Sitting in the hotel room this morning, I am reflecting back over Ken Ham's presentation yesterday, along with the many blessings of being able to meet with the leaders of our church body, talking with old friends, and hearing even older veterans talk about their ministry stories. In The Book of Concord, there is a line in the Smalkald Articles that talks about, "the mutual consolation of the brethren." We experienced that more at this conference than I ever remember experiencing in the past. Psalm 133 says, "Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!" It was as great blessing for Chris and me to experience some of that unity starting with receiving the Lord's Supper on Sunday evening, to prayer at Vespers, to meals, and to wrestling with the topics of the conference.
Ken Ham is the founder of the Creation Museum, which is just south of Cincinnati in Kentucky. His organization is called Answers in Genesis, and their web site is www.answersingenesis.org. He is the co-author of a book called Already Gone, which looks at why the church is losing it's younger generation. Ham also asks what triggered these 20 yr olds to walk away from the church. What he has found is that for many of these people doubts were growing in their minds and hearts that went all the way back to when they were in Middle School, or even before! Already in 4th, 5th, 6th grade seeds had been planted that would push these people - our children - away from the Church and raise doubts about their faith.
So what are the doubts that kids had? Primarily they were focused on the authority of God's Word and the foundation of our faith. Just as when the serpent tempted Eve in the Garden with the Question, "Did God really say . . . ?" The foundation of our faith is being attacked with the question, "Did God really say?" And Ham focuses on Creation and the Flood as key events that are questioned, and under attack. When kids hear the message that God created with world in 6 literal days, it doesn't jive with what they learn in the classroom of the world being millions of years old. They're not stupid, and they start asking good questions . . . questions that over the centuries, we have not done a good job answering. As a result we have allowed the message of salvation to become disconnected from its history.
How did this happen?
According to Ham it happened (and happens) when we allow Genesis to be interpreted from a secular view instead of a biblical view. Somehow we have been presented with the idea that scientists are neutral, and they are the arbiters of truth in our world, but people are never neutral. In fact in Matthew 12:30, Jesus says, "Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters." Science itself - as the observation of the world and the gathering of facts and data - may be neutral, but the interpretation of those facts are not. (And don't get the idea that I am trying to blame a bunch of evil scientists for bashing the Bible. I'm not. I'm blaming us as Christians for not questioning their worldview or presuppositions, and in the process saying, "Okay, we'll give up the Bible (which God says is the Sword of the Spirit, our only weapon) and fight with worldly weapons.")
As Christians we have been called out of darkness into God's light. We see things and know things that those who do not believe in Jesus cannot see or know because of God's Spirit at work in us. When we look back at the beginning, we know that God was active and created all things. Why? Because we've seen His finger prints, or His signature on things? No. We know because He told us He did it.
How one interprets the data the world presents us have everything to do with whether one accepts God's testimony or not.
In the meantime, our public schools have tried to take a stance of neutrality. Let me ask, are the science books used in our public school classrooms neutral on the topic of creation? (There are many wonderful Christian teachers in our public schools, I am not bashing them.) Look at your 10th grader's biology book, or your 6th grader's science book. Is it neutral? Even if they go to a private or Christian school, take a look. What does Matthew 12:30 say? Is it neutral? Probably not.
We are not connecting the truth of God's Word to the experience of life. As we look at anthropology, cosmology, biology, etc. we are allowing the scientists to dictate what is true. Instead of educating our children in such a way as to establish a solid biblical foundation in their lives so they can refute the worldviews presented in their textbooks and by some teachers and professors, we have allowed those worldviews to be treated as authoritative, leaving our children confused at best, cynical, and doubtful of the veracity of our faith.
Evolutionist and Creationist have the same world and the same facts. The difference is in our starting point and presuppositions. The call for us is to honor God's Word as we interpret those facts in the face of Man's Word.
As this battle of worldviews and faiths (because make no mistake, it takes faith to believe in the Big Bang Theory and Macro-evolution), the culture we live in has changed dramatically. Back in the 1940's and 1950's in the U.S. almost everyone believed that the world was created. The idea that there was a creator God that we were accountable to was common, and if you weren't a Christian, then you were probably a Deist. In the meantime, generations have grown up being taught that the world was not created, but came into existence through random chance, and that we ourselves are merely the result of molecular interplay and chemical reactions. More and more there is no belief in a creator god, and therefore no accountability to him/her/it. Therefore there is no such thing as sin. And if there is no such thing as sin, what do we need a Savior or the Cross for?
By giving up creation we have allowed the foundation of our faith - salvation by grace through faith - be damaged in the minds of this generation. And as Psalm 11:3 says, "If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?" We have allowed the teachings of men to define how we understand how we came into being. We need to learn to defend God's Word and allow it to define how we understand how we came into being.
So, yes, I believe God created the world in six literal days. Yes, I believe that God brought a flood upon the earth to punish mankind's wickedness that covered the whole world. Yes, I believe there was a Tower of Babel and that God confused our speech and scattered mankind over the face of the earth. On top of than that, I believe that we can logically and rationally defend those stances, and we need to learn how. We also need to teach our children to defend those beliefs.
It's impossible to wrap 5 hours of presentation into a short little blog like this, but I want to just conclude with a quote from a scientist named Werner Gitt.
