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young pastors: why mess with evolution at all?
Like many of you, I’d just as soon replace the word, “evangelical” with something else. Not because it isn’t a perfectly fine word, but for the response it evokes, thanks to the culture war tactics of so many American evangelicals in the last thirty years. But the fact is, labels are difficult to shed, and the labeled are not consulted about their moniker preferences. (My parents didn’t seek my permission to name me and “Christians” were so named by the people of Antioch who were not believers.) And I wonder if the hand of God isn’t behind this label’s stickiness. Like God himself may be holding it in place on us until we understand what it means.
There’s something in this descriptor that touches the heart of God. God is evangelical–in the sense that God has a heart for the outsider and seeks to bring the outsider good (to them) news. (The term is from a N.T. Greek word that refers to the announcing or proclaiming of news.)
So if you are a young pastor wrestling with the word, evangelical, allow me to recommend that you care less about the marketing albatross that we’d all love to jettison, and wrestle instead with God, like Jacob at Jabok. Over His evangelicalism that is. Over His affection for the outsider.
To be evangelical is to care as much for the outsider as the insider. Do you realize how difficult a thing that is? Especially if you are a pastor?
Who pays the bills: insiders or outsiders? Who has more power over you, pastor: insiders or outsiders? Who do you spend more time with, day in-day out: insiders or outsiders?
I thought so.
This means that, all else being equal, your heart is more inclined toward the insiders. That’s an inescapable sociological, psychological, and spiritual reality.
Many years ago, I read “On the Religious Affections” by Jonathan Edwards. I was convicted by that book that my heart had grown hard, as Edwards defined the condition. My heart was suffering from a dearth of “fleshiness” and a surfeit of “stoniness.” You’ll have to read the book to catch the gist of Edwards on this. (Besides the Bible itself, this book has affected me more than any other.)
It was deeply disturbing, this realization. It drove me to a kind of desperate praying, which over time, led to extended periods of weeping, a most uncommon occurrence in one with a stony heart. The weeping was of a most peculiar sort. It was, for lack of a better word, empathetic. As if my mirror neurons were responding to God’s heart for outsiders. It felt as though I were feeling what God feels toward those on the outside of faith looking in. What Jesus feels for them. Remembering myself as one of them.
It was, and is, the tenderest feeling. The most ferociously gentle affection. The most scandalously sympathetic disposition.
During this time, I think I became more truly evangelical.
Over the years since then, I find myself increasingly in tension with my evangelical tribe. Perhaps you’ve noticed.
Why do evangelicals who go by the motto “love the sinner but hate the sin” have such a difficult time convincing the sinners of their love? Why do environmentalists, secular scientists (especially biologists) feel the prickliness of our tribe?
What kind of evangelical was Jesus? He was the sort of evangelical beloved by the tax collectors, the sexual outcasts, the party throwing riff-raff of Israel, the people who were on the outside of Israel’s faith, looking in.
The fact that these people so delighted in Jesus led many in his own religious community to accuse him of compromise. His view of Scripture was suspect. He failed the orthodoxy litmus tests applied to him by the litmus testers.
If we’re following Jesus, shouldn’t we be accused of the same things he was accused of? At least every now and then? Unless we’re not guilty of following him.
For that matter, what kind of evangelical was Paul? The kind considered too accommodating to Gentiles, playing it fast and loose with the Law, a Scripture-fracturer.
Which brings me to Billy Graham and his comments about Scripture and evolution.
Young pastor, are you deeply affected by insiders who think evolution is a threat to Christianity? Are you reluctant to poke this topic for fear that you will disturb your fellows who bristle at the word? I was.
If you live in a culturally conservative community–in which even those who don’t attend church think the world was created 10,000 years ago in six, 24 hour days–then you’re off the hook. Don’t waste your time on these matters. Life is too short and the kingdom is a coming.
But if you’re in a major metropolitan area, and certainly if you have a major University in your town, you’re stuck with this thing.
Your fear of the insiders may be hindering you from making the gospel known to outsiders. I know fear may not be something you’re willing to cop to, so let’s call it instead the inclination to please or the disinclination to displease.
