Scary thoughts

We listened to a wonderful sermon yesterday morning. Our pastor--actually, our former senior pastor--preached on or from (perhaps more accurately, "inspired by"--but in the sense of "provided some excuses to touch on various themes by reference to") 2 Timothy 4:9-18.

Basic outline:

• v. 10--"Demas has deserted me"--The Danger of Defection: We need to be willing to come back to the Lord if we have deserted Him.
   
• v. 11--"Luke is with me"--The Value of Christian Friendship: We need to be willing to be friends and enter into fellowship--true, deep, searching fellowship--with brothers and sisters in Christ.
   
• v. 11--"Mark is helpful to me"--The Necessity of Forgiveness (based on reference to how upset Paul had been at John Mark in the past that Paul actually split with Barnabas, his long-time ministry partner, over the man [see Acts 15:36-41]): We need to forgive.
   
• v. 14--"Alexander did me a great deal of harm"--Beware of Bitterness: --Kind of a follow-on to the former point about forgiveness.
   
• v. 17--"the Lord stood at my side"--The Constancy of Christ: Jesus is always faithful.

Two particularly memorable quotes or stories within the sermon:

From the Fourth Point (about Bitterness):

• "The Devil has no happy old men or women. He keeps feeding them poison. [The poison of bitterness.]"

And, from the First Point (about Defection and the need for Repentance):

• The story of Robert Robinson, author of "Come, Thou Fount of every blessing":
  

  Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
  Tune my heart to sing Thy grace
  Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
  Call for songs of loudest praise. . . .
  
  O to grace how great a debtor
  Daily I’m constrained to be!
  Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
  Bind my wandering heart to Thee. . . .

  Our pastor told a story about Robinson--about how, long after he wrote this hymn, he himself wandered far from God. And then one day, while riding in a coach, a woman across from him, reading in a book, asked Robinson to read a passage.
  
  It turned out the words she asked him to read were his very own . . . from that very hymn!
  

  Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
  Prone to leave the God I love;
  Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
  Seal it for Thy courts above.

  Cut to the quick, Robinson repented of his wandering and turned back to the Lord.

I was inspired by this latter story. Yes, Lord! I want and need to repent. I want and need to "come back" to You. I don't want to wander. (But, O! Lord! How I feel it!)

I determined to find out more about Robinson.

The first biography I happened to read, written in rather stilted, old-fashioned English, mentioned nothing of the incident, nor even hinted that such an incident could have occurred. Absolutely nothing about Robinson wandering at any point in his life after he gave his life to Jesus.

The second one referenced the incident, but rather differently than did our pastor:

Prone to wander Robert was. He left the Methodists and became a Baptist. Later on, having become a close friend of Joseph Priestly, he was accused of becoming a Unitarian. Priestly and other Unitarians denied the full divinity of Christ. However, in a sermon he preached after he supposedly became a Unitarian, Robinson clearly declared that Jesus was God, and added, "Christ in Himself is a person infinitely lovely as both God and man."

Robert died on . . . June 9, 1790. Had he left the God he loved? A widely-told, but unverifiable, story says that one day as he was riding in a stagecoach a lady asked him what he thought of the hymn she was humming. He responded, "Madam, I am the poor unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago, and I would give a thousand worlds, if I had them, to enjoy the feelings I had then."

Hmmmm.

So, nice story as it is, it may be nothing more than a Parson Weems'-style "George Washington cut down the cherry tree" kind of historically false, but morally encouraging tale.

Well, strange as all of that was, for some reason--I can't think why--yesterday afternoon, many hours before I got around to looking up Robinson's biography (this morning), I got thinking about stories in the Old Testament, and I began wondering: in essence, could many of the stories in the Old Testament be morally encouraging, but historically false tales?

I know, this isn't a new question. I've vaguely thought about it before. But it seems to be knocking with increasing insistence upon my brain.

What if? What are the ramifications? Can a morally encouraging story teach true Truth while itself not being, at root, a true story? Can stories of heroes--the legends of King Arthur, for example, or the stories of Sir Lancelot: Can they teach true Truth while themselves not being true--at least, not true beyond some very surface level?

