understand this wisdom of God, or the things of God, as said later in the passage. The natural, or unsaved person, thinks the things of God to be foolish; this is why Mr. Nye called himself a "reasonable man" throughout the debate last night. It is, by extension, considered "unreasonable" to be a Christian. The Christian faith is placed as opposed to the wisdom of the world, and this is to be expected. It is only by the Spirit's working that any of us understand. The Gospel is only discernible as truth by the spiritual mind, and it is by the Spirit that we have the mind of Christ. Therefore, the wisdom of this world holds no more weight against the wisdom of God. The truths of God are outside the understanding of the natural human.

Now, before any Christian gets cocky and thinks themselves better, notice that I said "outside" and not "beyond." Had I used "beyond" or "above" the understanding of the natural human, that would imply that I meant that we were more intelligent than someone who is without the Spirit; however, that could not be more wrong. It is not by anything we have done, but clearly by what He has done by giving us His Spirit. We should not think of our spiritual, God-given wisdom as making us better or smarter, but rather as a blessing and enlightenment into the mind of God. Keep this in perspective. We have all been natural men or women at some point in our lives.*

• This Spirit-given knowledge should impact how a Christian looks at anyone who is not saved. We must keep two things in mind as a result of this truth:

1. Christians must show love and understanding. We were natural humans at one time. There was a point where we were just as lost in the eyes of God as anyone else. If it weren't for Him saving me, I would probably be writing a blog post that praised the logic and evidence of Bill Nye right now. It is by His grace that sinners come to repentance and are clothed in the righteousness of Christ. Therefore, we must always show love to those who are not in Christ. When we do not show love, it is akin to a homeless man being given a house, car and job, only to mock other homeless people. It is insensitive at best, and arrogant, stupid and sinful at worst. How dare we be swept from drowning in the flood of our sins and then turn to look down upon those still swirling in the waters. It is disgraceful and disgusting to do so.    
2. Christians must not be pitiful. Let's be real: we get our feelings hurt when the world calls us stupid, ignorant or helpless idiots. Yes, it is upsetting to be mocked and ridiculed, but this is hardly persecution as Christ predicted. We are not martyrs when we are made fun of or looked down upon. We are not in any real danger. May that be in the future for Christians in the United States? Very likely. But it is not the case currently, and since the Bible says we will seem foolish, we need to quit acting pitiful and realize that this is to be expected. 

Ultimately, I believe that there was good that has come from the debate. Mr. Ham stated that he wanted to bring discussions on creation and evolution back to degree, and if anything, this debate has done that. This has certainly been a good topic to discuss over the past 24 hours, and I hope the discussions continue. Ultimately, I believe it is helpful to reflect on these truths and have these talks. They solidify faith and bring God's Word to the forefront of our focus. For that, I thank both Mr. Ham and Mr. Nye. May the conversation on this topic continue until the end! 

*For more on this, check out chapter two of D.A. Carson's book The Cross and Christian Ministry