It may affect what you read, what you question, what you assume. David Brooks says it well: “We have confirmation bias: we pick out evidence that supports our views. We are cognitive misers; we try to think as little as possible and conform our perceptions to fit in with the group.”
Like most pastors, you’re not looking for more conflict to manage.
See how difficult a thing this is?
Pastoring is already messy business, who is looking for more mess to muck about in?
I don’t know what to say except that you might have thought of that before you got into this line of work at this particular time in history.
So what’s to be done?
Perhaps you could go friend-making. Find some people with graduate degrees in science–people who are not socialized in the American evangelical milieu. People who read Scientific American or Discover or Nature. Who prefer N.P.R. to A(ngry) M(an) radio. Even those who simply enjoy science, whose eyes don’t glaze over when the Big Bang comes up, will do.
It’s not a huge group, this science loving crowd, but it’s the inner circle of a much larger community of people who are not the church going type–the people for whom science is an accepted authority.
Chances are you are not reaching these people, not with your church as it is. Even though yours is a hip-contemporary-emergo-not-your-father’s Oldsmobile church. These are the people who stay away from church for fear of meeting people who think their views of science are deeply mistaken; they are the people who don’t bother going because they assume that Scripture and science–as they know science–are necessarily at odds with each other.
Go find some people like that and get to know them. Listen to their thoughts about science. Ask questions in the hopes of hearing even more. Seek to understand what you hear.
Do whatever it takes for as long as it takes until your heart leans toward them sympathetically.
And pray and read and pray some more to see if you can imagine a bridge from the Bible to them. Even if it feels a little daring or daunting to imagine such a bridge.
Later in life, when Billy Graham said what he said to David Frost about Genesis 1-3 not being science, he revealed his evangelical heart. I’m guessing he had you in mind when he said such a thing, hoping you would have ears to hear.
Tags: bible, billy graham, Christian, david brooks, evangelical, evolution, jonathan edwards, National Geographic, on the religious affections, science, Scientific American
August 24th, 2010 at 3:20 pm
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Young pastors, old pastors — the ghetto of self-imprisonment in “pastoral” ministry involves the mutual assent of pew-puppies adoring their pastor and the pastor adoring being adored.
Walk into any room with the moniker “pastor” hanging around your neck from a lanyard like a millstone, and wonder whether the fusillade of expectations with which parishioners bombard you (false good, the adoring smiles, the agnostic “what the hell’s a ‘pastor?’”, and a million more expectations) — wonder whether these expectations are really any more than the roles you’ve cultivated – as a young pastor or old – by mutual assent.
The imprisonment for young pastors is to grow into old pastors with the curse around their old necks of having chosen to cultivate the wrong side of truth (see my concluding paragraph, below).
Jesus – the wisest of pastors – hid himself from the 5,000 after feeding them. They would have made him “king” by force, i.e., Jesus refused to confirm their confirmation bias (your Brooks note). Our only hope.
My intuitive guess about Billy Graham (his wiser position) on evolution is that Graham knew a lot less about changes in allelic frequencies across populations over time than Graham knew about the changes in frequencies over time in church history in which the church flat out gets science wrong and suffers valid demotion and egg-on-its-face in the history of church squabbles with science, and, Billy would naturally select to join Galileo on house arrest under the condemnation of fellow house-Christians rather than bow down to evangelical ignorance and Christian anti-science bigotry.
Even if my intuition is wrong (it could be falsified), Graham is my pastor on evolution.
Your results may vary.
As to evolution and mutate-select: vis pastoral ministry, just look at how the roles of pastoral ministry mutate and select inter-subjectively between pastor and parishioner (yeah, yeah, sure this lame analogy is more akin to artificial selection; but, no one has yet invented a mathematics to make mimesis tract to measurement – so play along). And tell me the outcomes of the definitions of “pastor” aren’t random in this mutual process of pastoral adoration and adoring being adored. Denominations, anyone? And inter-nicene squabbles after that? And hey, the church v. science wars, aren’t they pretty? As if the evolutionary God of Darwin Who doesn’t cause confusion (1 Cor 14:33) didn’t author the confusion at Babel (Gen 11:9ff). The beauty of science knowledge, for my book, is that science already knows at its baseline that science is scaffolded, partial, delimited knowledge. That’s its majesty. Theologians confuse God’s omni-science with their own bible banging.