Is it possible that our Jewish forebears in the faith, men (and, I expect, women) who interfaced with the real, true God: Is it possible that they conveyed true Truth about God and about how God operates in the world while telling morally compelling tales that aren't "really" true in detail?

There. I said it. I at least formulated the question and got it "out of my mouth" or "out of my fingertips."

I intend to return to this question--or the related group of questions, in subsequent posts.

"Failure to uphold any part of the Bible ultimately undermines trust in the whole."

I've been sorting through old papers and came across a special insert in one of the Answers in Genesis Answers magazines from last year. (Can't recall which issue. I removed the insert for future reference.)

The insert is titled "The Descent of Man" and suggests that Martin Luther held a pure view of Scripture: we are to "accept all of God's Word." Since Luther, however, men like Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), Thomas Chalmers (1760-1847), and Hugh Miller (1802-1856) compromised their interpretations of various parts of the Bible so that, today, many "deny all of God's Word."

And the alleged steps in this descent of man?

• Francis Bacon . . . "argued that the Bible is not needed to understand the world."
   
• Galileo Galilei . . . "argued that one can interpret the Bible based on science."
   
• Thomas Chalmers . . . "popularized the gap theory (millions of years passed between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2)."
   
• Hugh Miller . . . "popularized the day-age view of 'days' in Genesis 1.

As a result of these men's "compromise," the document urges,

Charles Templeton (1915-2001), once an evangelist alongside Billy Graham, later embraced evolutionary history over millions of years while attending Princeton Seminary; he died in unbelief.

And so, as the subtitle of the document declares, "Failure to uphold any part of the Bible ultimately undermines trust in the whole."

"Who are we to question God's account of creation?" asks the front cover of the document. "'Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding,' God says in Job 38:4."

And then, on the back cover: "Does God's Word trump man's ideas? -or- Do man's ideas trump God's Word? When faced with questions about current science models, many Christians place their faith in man's ideas above God's Word. Yet the search for understanding must always begin with God's Word. 'The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge' (Proverbs 1:7)."

Question: Do attempts to align what we might call "secular knowledge" with what we might call "spiritual" (or Scriptural) knowledge necessarily and unavoidably imply compromise?

Question: Suppose we "understand something wrong." Does that unavoidably imply that we are headed down the slope to unbelief?

Question (as asked before): Is Answers in Genesis itself compromised with unbelief, having permitted modern science to shape its understanding of what, prior to Galileo, was the incontrovertibly clear statement of Joshua 10? On what ground can they pretend they are not on the "slippery slope" to unbelief as Gerardus Bouw urges?

Question: The back cover says the search for understanding must always begin with God's Word. Must it end there as well? (Based on what else is said on the back cover, it sounds as if Answers in Genesis wants us to believe--and act on the belief--that the search for understanding must, indeed, end with God's Word as well. There is no room for scientific input into our understanding of Scripture. Indeed, from the AiG website itself: "Scripture interprets Scripture. . . . Scripture itself is our best theology professor in helping us understand and apply Scripture. . . . What to pray: seek repentance in your life for times when the words of men--even good men--have become more important to you than the Word of God."

Things I've known . . .

I've been at least vaguely aware of the things that Jonathan Dudley states in a recent Huffington Post article. But he provides some details and background of which I was wholly unaware.

Probably worth keeping in mind . . . and, from a young-earth creationist perspective, figuring out how to respond to what he says:

In theory, if not always in practice, past Christian theologians valued science out of the belief that God created the world scientists study. Augustine castigated those who made the Bible teach bad science, John Calvin argued that Genesis reflects a commoner's view of the physical world, and the Belgic confession likened scripture and nature to two books written by the same author.

These beliefs encouraged past Christians to accept the best science of their day, and these beliefs persisted even into the evangelical tradition. As Princeton Seminary's Charles Hodge, widely considered the father of modern evangelical theology, put it in 1859: "Nature is as truly a revelation of God as the Bible; and we only interpret the Word of God by the Word of God when we interpret the Bible by science."

In this analysis, Christians must accept sound science, not because they don't believe God created the world, but precisely because they do.

The question is: Is macro-evolution good science?

