Values stink.

by Karen Richter

Why do you bring your children to church? Why do you think there are children sitting in the pews of your church?

If you ask parents this question (or if just now, you answered this question for yourself), you might hear answers like this:

“It’s important for me that my child learns the values of our church community.”

“I want my kid to be a good person.”

“Church provides my family with moral guidance.”

Values stink. by Karen Richter, Southwest Conference Blog southwestconferenceblog.org United Church of Christ
Can we agree than authenticity is better than shiny and happy?

Nope. Sorry – nope nope nope.

Church is not about values. Not only are there OTHER places in our society to expose your children to good values, there are BETTER places in our society to teach good values.

Scouting, team sports, community theater, chess club, school-based values curricula, VeggieTales… these are excellent sources for parents to teach their children the importance of fairness, teamwork, honesty, and cooperation. The kiddos will make friends along the way – it’ll be great!

Church MUST be more than values instruction. I’ll risk overstating my point (and annoying my readers): if we structure programs for children in churches with the goal of teaching good values, we will lose. Not only are the organizations I listed above doing great things with kids, the Gospel of grace always trumps morality.

What then takes the place of values instruction? In progressive churches, we’ve somewhat abandoned old-timey instruction. I haven’t seen a good fill-in-the-blank Bible worksheet since I was 10 years old. We’re working on abandoning a school-based model and even in some churches we’re getting rid of a star-earning, funfunfun carnival model.

What’s left? Just two principles guide children’s ministry in the post-modern era, and the earlier a child can communicate and internalize these, the better.

“At church, people love me just as I am.”

This means prioritizing relationships and connections over curricula and content. This means children participating in worship – not as cute props for adults to coo at, but as full members of the worshipping community.

“At church, I can ask questions.”

Values stink. by Karen Richter, Southwest Conference blog southwestconferenceblog.org United Church of Christ
Our kids can be like Jesus: more questions than answers!

Whether it’s a deep question like this one I got during Advent, ‘How do we know that Jesus was God’s son? What if he was just a good person?’ or it’s a question from the Our Whole Lives question box or just an everyday ‘Why?’ – questions are at the heart of the spiritual journey for every person. When our churches are safe places for questions, doubt, experiential pondering, they will thrive.

In fact, what would our churches look like if every person at every age and in every situation can express these same ideas:

“At church, people love me just as I am.”

“At church, I can ask questions.”

So, yeah, values stink. The Good News we have is so much better, deeper, and wider than values.

Peace to us all in 2016.

Vulnerability is Sacred

by Davin Franklin-Hicks

Vulnerability is sacred.

I first thought this when I had been attending First UCC Tucson for about three years. I was spending a great deal of time, attention, thought, and meditation in developing relationships, including the one that I had once known with God. It was a communion Sunday and I often did not partake in communion. This was due to a resentment that I had against those who created insiders and outsiders at the communion table. The other aspect of my refusal was that I did not know what, if anything, communion meant to me and my path.

Vulnerability is sacred.

The work that I get to do in the community where I live is often heart-wrenching at times and  celebratory at other times. Working in the realm of substance dependence and mental illness, I see people often at their most vulnerable. The stripping away of ego is so hard to watch, especially when it is due to illness. Many of the folks who fill our jails and psychiatric facilities have a large number of adverse childhood events, also known as trauma. As trauma increases, health needs and disparities often increase. As safety increases, health needs and disparities often decrease.

Vulnerability is sacred.

The return to the sense of safety often comes on the heels of talking about that which made it unsafe, most often trauma. The concept, “the only way out is through” is very applicable here. Finding that way through trauma is not for the faint of heart. That being said, I shall now give you a bit of a gross comparison that a coworker of mine uses. He says, “This whole time we have been together, you have been swallowing your saliva without any thought about it. It’s natural to you, it’s normal. If you were given a cup and told to spit in it vs swallow the saliva, that would likely gross you out. If you were then told to drink from that cup (my note: my stomach is turning too, ugh) you would likely refuse.” Here’s why that is: when it is out of you, it changes. We interact with it differently, we see it differently, we address it differently.

Vulnerability is sacred.

The telling of trauma is exhausting, scary, and so incredibly hard. The pain that induced the trauma feels fresh and feels awful, most do not want to talk about things like that. Yet, we must. To some degree, we must. In the telling, we are no longer alone with it. In the telling, we are able to look at what exactly it is that was inside us. In the telling, the event of the trauma can be a single event versus the overshadowing painful, all consuming thing that it had been. It is out of me, it is out of you and we can look at it together.

Vulnerability is sacred.

That communion table. What am I to do with that communion table? Can I just fake it and hope the feelings of acceptance for communion comes? Can I continue to ignore it and just check out while it is being served? I could do that. Or I could work on this a bit more. I chose the latter. The only way out is through, after all. Within the same hour that I opted into contending with communion and determining my beliefs and practices, a thought came to me. Communion is the telling of trauma. As we sit with the understanding of the horror that was done to Jesus in his execution, we are bearing witness. We are bearing witness to injustice. We are bearing witness to something intensely private and very human. We are bearing witness to trauma.

Vulnerability is sacred.

