My very first “speaking engagement” happened when I was 8 and was voted as “Counselor of the Day” for my cabin at First Presbyterian Church Camp in Ligonier, PA. I was assigned evening devotions and devoted that time to trying to reconcile evolution and the Bible. It went about as well as one might expect. Since that time I have come to embrace a rather ordinary and straightforward young earth creationism (YEC) position. I believe God made the universe and everything in it in the space of 6 ordinary days likely less than 10,000 years ago. The shift was as slow and steady as uniformitarian geology. My view, however, locked into place when my seminary Old Testament professor, Dr. Richard Pratt, taught the class that in order to understand what a text means you first must seek out what the original author intended to communicate to the original audience.
Imagine then, if you will, Moses telling the stories of the book of Genesis to the people of the Exodus. He says, “On the first day God…” all the way through that first week. I asked myself a simple question- what would his audience have heard? Would they have thought, “Cool, look at this poetic element in Moses’ story and that typological symbol. That must mean it didn’t happen the way he said.”? No. Would they have thought, “When he says ‘day’ he must mean age or epoch, because of the starlight.”? I don’t think so.
The idea that elements of poetry or typology cancel out historicity is, well, silly. It’s true, for instance, that the plagues God burdened Egypt with through Moses were polemical assaults of the false gods of the Egyptians. Does that mean the water didn’t turn red? Does it mean the frogs didn’t croak? Of course not. God puts all sorts of elements of story into His story. He is the master storyteller. What makes it all so amazing, however, is that He writes non-fiction. Every bit of His story is brought to you live, from planet earth.
I am grateful for the faithful work of faithful scientists who demonstrate scientific evidence for creation and a young earth. I’m grateful for the myriad ministries that produce such work. At the end of the day, however, I believe in young earth creationism because I believe the text demands it. I’m no scientist. Nor am I any sort of Hebrew scholar. Whatever my training might be I am at least this, an ordinary person with ordinary ears and eyes. I hear what I believe Joshua and Caleb and Miriam and Achan and all the rest, the good, the bad and the ugly, when Moses spoke, that God made the world in six days.
As with all secondary issues, this is not one that will determine a person’s ultimate eternity. Heaven will have plenty of saints who denied young earth creationism and hell plenty who affirmed it. There are trajectories and implications for all the errors in all our ideologies. And, as with all secondary issues, that it is not a gospel issue doesn’t mean it’s unimportant, the equivalent of debating how many cherubim can do the twist on a pin’s head. It is an issue worthy of careful study, robust conversation. It is not an issue worth dividing God’s people over.
It’s time once again to remind you all of the RC Sproul Jr. Principle of Hermeneutics. If you already know it, I mean, really really know it, like someone who really knows something, feel free to skip to the next paragraph. The principle says, “When you see people doing something really, really stupid in the Bible, do not say to yourself, ‘How can they be so stupid?’ Instead say to yourself, ‘How am I stupid just like them?’” God doesn’t show us the sins of His people to make us feel better about ourselves but to be better informed about ourselves. The Word is a mirror.
Can you imagine being a literal slave? Can you imagine also being the child of a slave? And a grandchild? All the way back for 400 years? Your whole family are slaves, and your neighbors are slaves. One day God hears your cries and brings the powerful nation the world had ever known to its knees, and you are free. This same God promises to take you to a land almost as wonderful as Eden and to give you the homes and vineyards of those currently living there. Would you be happy? Would you walk around all day every day with a big grin on your face? Would you be so cheerful that normal people crossed the street to avoid talking to you?
No, you’d be one of the normal people doing what normal people do, grumbling and complaining. How do I know? Two reasons. First, that’s what God’s people did during the Exodus. Second, it’s what God’s people do now, as He leads us out of slavery and to a place even more wonderful than Eden. My stars we are the worst.
Maybe this would help us. What if we tried, remembering that every good and perfect gift is form above (James 1: 17), to imagine our lives without some of the gifts we take for granted? What, for instance, would your life be like with no heating or air conditioning? What if all you had to eat was bread? Imagine no showers, no washer and dryer, no cars, busses or trains. Imagine you had no job and no income. What if there was no government at all? What if, most hideously at all, He left you to your own devices, if He removed His restraining hand from you?
Notice something about this list. These are all quite “ordinary” things. The very things we take for granted. You may have a restored British roadster that every time you look at it you smile and give thanks. You might have rose bushes that are your delight, or a diamond ring. You might have a title and a bank account that you thank God for. That’s good. You should. But without those special things we would still have all the special things that we no longer see as special. Giving thanks for your most exciting Christmas gift doesn’t cover a failure to give thanks for every Christmas gift.
This year this is what I’m asking for- that I would be given the gift of gratitude. That I would be restored to the joy of my hot shower, that I would praise Him for the grace of food on my table, that I would shout to the heavens in thankfulness for my beloved and extraordinary bride and the life we live together. And if He should so bless, I’d love to see me and the rest of God’s people better see ourselves in the folly of His people, and in the love He has for them.