Dudley says it is.

Why? On what grounds?

Because no amount of talk about "worldviews" and "presuppositions" can change a simple fact: [young-earth] creationism has failed to provide an alternative explanation for the vast majority of evidence explained by evolution.

It has failed to explain why birds still carry genes to make teeth, whales to make legs, and humans to make tails.

It has failed to explain why the fossil record proposed by modern scientists can be used to make precise and accurate predictions about the location of transition fossils.

It has failed to explain why the fossil record demonstrates a precise order, with simple organisms in the deepest rocks and more complex ones toward the surface.

It has failed to explain why today's animals live in the same geographical area as fossils of similar species.

It has failed to explain why, if carnivorous dinosaurs lived at the same time as modern animals, we don't find the fossils of modern animals in the stomachs of fossilized dinosaurs.

It has failed to explain the broken genes that litter the DNA of humans and apes but are functional in lower vertebrates.

It has failed to explain how the genetic diversity we observe among humans could have arisen in a few thousand years from two biological ancestors.

Who should you trust? Who CAN you trust? Separatism and degrees of separation. Reforming Fundamentalism--Part III

I ran across an article two weeks ago on a fundamentalist website as I was looking for information about some of the people I count as spiritual ancestors. I have run across these kinds of articles in the past. I figure it is time I at least acknowledge their existence and say something about them.

As so many other such articles, The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From the Tree attempts to paint all efforts at Christian unity--working together for the advance of the Kingdom of God worldwide--as virtual blasphemy. No one who refuses to be quite as "holy" ("separate") as those who write these articles escapes the brush. Thus, as I have discovered,

Karl Barth more satisfying than the evangelical theology in which I was raised?

I referred last Monday to a comment by Kim in MT. "My world and my God are much larger now that I'm not trying to do the mental gymnastics to make them fit in the young earth, evangelical box," she had written.

Though it dismayed me, her comment did not come as too much of a surprise.

But I was blown away a few hours after my post when I received a note from Perry Marshall, a friend of mine, a guy I recognize as an outspoken and zealous advocate for Christian faith both publicly and privately.

I think you may be outgrowing both evangelicalism and fundamentalism. Congratulations.

???!!!!???

Discovering my spiritual heritage: Reforming Fundamentalism--Part II

When I received my copy of Reforming Fundamentalism, I began reading from the very beginning--the Preface, the Introduction, and then the body. Already, at the Preface, I was impressed with Marsden's candor and, frankly, insight:

Inevitably one's point of view will shape one's work. Since it is impossible to be objective, it is imperative to be fair. . . . I work from a particular Christian commitment that makes me generally sympathetic to what Fuller Seminary has been trying to do since its inception. At the same time, I have also tried to step aside from my sympathies. I think the primary justification for having historians these days is that they can provide critical perspectives, especially on traditions that they take seriously. Partisanship, then, although to some degree inevitable, is to be suppressed for the purposes of such historical understanding.

This approach will not entirely please those who see Christian history as adequately understood only as a battle in which it is perfectly clear who stands with the forces of light and who with the forces of darkness. I do not have any difficulty with the concept of the Christian life as a battle; I do not believe, however, that we can identify the forces of light and darkness so easily. My world is filled with ambiguities. Even with the light of Scripture we are very limited humans who see as through a glass darkly.

--p. xi

But it was as I began the Introduction that my heart leapt. I "couldn't believe" whose names I was reading as being associated with Fuller Seminary from the very beginning.

Introduction: Reforming Fundamentalism--Part I

I've mentioned this book a couple of times already: Reforming Fundamentalism by George M. Marsden. Sub-title of the book: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism.

Perhaps you are unfamiliar with Fuller Seminary. I know I was. Maybe I had heard the name, but I paid it no attention until Sarita and I moved to Pasadena, California, at the beginning of 1984. In 1984 and after, however, living in the same community where Fuller is located and, probably more importantly, working for Dr. Ralph Winter, a former professor of the seminary's School of World Mission, I couldn't escape hearing about the school and becoming aware of some of its strengths and weaknesses.

