Reminded by Rain

Matthew 5:38-48  "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.'  (39)  But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.  (40)  And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.  (41)  And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.  (42)  Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.  (43)  "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'  (44)  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,  (45)  so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.  (46)  For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?  (47)  And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?  (48)  You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

This passage struck me afresh this morning.  Once again I am stunned by the radical injustice we are called to participate in.  Not only was it unjust of God to forgive his children and punish his son Jesus in our stead, but he calls us to do the same in allowing ourselves to be abused and by loving what is not worthy of love.

The cross should be a constant reminder that Jesus was unjustly abused and has loved many who were not worthy of love.

The rain should remind us that God blesses both the just and the unjust.  Who are we to refuse to do the same when God is our perfect example to follow.

Intelligent Design vs. Biblical Creationism (a concise comparison)

A quick search via google found very little in the way of a reasonable comparison and nothing concise.  I’ve attempted to provide this as a Christian who believes that the literal account of creation from Genesis is true, wanting something simple to reference people to, and out of frustration at those who argue that ID is Creationism.  

One note that is important in the extreme:  While any form of belief in a creator god must be labelled as creationism, including Intelligent Design (ID), there is a clear distinction between the broad sweep of the creationism of many different religions and the Biblical Creationism that is most commonly under attack by evolutionists.

It is just not fair or honest to insist that ID is Biblical Creationism under another name.  While there may be some overlap, as there is between even Biblical Creationism and Evolution, this doesn’t mean they are the same thing.  The debate should be shifting towards refining the points of contention and not just slinging words around to muddy the waters and slur opponents positions unjustly.

The Comparison

	Intelligent Design	Biblical Creationism
Is an “old” earth compatible?	Yes	No
Is “Irreducible Complexity” a  necessary argument for  your position?	Yes	No
Is the theory of Evolution  compatible with your  position?	Yes (ID offers an explanation  for many gaps in  evolution too)	No
Does your position require  the Bible to be true	No	Yes
Does your position rely on  a different interpretation of  much of the same  evidence that the theory  of Evolution and “old earth  geology” uses?	No	Yes

A Word on The Debate
It is the final two points where the debate needs to take place between Biblical Creationism and the current Atheist/Secular Humanist position.  Anything else is missing the mark.

The questions for debate are:
1. Is the bible true?
2. Can the evidence be interpreted in a reasonable but different way?

Trust and Truth in Science and Religion

Some trust in Science, some trust in God, some trust in both.  There are truth gaps in both Science and Religion that force us to trust if we are to continue to live by it.  It is our past experiences within that realm that will inform us whether we can safely place our trust  there or not.  The same principle applies to human relationships, favourite authors, Internet providers, and a host of other fields with unknowns that we commit to based on what we already know about them.  For now, we will look at trust and truth in Science and Religion.


Is there enough truth for us to trust in what we trust in?
This is not so much a difficulty in the Science realm, because the scientific method is formed to be able to make rational sense of observation of the universe.  Any theory or hypothesis that does not square with experimental data is replaced with an updated one that does work.  It’s a clear and simple, common sense process of human exploration of the natural world.  It doesn’t always work though, as it relies on fallible people to spot the inconsistencies in a theory, and even then it might take a while for people to be willing to let that theory go, especially if they have been making good use of it for a long time.  This gives rise to the question, “How much truth has to be compromised before the trust is compromised?”

Take the case of the dinosaur bones found with blood cells preserved inside.  Actual dinosaur blood.  Read the journal article for yourself here (or here for one of the articles at www.creation.com)  It seems that any rational scientist would have to make a choice, assuming he or she holds to dinosaurs existing over 60 million years ago along with a much shorter decomposition rate for organic material.  The choice would be between which theory is wrong.  Either dinosaurs didn’t live that long ago, or blood cells decay at an impossibly slow rate under particular conditions.  Trust in that portion of science must drop away, otherwise enough trust has already been built up that the scientist would safely assume that more evidence will come to light to explain how both can work.

When it comes to the bible, people are not so willing to trust.  
If we start on the same grounds that we might start from with science, we can see that there is no difference in how we can apply our trust to the bible.  There are truth claims, some of which are obvious and easily believed and it is a wonderful resource of accurate wisdom about human nature and life principles that work.  

However, there are gaps and contradictions that don’t seem to make sense and there are claims that we can’t know anything about through “natural” means of knowing.  Yet the parts that we can believe should convince us that it is worth looking a little deeper before throwing the baby out with the bath water.  Some contradictions readily dissolve with the right context or understanding of how God is working through history.  Others are not so easy to deal with, much like the science situation above, and require a re-think of past ideas; yet there is no reason to think we should dismiss the lot.