Go ahead, reject Darwin. And sing to me how beautiful Tay-Sachs really is. “This Is My Father’s World.”
Reposting my two-cents from the previous thread – “It seems to me to be more fundamentally plumbed-to-truth that we are seekers after truth – including truth found in the wide and breathtaking range from lawfulness to stochastic/random evidence in nature, and including that some truth statements stand or fall on empirical evidence” (@ http://kenwilsononline.com/2010/08/10/advice-to-young-pastors-listen-to-billy-graham-on-evolution/comment-page-1/#comment-4266).
Cheers,
Jim
August 24th, 2010 at 7:34 pm
My experience on these matters in the church I lead, which is a culturally conservative community with many people who do not believe the world was created 10,000 years ago, is that the following approach allows people of various viewpoints to feel welcomed in our church…
1. Acknowledge Genesis doesn’t tell us everything we’d like to know.
2. Acknowledge that the Genesis account of creation doesn’t require one to believe that the days of creation were 24 hour days, thereby allowing for the possibility that the days of creation could represent vast expanses of time.
3. Affirm what Genesis does tell us (God created Adam and Eve. God created the world in six days, whatever a day represents) without pressing out of the text things we just can’t know.
I have found that this approach, simple as it is, has allowed people to feel welcomed in our church and to feel that there is room for them to think a little differently than the typical person in our church may think.
It seems to me that a simple, respectful approach like this would be appreciated by the vast majority of people who simply want their views respected but aren’t bent on converting the otherwise convinced to their particular view of origins.
And yes, this approach has proven helpful with people who do care about this issue, went to some really good schools, and are even highly intelligent!
August 24th, 2010 at 8:59 pm
Brian, Excellent moves, all. I’ve used ‘em all. They are a bit inadequate for many in Ann Arbor with a science background, but that’s a quibble. I think the simple Billy Graham quote: that the Bible is not science and that God is certainly capable of working through natural processes, including evolution, does a LOT of the heavy lifting on this.
August 24th, 2010 at 10:47 pm
(Fixed my typos):
So how does the “science loving crowd” (or those reaching out to the “science loving crowd”) deal with things like the Virgin Birth or the Resurrection? How about Jesus turning water to wine or healing the blind? How about Jesus raising the dead? What about the Holy Spirit? I mean, isn’t salvation itself a supernatural event (the angels in heaven rejoice!)?!
The fact is that much to do with Christianity involves things that cannot be explained “in the natural.” If we start trying to explain everything in Scripture with “science” we are in for a long lesson. (BTW, I don’t think that there is anything in the Bible that conflicts with “science.”) If people, including the “science loving crowd,” can be brought to accept the amazingly supernatural life of Jesus, why can’t they be brought to believe a supernatural explanation for the existence of all things?
August 25th, 2010 at 8:20 am
Trevor, Gosh, there are many who love and practice science, and have no beef with evolution, etc. who also believe in a God quite able to work through natural process and beyond natural process his wonders to perform. The new physics, as well, helps us to understand that the natural system is an open system not a closed one, as previously thought, with quantum particles popping into and out of existence, heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, etc. John Polkinghorne a quantum physicist and now an Anglican priest has done some wonderful writing on this, embraces the resurrection of Jesus, etc. Plenty of room for God’s agency shot through the system and not just through tiny gaps that we don’t yet understand.
August 25th, 2010 at 2:01 pm
Brian, So the downside of the six days as six eras approach (which does make space for people, and is certainly missionally better than insisting on Young Earth view): 1. The text itself pretty explicit about the days being days not eras “and it was morning and evening, day one”; this is why I like Billy Graham’s approach: The Bible is not a book of science. Let the text stand as it presents itself, so we don’t have to twist or science into neat overlap. 2. The sequence of the days, read as science, contradicts the scientific understanding. However, at the large scale it is amazing similar to the emergence of life over time picture that science paints. For reason 1, I no longer use the “era” explanation. But the approach you outline is a big improvement on the tendency of many to insist on reading the text as it were a piece of science writing.