I came to understand that Fuller had undergone a major shift in its commitment to biblical inerrancy sometime prior to our arrival in Pasadena. And, for some reason, I also came to understand that Fuller considered itself--and still considers itself--an evangelical seminary.

Order from Chaos

This is definitely "out there" as far as this blog is concerned. But it's at least tangentially related by theme. (See Genesis 1--where God brings order from chaos.)

I post this, however, "just" because of my personal pleasure in the art of ambigrams or what I once called visual palindromes and similar curiosities.

Wonder at beauty . . .

My brother's co-worker Cecilia recently (two weeks ago) received the truly awesome gift of a new pancreas and kidney. Her recovery has been astonishingly smooth--far beyond expectation. And she is, as she says, "flying high" for the last few days . . . which led her to send a letter of thanks (to those who prayed for her) and praise (to God).

"Please, accept this video song as a little something from me to you," she wrote. "Take a moment to listen and perhaps you’ll get a glimpse of what all I experienced." And she included a link to the following video as presented on Andie's Isle. (Andie's version includes Brian Doerksen's lyrics shown line by line at the bottom of the video frame.)

Why I'm inclined to believe (or at least want to PURSUE) an old-earth interpretation and disinclined to believe (or pursue) a young-earth interpretation

Oh, boy! "The other shoe."

I've written about why I'd prefer to believe--or at least pursue--a young-earth perspective. Now let me put the same question the other way around: Why bother with an old-earth interpretation of Scripture? And why prefer to stay away from a young-earth perspective?

Here are some of the things that come to mind in this regard.

I am inclined at least to pursue information about an old-earth perspective . . .

• Because I have found that

Why I'm inclined to believe (or at least want to PURSUE) a young-earth interpretation and disinclined to believe (or pursue) an old-earth interpretation

My conversation partner a couple of weeks ago asked something like, "John: Why are you spending so much time and energy on this issue? Neither the young-earthers or the old-earthers would ever claim it is central to salvation!"

He also said, "Are you letting this kind of study take the joy out of your life?"

Reality: This area has already taken a bunch of joy out of my life. As I admitted in a previous post, it led me at least to contemplate suicide for a few minutes, and then, not wanting to do that, social suicide--"disappearing" without a trace and without notice to family or friends. That was ten years ago. On the morning of 9/11/2001, actually. A couple of hours before the planes began flying into the buildings in New York City.

No. This path I've been on has been no fun. No joy. In fact, it has carried me through an extremely long and painful "Dark Night of the Soul."

But/and that is part of the reason I've been strongly inclined to believe (or at least to want to pursue) a young-earth interpretation of Scripture: Because

Meteorology--Another look

Yesterday morning, as I normally do, I joined a few men at our church for a weekly prayer time. And we prayed about the recent spate of violent wind storms on the eastern seaboard of the United States. We prayed for the victims. We prayed for our country. We also prayed--actually, I led in this prayer--that if this is God's judgment upon us for any of our country's numerous sins, from our prideful pursuit of financial and material wealth at all costs, including the poisoning of our environment, to our willfulness and ignorance of [as in, willfully ignoring] God, to . . . well, any of dozens of sins that could be chalked up against us . . . we prayed for God's mercy.

And even if these are not God's judgments upon us, still: we prayed for mercy.

As we prayed these things, I got thinking of what I wrote a few days ago about meteorology. I wrote at that time:

When the Bible speaks of the storehouses for rain and snow and wind and the windows of heaven and so forth (Genesis 7:11; 8:2; Job 38:22; etc.) . . . and when it tells us how God controls these storehouses and windows (Job 38:22; Jeremiah 10:13; and so forth), is it not touching on matters pertaining to nature (as well as, on occasion, history)? And assuming this is the case, then when meteorologists speak of high- and low-pressure systems and evaporation and transpiration and sublimation and precipitation, are they not attempting to "disprove the teaching of Scripture or (to have their extrabiblical views) hold priority over" Scripture? If someone wants to say that this is surely not the case, then I would like that person to explain, on Scriptural grounds alone, how and why he or she is right and I am wrong!

And as I thought once more about what I had written, I got thinking that I should come back and say a bit more about this matter of meteorology and science and Scripture.