When Crick and Watson discovered the double helix form of DNA, they declared that they had proven that God was not necessary for creation and that we are a series of chemical reactions. As we have gone deeper into our study of DNA we have seen that DNA is a code that carries information from generation to generation of a species. This information and the amazing way it is handed down moved Gitt to proclaim, "DNA cries out, "In the beginning, God created . . . ."
Ken Ham is the founder of the Creation Museum, which is just south of Cincinnati in Kentucky. His organization is called Answers in Genesis, and their web site is www.answersingenesis.org. He is the co-author of a book called Already Gone, which looks at why the church is losing it's younger generation. Ham also asks what triggered these 20 yr olds to walk away from the church. What he has found is that for many of these people doubts were growing in their minds and hearts that went all the way back to when they were in Middle School, or even before! Already in 4th, 5th, 6th grade seeds had been planted that would push these people - our children - away from the Church and raise doubts about their faith.
So what are the doubts that kids had? Primarily they were focused on the authority of God's Word and the foundation of our faith. Just as when the serpent tempted Eve in the Garden with the Question, "Did God really say . . . ?" The foundation of our faith is being attacked with the question, "Did God really say?" And Ham focuses on Creation and the Flood as key events that are questioned, and under attack. When kids hear the message that God created with world in 6 literal days, it doesn't jive with what they learn in the classroom of the world being millions of years old. They're not stupid, and they start asking good questions . . . questions that over the centuries, we have not done a good job answering. As a result we have allowed the message of salvation to become disconnected from its history.
How did this happen?
According to Ham it happened (and happens) when we allow Genesis to be interpreted from a secular view instead of a biblical view. Somehow we have been presented with the idea that scientists are neutral, and they are the arbiters of truth in our world, but people are never neutral. In fact in Matthew 12:30, Jesus says, "Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters." Science itself - as the observation of the world and the gathering of facts and data - may be neutral, but the interpretation of those facts are not. (And don't get the idea that I am trying to blame a bunch of evil scientists for bashing the Bible. I'm not. I'm blaming us as Christians for not questioning their worldview or presuppositions, and in the process saying, "Okay, we'll give up the Bible (which God says is the Sword of the Spirit, our only weapon) and fight with worldly weapons.")
As Christians we have been called out of darkness into God's light. We see things and know things that those who do not believe in Jesus cannot see or know because of God's Spirit at work in us. When we look back at the beginning, we know that God was active and created all things. Why? Because we've seen His finger prints, or His signature on things? No. We know because He told us He did it.
How one interprets the data the world presents us have everything to do with whether one accepts God's testimony or not.
In the meantime, our public schools have tried to take a stance of neutrality. Let me ask, are the science books used in our public school classrooms neutral on the topic of creation? (There are many wonderful Christian teachers in our public schools, I am not bashing them.) Look at your 10th grader's biology book, or your 6th grader's science book. Is it neutral? Even if they go to a private or Christian school, take a look. What does Matthew 12:30 say? Is it neutral? Probably not.
We are not connecting the truth of God's Word to the experience of life. As we look at anthropology, cosmology, biology, etc. we are allowing the scientists to dictate what is true. Instead of educating our children in such a way as to establish a solid biblical foundation in their lives so they can refute the worldviews presented in their textbooks and by some teachers and professors, we have allowed those worldviews to be treated as authoritative, leaving our children confused at best, cynical, and doubtful of the veracity of our faith.
Evolutionist and Creationist have the same world and the same facts. The difference is in our starting point and presuppositions. The call for us is to honor God's Word as we interpret those facts in the face of Man's Word.
As this battle of worldviews and faiths (because make no mistake, it takes faith to believe in the Big Bang Theory and Macro-evolution), the culture we live in has changed dramatically. Back in the 1940's and 1950's in the U.S. almost everyone believed that the world was created. The idea that there was a creator God that we were accountable to was common, and if you weren't a Christian, then you were probably a Deist. In the meantime, generations have grown up being taught that the world was not created, but came into existence through random chance, and that we ourselves are merely the result of molecular interplay and chemical reactions. More and more there is no belief in a creator god, and therefore no accountability to him/her/it. Therefore there is no such thing as sin. And if there is no such thing as sin, what do we need a Savior or the Cross for?
By giving up creation we have allowed the foundation of our faith - salvation by grace through faith - be damaged in the minds of this generation. And as Psalm 11:3 says, "If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?" We have allowed the teachings of men to define how we understand how we came into being. We need to learn to defend God's Word and allow it to define how we understand how we came into being.
So, yes, I believe God created the world in six literal days. Yes, I believe that God brought a flood upon the earth to punish mankind's wickedness that covered the whole world. Yes, I believe there was a Tower of Babel and that God confused our speech and scattered mankind over the face of the earth. On top of than that, I believe that we can logically and rationally defend those stances, and we need to learn how. We also need to teach our children to defend those beliefs.
It's impossible to wrap 5 hours of presentation into a short little blog like this, but I want to just conclude with a quote from a scientist named Werner Gitt.
When Crick and Watson discovered the double helix form of DNA, they declared that they had proven that God was not necessary for creation and that we are a series of chemical reactions. As we have gone deeper into our study of DNA we have seen that DNA is a code that carries information from generation to generation of a species. This information and the amazing way it is handed down moved Gitt to proclaim, "DNA cries out, "In the beginning, God created . . . ."
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