August 25th, 2010 at 4:39 pm
Ken,
My understanding has been that there is debate about the the proper meaning of the word translated “day” (yom) within the creation account.
I’m not certain of this…but I’m thinking you might be pressing a little more out of Billy Graham’s comment than is really there. For example, I’m not certain anything he said means he would share your view about Adam and Eve. I’m guessing he views Adam and Eve as historical figures. Unless you have something more from him than the quote you’ve referenced, I don’t think you can honestly conclude he would be where you’re at on this issue. He might be in a much different place than many evangelicals, but I doubt he has adopted your view that Adam and Eve are not historical.
August 25th, 2010 at 6:59 pm
Brian, Yes, there is more to the Billy Graham quote. “I personally believe that it’s just as easy to accept the fact that God took some dust and blew on it and out came a man as it is to accept the fact that God breathed upon man and he became a living soul and it started with some protoplasm and it went right up through the evolutionary process. Either way is by faith and whichever way God did it makes no difference as to what man is and man’s relationship to God.”
On the word day “yom” it’s certainly the case that the word is used at times in the Bible to refer to a day in our sense of era “day of the Lord” etc. However, I think Genesis 1 specifically is referring to a day that has delimited by an evening and a morning. The context seems clear–or shall we say HIGHLY suggestive–that an era is not in view.
As Billy says, it’s not meant to be read as though it were science. And I think that Genesis 2 & 3 are not written in the genre of historical narrative. A very different piece of writing than Matthew 1 or Luke 1, different than the narratives about Abraham and Joseph and company. I personally think that one tends to read it as historical narrative only if one has an a priori assumption that this is the only faithful way to read it. These are of course, judgment calls.
August 25th, 2010 at 8:50 pm
Ken, what is your source for the Graham quote? Not questioning your accuracy, I’d just like to be able to know the source for future conversations I may have on the topic.
Thanks.
August 25th, 2010 at 9:46 pm
Brian, An Amazon link is on the previous post. I have the actual book. (Billy Graham: Personal Thoughts of a Public Man, by David Frost and Fred Bauer)
August 26th, 2010 at 5:10 pm
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Imagine that adaptive radiation works in the world of church variation as well – “taxonomic diversity (the number families) closely matched their ecological diversity (the number of niches they occupied) through their 400 million years of evolution, and that there appears to be little evidence for competition as the driving factor for their great diversity. Diversity was driven by the dominant animals at the time, which expanded into empty niches” (@ http://fishfeet2007.blogspot.com/2010/08/space-not-competition-has-driven-earths.html).
Still thoroughly Darwinian. Less weight to competition. More to eco niches. It’s adaptive radiation.
The research partly shoots itself in the foot – “Our research shows that tetrapods (amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds) have explored only one third of habitable ecological space and that without human influence, biodiversity would continue to increase exponentially.”
Ha, ha – “without human influence.” Means without competition.
Still, niches provide.
A niche role for Vineyards to play? – in the ecology of the faith world?
Only if the faith v. science competition became correspondingly de-emphasized. In favor of pursuing truth into all its niches.
What else the meaning of, “go into all the world?”
Cheers,
Jim
August 26th, 2010 at 9:42 pm
Jim,
YES! “Only if the faith v. science competition became correspondingly de-emphasized. In favor of pursuing truth into all its niches.” De-emphasized indeed. But more: the great and growing crisis of our time, with world population on its way to 9 Billion, oil peaking, a massive adoption of the energy intensive American dream lifestyle in India and China, etc. will require people of science–complex, not sound-bite science–and people of faith to work together for the sake of the world.
The ecological niche concept echoes the great commission–take this gospel into every nation/laos/people group, every nook & cranny (niche) of creation.
The present evangelicalism, even the jazzed up contemporary version, has worked it’s niche and is occupying it. Saturated it.
If I were a young pastor, I’d be excited by the niches yet to be occupied, not rehashing the same territory with a millenial slant.
They are on their way, by the way–just a matter of time.
August 26th, 2010 at 10:16 pm
If Genesis 1-11 is “poetic” then how does one deal with Exodus 20:8-11?
“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”
The whole concept of a Sabbath is based on a literal (historical) view of Genesis ch. 1.