The impact of an evolutionary view on our doctrine of Scripture

I found this morning that Steve Douglas had anticipated much of what I spent four days researching for my post last night.

I encourage you to read Steve's The trouble with intramural accommodationism.

I observe people try to sell other believers on evolutionary theory without openly acknowledging the ways in which their own rejection of the idea of a single pair of progenitors has resulted in an often subtle yet usually profound modification of how they understand the Bible to work. I, too, have been tempted [to posit] a (purely hypothetical) scenario in which accepting that early Genesis was unhistorical does not result in a revised or nuanced bibliology[. I]f not outright dishonest, I feel that this approach is . . . misleading, perhaps even disingenuous, and a setup for problems later.

Yes! Agreed! Which is why

Why are certain questions forbidden? --Part 2--The authority of Scripture, Part II

This post is exceptionally way too long and convoluted. But I want to post it anyway. I have spent too much time on this relatively small portion of my larger project.

So, recognizing my verbosity, please let me summarize, here, up front, what I attempt to cover and attempt to say. Then dig in!

1. I believe that young-earth creationists "have it right" when they fear that old-earth creationist viewpoints tend to wreak havoc with many traditional statements of faith concerning the authority of Scripture. An old-earth view does not permit followers to look at Scripture in quite the same way they did if they read (or when they read) the Scriptures from a young-earth perspective.
    
2. Young-earth creationists are nothing if they are not passionate to uphold the authority of Scripture!
    
3. Evangelical old-earth creationists, too, are passionate to uphold the authority of Scripture. But they find faults in the old formulas. They are convinced that the formulas need some adjustment. Or (depending on the specific statement of faith under discussion) they sense that certain interpretations of the confessional standards may need to change. (Not in all cases. But some.)
    
4. While young-earthers "man the heights" with their staunch defense of even the narrowest confessional standards when it comes to the authority of Scripture, they fail to realize--or, perhaps, they realize but are unwilling to acknowledge--that they apply their vaunted standards unevenly or inconsistently. So, ultimately, the standards become no standards at all. Not really.

Past tense/present tense

I had a great conversation with one of my coworkers Friday afternoon, just minutes after I made my last post.

"I noticed how you wrote everything in the past tense," he said. "And it bothered me. I kept wondering when the 'other shoe' would drop."

I laughed. "I don't know that I permitted one shoe to drop!"

But I knew what he was talking about. I had felt the same even as I wrote the post. I was concerned how people might interpret my use of the past tense: "I was taught," "I said," "I dared," "I learned," "I knew," "I was committed," "I believed," "I . . . confessed," "I was convinced," "I planned," and so forth. -- "What about today? What are you thinking and feeling and believing today?"

"Where are you going, John?" he asked. "If you are heading toward faith, I need to hear that. If you are heading toward shipwreck of your faith, I want to hear that, too, because, frankly, I don't want to listen to it.

Why are certain questions forbidden? --Part 1--The authority of Scripture

Several posts back, I said that "next time (Lord willing)," I would talk about two forbidden questions. I even named them.

But I didn't talk about them the next time, nor even the time after that. And I realize that, even today, I am unable, yet, to address the questions themselves, because there are more fundamental issues I have to work through.

One of the key issues: Why are the questions even forbidden? And who is doing the forbidding?

Truth: I have been partially at fault, myself, for forbidding myself to ask them. And the reason I have forbidden myself to ask them is because of some very fundamental doctrine, teaching, beliefs that I have held from my very earliest childhood.

Is truth knowable?

Anne Elliott graciously sought to call me out on some of the things I wrote on Wednesday. Not only did she write a brief comment on my post, but she wrote a full-blown post on her own blog.

I really appreciate her taking the time. It provided me a wonderful opportunity to better understand some of the things that have disturbed her (and many of her readers, I'm sure!), and it spurred me to dig deeper and seek to speak more clearly about issues I've been groping toward for too long.

Exegesis and science

I just realized that my post yesterday failed to acknowledge or make good use of a comment Dr. Danny Faulkner of Answers in Genesis made that is very much in line with what I quoted from Dr. Menninga.