God of the gaps
Scientists are quick to accuse believers of “invoking the god of the gaps” .  When things in the universe don’t stand up to the claims of the religion (a gap in knowledge) then a miracle or mysterious action of god is used to cover the gap.  God of the gaps can be seen as a faith that the gap is a part of god’s plan or something that we can trust Him about despite not understanding how it fits in with the rest of reality.

What many scientists don’t realise is that they use science itself as a god of their gaps.  Scientists will come across something such as the dinosaur blood cells discovery and then say that “science will discover something that explains this, it’s just a matter of time.”  This is essentially putting faith in science to cover a gap in knowledge (or a contradiction in current knowledge).

Both rely on faith/trust but for different reasons
Science builds our trust with accurate accounts of physical reality.  The bible builds our trust with accurate accounts (primarily, but not exclusively) of moral/philosophical reality.  These two different reasons make it hard to compare the trust that we place in each, but that does not mean that either is totally wrong.  When each encounters a truth that stretches the bounds of belief, the adherents to that field (science or a particular religion) must decide if that claim is too far out for that system to adopt.

As a final note, I have focused on the bible, and by implication Christianity.  This is because I am a Christian and have explored the claims of Christianity more than other religions.  After looking at the other major world religions (and some minor ones also) I decided that they didn’t match with reality enough to bother trusting.  In short, where a religion makes their god lower in stature than man or who requires sub-standard payment for mans sin, I don’t think it can be true.  That is another discussion for another time though.

Some useful links

http://carm.org/introduction-bible-difficulties-and-bible-contradictions

Reasons to trust the bible

13 Things that do not make sense (New Scientist)

Romans 12:2

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

How do we know if we are being conformed to this world?  The bible clearly lets us know that it is a bad thing to be conformed to the world’s ways of thinking and doing things so it seems like an important thing to know when we are headed this way.  Let’s take a look and see what this verse tells us about conformity to the world, and how we can pursue the alternative.

In what way are we to avoid conformity and instead by transformed?
Now, I’m pretty sure that this scripture is not speaking of issues such as whether to brush your teeth or not.  It would be a bit silly to abstain from brushing your teeth just because most people in society do this.  We get an idea of the things that are really being considered by looking at the next part of the verse and contrasting it with conformity to the world.  Instead of becoming like the world, we are commanded to be changed by renewing our minds.  This means that when we are considering conformity, it is something to do with thinking, or with philosophies, or with ideas.  

So we could say that we are meant to avoid adopting the ideas and philosophies that are common in the world, and instead become changed by consciously adopting a “new” mind.  The remainder of this verse shows what sort of mind we are to build in ourselves.

What sort of mind should we be growing?
The ideas and philosophies we adopt should not be common to the world.  Instead these ideas we are building our life around should enable us to discern what God’s will is.  So our new (renewed) mind should take into account what we know of God’s will.  Where do we find out God’s will?  In the bible, God’s revealed word to the world.  From the bible we can see how God has interacted with His people over the millennia, from which we can deduce some common principles about His will.  We can also see some direct commands from God in the flesh (Jesus Christ) and from his apostles, who were directly instructed by Jesus.  This is a good reason to regularly read the bible.  There is currently no other way to get a direct word from God that will carry the sort of power and authority that the scriptures provide.

So how do we know that we are avoiding conformity to the world?
Conveniently, the ideas and attitudes of the world are also contained within scripture.  Let me see if I can summarise what conformity to the world looks like and what the godly alternative is:

When a person becomes more and more concerned with the pursuit of their own happiness at the expense of others, and at the expense of a worshipful attitude towards God, then they are conforming to the world.  The world says that it is all about you.  The bible says that it is all about God.  If you are not loving God, by learning how to worship Him with the lifestyle that He likes, then you will be loving yourself and your own (false) wisdom about what is good.  That is conforming to the world.  When you find yourself preferring your own comfort over the difficulty of doing what you know to be right, you are also conforming to the world.  When you don’t even really care if you are conforming to the world, or are too afraid to look at your life in case you are conforming, then you are most definitely conforming to the world.

Much more could be said, with a multitude of examples, but it is easier to say what it is to avoid conformity (I only provide the above examples because sometimes people are reluctant to use their mind to think in detail about this sort of thing).  Those who avoid conformity spend time reading what God has communicated to them in the bible.  They are open to correction and changing their mind in case they have got it wrong on some part of their moral development.  This humility and willingness to try and understand more about God’s character, and to build these spiritual characteristics into their life, is what it means to avoid conformity to the world.

At the risk of harping on, the only way we can know that we are on the right track is by comparing our personal development of character to that which the bible continually tells us is good.  One such list is in Galatians chapter 5, the fruit of the Spirit:

Galatians 5:22-24  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,  (23)  gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.  (24)  And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

To actively pursue these, and see them grow in your life, is what it means to be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  To love God, and to love your neighbour.