August 27th, 2010 at 9:19 am
Trever, Great question. It begins with a judgement call: Is Genesis 1 written as science or something else. REad the text and make a genre decision. I think the text is telling us, “Read me as poetic narrative.” If you read the text as science, I think you’ve made the wrong judgment call on genre and it’s going to lead you into an unnecessary argument with science.
So in my reading, Genesis 1 teaches that God wants to take up residence in the earth as his temple. In the poetic days of creation, he is setting up the creation for this indwelling of his presence. As MOses set up the tabernacle in its various function, and then when it was all ready, God took up residence in the tabernacle. Same motif in Genesis 1, poetically unfolded. The powerful truth powerfully told: this earth is the Lord’s and he wants to dwell here because it is his temple. It’s not just a planet. It’s a temple.
In Exodus, everything is leading up to the same thing. The ten commands precede the final preparations of the tabernacle in Ex. 39, after which the glory fills the temple.
God is speaking truth to people who don’t have the language of science. Science has not been invented as a method with it’s own rules and language. So God condescends, and speaks to the people in poetic language that they can understand to convey the important truths he wants to convey.
He references this poem and uses it to tell the people that, like him, they are to be actively engaged in the creation through work, most of the time, but they are also to sit back and delight in the creation and more, in the Creator, through a weekly sabbath.
When we read Genesis 1, God does not intend us to bristle and think, “Science has it all wrong! The world was made 10,000 years ago in six days. I must stand up for Jesus by asserting this!” God intends us to read Genesis 1 and say, “Oh my! This is more than a planet! This is a temple! God’s temple! I must change my way of thinking, perceiving, and being in this place!”
As a result of reading Genesis 1, we marvel all the time at the world around us. We don’t see “animals” we see fellow creatures, who share the breath of life with us. WE see ourselves as the image bearers of God in this place with a priestly function to worship and to care for the place as though it were not ours to use for our own desires alone. As though it were God’s. WE live differently because of this vision. GEnesis 1 is not fodder for an argument with science, alienating all to whom the science makes perfect sense. It’s a transforming vision that affects the way we live here.
In my humble opinion.
August 28th, 2010 at 7:42 am
Ken: You keep referring to Darwinian evolution (D.E.) as if it were settled “science.” Nothing could be further from the truth. This is why many “people of science” have no problems accepting the account of creation as described in Genesis as literal history. Reading the accounts in Genesis as literal history, one can still scientifically explain everything in the universe. As I have already pointed out, D.E. is historical “science,” not operational science. It contributes nothing to the world other than trying to explain how life began.
Also, there is no good logical reason for Genesis ch. 1-3 to be presented as poetry. How can Gen. 1-3 be poetry when so much of the rest of the Bible rests upon it as literal history? Just because people didn’t have the “language of science” (whatever that is), doesn’t mean that they couldn’t understand and read history. For centuries “people of science” such as Pascal, Bacon, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Faraday, Pasteur, Carver, etc., took a very literal and historical view of Genesis, and yet “science” marched on.
Also, I don’t think that most evangelicals have made “creationism” a precondition for a person becoming a Christian. Also, I don’t think that this battle is why many “people of science” reject Christianity. I think the biggest problem with D.E. is that “people of the church,” especially secularly educated young people, are turning away from God and the Bible because of the teachings of D.E. The fact is that D.E. is usually presented as being in direct conflict with a supernatural Creator. This deceit is swallowed as fact by young influential minds, and as a result, many are drawn away from their Creator and Savior.
August 28th, 2010 at 9:06 am
Trevor, Regarding your views about what is and isn’t settled science: I respectfully disagree. (With the proviso that no science is entirely settled, but self correcting, emerging. The beauty of the scientific method.) Regarding your thought that there is no indication of Genesis 1 being poetry: if you read the translators introduction to the NIV, there is an indication there about how the translators indicated poetic writing through the use of indentation. The translators use this indentation in Genesis 1. But perhaps we’ve said enough and it’s time to simply acknowledge that we see science and Scripture differently when it comes to evolution and Genesis.
August 28th, 2010 at 1:40 pm
Ken: Agreed: We’ve certainly said a lot. I appreciate the respectful back-and-forth. Be blessed.