Rocket fuel burns fast and hot, but it doesn’t burn long. The same is true of prideful, moral indignation. It burns fast because we live in a world not only of sin, but of sinners. Ignition is not a problem. It burns hot, in a manner of speaking, for the same reason. That is, I find it easy to become indignant, because of my own sin. My indignation over your sin allows me to cover my sin. As long as I am sputtering in wonder over how you could do that, I have no time, energy or ability to consider what I have done. “How could you!?!” trumps, “What did I…” The brightness of the burning rocket fuel blinds my own eyes, and the eyes of others, against my own sin.
Indignation, however, cannot burn long. While our sin is rather abundant, it is eventually likewise rather ordinary, pedestrian even. After a brief time of twisting the words and actions of the object of our indignation, after assuming motives and judging them, after convicting your victim of all that is evil in your imagination, sooner or later you’re left with, “And another thing. He feeds his dog generic dog food!! Generic I tell you. That stuff that’s deficient in protein, and abundant in ground horse bones. That no good scum not only hates dogs and horses, he’s cheaper than a very, very cheap person!!!”
That’s where our indignation can get both embarrassing and lonely. Indignation always looks for partners. I tell you about how awful he is, so that you can join me in my outrage party. Eventually, however, one of us decides it’s time to go home and get some sleep. Now what do we do? Someone has to give up and the other one is left holding the bag. Consider, for example, the web junk of orphaned attack blogs. The indignant take their indignation public, inviting all the world in to look at the purported sins of another. The blog author rants, raves and rails. Others come to visit, and join in the assault. Cross posting and linking feed the beast and the rant-meister rejoices in the good news from Google diagnostics. Then it all dies. Either people stop coming, or the author stops posting. Eventually everyone moves on because the victim, strangely, never confesses to being the anti-Christ. And the accusers grow weary in their do-gooding. Or, as is more often the case, someone creates a different attack blog with bigger names in its crosshairs, and draws all the indignant away.
Unlike the media ancestors of this stuff, the tabloids and sundry forms of yellow journalism, this web stuff stays up there. Like derelict satellites in space, these blogs stay up in orbit, and from rare time to rare time, thanks to google, attract a new visitor. Said visitor, ignorant that the rest of the world has moved on, gets his or her knickers in a twist, joins in the long dead indignation, and then sits alone listening to the echoes mixing with the crickets chirping.
We yet have so much to learn about the message of this media that is the internet. Worse still, we still don’t understand ourselves. If we can’t stay indignant, perhaps we shouldn’t be getting indignant. If someone is inviting us to share his indignation, perhaps we should ask for a lifetime commitment first. Better still, maybe we should save our indignation for that special someone- ourselves.
I once worked in an office that was quite caught up in a then well-known book. The E-Myth was a business book, written by Michael Gerber. His thesis, as I recall, was that successful businesses are those that learn to franchise themselves, after turning themselves into turnkey operations. The receptionist, like most people at the office, was reading the book, and she asked for my opinion. I opined in this manner, “I suspect, as with most business books, that whatever good one may find therein is common sense. Whatever one may find that is not common sense is likely not very good.”
The same holds true for the church, and her sundry strategies pouring forth from the program factory. Consider the altar call. Precious few of us, I suspect, would want to defend the whole clichéd, “the busses will wait while we play fifteen more verses of Just as I Am.” But, a case might be made for say, calling on the congregation to repent and believe. A case could be made for giving opportunity for people to come into the kingdom publicly, and for others to recommit their lives. A case could be made for coming forward for prayer. When you look at it this way, suddenly it looks both like like the ancient church. They likely had an “altar call” every week wherein everyone, after hearing gospel preaching, came forward. We call it celebrating the Lord’s Supper.
I had a similar experience in a church I was a part of earlier in my life. I was heading for the sanctuary, only to have an earnest young man, caught up in the grip of some evangelical program, ask me an odd question. “Do you,” he asked, “have an accountability group?” I smiled and said to him, “Well, I have friends, if that’s what you mean” and went on into worship. There is no idea so simple and straightforward that we evangelicals can’t build a program out of it.
Mega-churches, of course, didn’t invent friendships. They didn’t invent the plain biblical notion that we are to encourage one another on to good works. They didn’t invent the idea that we are to confess our sins one to another. They didn’t invent the idea that we are called to love our neighbors. From my perspective these things come together not in this or that program, but in healthy relationships in churches, churches small enough where everybody knows your name.
Which is why we have no need for “small group ministries.” What we need is a joyful commitment to the practice of hospitality. We should invite folks into our homes, and visit the homes of others. There should be no rules for this. We don’t need a dinner coordinator that makes each family play musical chairs with each other family, all while carrying around a casserole if your last name begins with A through G, and a dessert if R through Z. Instead we should share table fellowship freely and happily.
I suspect that when mega-churches build these programs what they are trying to do is undo their own nature, to in some way stop being a mega-church. I am sympathetic to that sentiment. My suggestion, however, would be not to build more programs, but to build fewer mega-churches. When we simply obey what God has revealed to us, we have no need to make up programs. And we find blessing.