While criticizing some things Hugh Ross says, Faulkner writes:

Ross argues as follows. There are two books: the book of nature and the Bible. God is the author of both, so both must agree. So far this seems reasonable.

Then Ross subtly equates science [with] nature, from which one could infer that science and the Bible should be equated in authority.

A discovery

I've been digging through some old posts on my personal blog.

Strange: I have known my mind has been in a major fog for the last couple of years. (I have had a number of theories as to why that is so. Dealing with rheumatoid arthritis has, I'm sure, had a lot to do with it. Cleaning up from close to 18 years of virtually non-stop, 6-days-a-week, 12- to 14-hours-a-day work on Sonlight Curriculum may have had something to do with that as well. When I resigned from Sonlight on April 1, 2008, I was truly "fried.") But still. I have been truly surprised to discover how many of the issues I want to deal with here I've already dealt with "over there" on my personal blog. I read the posts I wrote and I recognize that they are things I wrote, but I have absolutely no recollection of their content until I [re]read them.

Because I intend to push further into the issues, and because what I'm dealing with here is far more narrowly focused than what I want to do on my personal blog, I hope you will forgive me if and as I copy material from there to here. If you happen to have followed me over the years "over there," please understand what I'm doing. And forgive me for not acknowledging if or when I copy, and possibly modify as I copy, what I've written "over there."

I'm thinking I will probably serve the majority of my audience here best if I simply post and make no mention of the prior appearance of some or all of the material.

Thanks.

God or science? God or man?

I posted yesterday about Kathy Bryson's comment that (if I understood her correctly) she doesn't believe the Bible needs to be interpreted.

Now, maybe she meant, instead, to say something more along the lines of what TomH, who wrote a day after her, said: "It seems to me that the ongoing controversy is whether we should believe God, who is omniscient, or Science."

And Tom, I think, has plunked himself down right in the middle of the issue I attempted to address in my post on Science, theology, the Bible and rocks, where

Understanding the Bible: Can we just read it? Or do we need to interpret it?

I thought my comments about the distinction between the Bible itself and theology would be rather self-evident. But I guess not.

I posted a comment that echoed these thoughts on a blog post that expressed disapproval of Dr. Jay Wile's defense of Dr. Peter Enns against what Wile sees as an unfair attack by Ken Ham.

Anne Elliott wrote,

I’ve been watching with great interest some interaction online between Ken Ham (Answers in Genesis), Jay Wile ([author of] Apologia’s high school science curriculum), and Peter Enns (the author of Peace Hill Press/Well-Trained Mind’s “Bible” curriculum):

• I’ve been thrilled with Ken Ham’s stand. However, just yesterday Ken Ham has been dis-invited from several homeschooling conventions, just because he has taken the same stand I certainly would, in favor of God’s Word!
• Jay Wile, author of Apologia’s high school science curriculum, has been taking Peter Enns’ side. He has been sharply criticizing Ken Ham, and I’m actually rather shocked by this. To be honest, I don’t know that I want to use Jay Wile’s high-school science curriculum any more.

Based on some further comments by readers, I responded,

Getting to the heart of the matter . . .

I see that some of the issues I have been personally struggling with for years, but far more intensely over the past year-and-two-thirds are now becoming front-and-center in the homeschool world at large. (For a brief glimpse of what I am talking about from my perspective, see my Denis Lamoureux's Evolutionary Creation, Part II post from July 21, 2009. I promised, at the end, "to note some places where I think Lamoureux probably failed, adequately, to do all his homework. Or, if he did his homework, he failed, adequately, to express what I believe he should have." --But I never wrote what I promised because I have found myself lacking the knowledge base on which, properly, to build my case.)

But now--as evidenced by my last two posts here in Forbidden Questions--I realize the homeschool world is being engulfed by the issues that disturbed me.

I still wish and want to build my case the way I would like, but I think it would behoove me, at least, to acknowledge from where my great discomfort arises.

"Truth" (with a capital "T"!) v provisional theology

I am finding that the mental pocket knife of my last post ("Theology is to the Bible as [Geological] Science is to Rocks"; or, "Theology is to [Geological] Science as the Bible is to Rocks") -- that mental pocket knife has more usefulness than I might have imagined.

A division in (Christian) homeschool circles that has been slowly making its presence felt now seems to be ready for showtime.

And let me state, before I say anything else, I find this division extremely sad. I am concerned that the Christian homeschool marketplace--the marketplace of ideas--is about to be riven in the same way (again, very sadly) as the American culture as a whole seems to be being riven.

No longer will people be willing to speak with or to one another. Now we are about to begin to see shouting matches.

Science, theology, the Bible and rocks . . .

I was astonished this morning to receive notice from a friend on Facebook of this post by Dr. Jay Wile, an arch young-earth creationist and founder of Apologia Ministries, who was willing, actually, to stand up for decent treatment of someone of a radically different perspective than his own.

Reading some of the responses to his post

--"these are unbiblical views"--

--"[Such a] view . . . is clearly not Biblical"--

etc.

reminds me of something I have been trying to figure out how best to post here.

Saw this in yesterday's comics . . .

[Updated 3/7/2021: You can find the comic at https://www.gocomics.com/getfuzzy/2011/03/06.]

For some reason, it seems to fit the subject matter of this blog.

In response to Rob's sarcastic suggestion that Bucky is "a real think tank," Bucky Katt comments,

The use of language

As I listened to the sermon at our church last week, I suddenly felt "inspired." I don't recall what spurred this train of thought, but it consumed me, and so I wrote a bunch of notes intending to write it up for this blog.

First thought: If I am ever going to write much of anything on this blog, I probably can't afford to be quite as scholarly as I prefer.

It has always been my habit to try to quote things absolutely accurately. I try not to rely on my memory, but to find printed statements that I can reference to back up every statement I make.

I do that

Genesis 1 - "plainly" or "straightforwardly"

I'm already behind in my attempt to read through the Bible in a year this year.

It doesn't help that I'm trying really to read it (rather than simply skim; see my last post).

So I'm reading Genesis 1, the part of the Bible that Ken Ham and company warn we must interpret "without compromise," in "a plain or straightforward manner."

Reading the Bible “plainly” means

Attending to details

I have to get my "sea legs," as it were, with this new blog. Forgive me if I don't start with a bang. As I said in my first post, I'm simply interested in getting ideas out there for consideration. And I will look forward to feedback from whoever feels "inspired" to reply to . . . whatever.

I hope this will become a fairly long-term, drawing-room kind of conversation. No pressure. "Just" a relaxed and thoughtful interchange.

*******
So this one struck me a few days ago.

As I was finishing my second annual complete read-through of the Bible, I hit

Welcome

I don't want to make this an overly long post. I expect to be blogging for months and, perhaps, years to come on this subject. God willing, I will have plenty of time to develop themes and streams and rivers of concern that have plagued me for years. I imagine--indeed, I'm quite confident--that many of the issues I raise are of concern to others and, though not all, many of them will be of interest or concern to you.

I expect that some of my readers here will be very familiar with me. I am known in Evangelical Christian homeschooling circles because of my relationship to Sonlight Curriculum.

My wife and I founded the company 20-some years ago. I used to be the chief spokesperson for the company until I resigned from active, day-to-day participation. (That resignation occurred going on 3 years ago, now. (Wow!))

I still identify strongly with the larger homeschooling community, and I know that many Sonlighters "follow" me to one degree or another.

I also know that--or maybe I should say, I am confident that--a number of Sonlight detractors "follow" me as well, hoping to find something with which they may beat on Sonlight.

I don't know why others may be familiar with me. Twenty years ago I published a book called Dating With Integrity. It's still in print today. So you may have heard of me through that.

I was editor of Mission Frontiers magazine published by the US Center for World Mission for several years. I wrote a number of articles that gained fairly wide circulation.

But, overall--and I am writing this paragraph in anticipation of it being read two or three years in the future!--I expect the most likely reason someone will find this blog--the most likely reason you have found this blog!--is because they have (you have) Googled one of the topics we will have discussed within the blog itself.

I have decided to create this blog because it feels to me as if Christians are "not allowed" to ask the deepest questions.