I look very closely for the vulnerability in those around me. I have a strong desire to protect that vulnerability, to ensure they are safe and cared for in whatever way the vulnerability arises. I have a strong connection to vulnerability and I have a strong disdain for abuses of power. The Sermon on the Mount, or the Beatitudes made perfectly clear the expectation that we would look for the vulnerable and honor that vulnerability with love. In so doing, we are reaching beyond what is in front of us or what is our present reality and we are inviting the sacred into our relationships. When I am vulnerable with you and when you are vulnerable with me, I do believe God is there. The whole, when two or three people are gathered in my name, I am there in the midst of them. The presence of the sacred.

May we tell our stories.

May we look for our shared humanity.

May we be vulnerable. And may the sacred be present.

Your vulnerability is sacred.

 

The Force is with us

by Ken McIntosh

This year, the world is celebrating a very special season, in a very special way. Evidence of the unique meaning of this time is a phrase that we hear repeated, in some cases daily.

“May the Force be with you!”

It really is very appropriate for this season, when many of the world’s religions celebrate the battle between the dark side and the light…the winter solstice could perhaps be regarded as one epic lightsaber duel… the annual return of the Jedi. For Christ-followers, it is the time of the year when we choose to celebrate the Force coming to live among us.

John’s Gospel begins with a word of enormous importance…a somewhat mysterious word…and that word is… ‘the Word.’ “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” That’s some ‘Word!’

Oceans of ink have been poured out trying to explain and understand ‘the Word.’ In Greek the word is ‘Logos.’ It has survived and transmuted into our language today whenever we speak of a brand ‘logo.’ The Word ‘Logos’ was used outside of the Bible—used a lot, in fact, for centuries. It had meaning for Jews, Greeks and Romans. And it was still somewhat mysterious.

Jews associated the Divine Logos with the Hebrew word ‘Amar,’ = “to speak, to utter”…as in Genesis 1, “In the Beginning… God spoke, saying let there be…and there was…and it was good.” The first words of John’s Gospel echoes Genesis, “In the Beginning was the Word…”

The Greeks also spoke much of the Word. The Logos was the ordering principle, or the cosmic pattern, that underlay all things. Heraclitus spoke of the Word as the rational and divine intelligence that controlled the universe. In fact, for the Greeks the Word was what made the universe the UNIverse (as opposed to a disordered omni-verse); the Word was the single unifying factor shared by a vast number of diverse phenomenon in the cosmos.

I am sure that if ancient sages could speak to us at the end of 2015 they would readily affirm—“In the beginning was the Force!” Remember Obi Wan’s first description of the force, from the original 1977 Star Wars? “The Force is what gives a Jedi his power… It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.” That sounds an awful lot like the Greek philosopher Heraclitus!

So the thinkers and mystics of the ancient world knew the Word the same way that people now know the Force. They could protest, like Han Solo protests in the first movie “There’s no mystical energy field controls my destiny!” Or give benedictions like a Jedi “May the Force be with you!”

But there are things they could not know about the Word…not until “the Word became flesh and made his home among us.”

They could not know that the Word would look at humanity through eyes filled with compassion.

They could not know that the Word would challenge a lynch mob telling them “Whoever is without sin, let them cast the first stone,” and then assure a shamed woman, “Neither do I condemn you.”

They could not know that the Word would weep, shedding tears at the death of a friend.

They could not know that the Word would shed tears again, thinking about the coming destruction of Jerusalem, and say to the women of Palestine “I have longed to gather you, like a hen gathering her chicks under her wings.”

They could not possibly imagine that the Word would rasp out a phrase, over and over, from the cross, “Abba, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.” “Abba, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.”

The Force was strong in that One.

Christians have gotten their theology backward, over the centuries. They have sometimes proclaimed “Jesus is like God…Jesus does what God does.” But in fact it’s the reverse. In fact, “God is like Jesus…God does what Jesus does.”

Yes, the Force was in Jesus of Nazareth… and the Force is with us still. Not just a fact of history, but a reality today.

We can feel the Force within us, and…the Force is still speaking.

And that’s Good News for 2016, because the power of the Dark Side still entices us.

In 2016 we need to heed well the words of that ancient prophet of the Word, Master Yoda. Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

Fear-talk abounds: be afraid of terrorism, be afraid of refugees, be afraid of people with darker skin, be afraid of people who follow other religions, be afraid of your neighbor, be afraid of the future…be afraid, leading to anger, leading to hate, leading to suffering.”

Jesus still speaks, saying “In this world you will have many troubles, but do not give in to fear, for I have overcome the world!”

God is love.

The Force is love.

Be strong in the Force, and may the Force be with you.

Amen.

How Do You Search?

by Amanda Peterson

Advent is a season of searching. It acknowledges that we are a searching people hunting for that tiny part of us that nudges us to keep looking for the “thing”. This thing has many names like peace, abundance, hope, love and God. And the question arises “how do I find it?” There is a yearning for that arriving place where that tiny nudging will be satisfied and calm down.

During Advent we can call that nudging out. It is a Season to say “where is that nudging leading me?” Is that nudge coming from a place of lack? Or is it a nudge affirming what is looked for already exists and to look at life from that place. An invitation to look in the ordinary, unexpected places one might not normally go. For some that is to the marginalized, the “other.” For others it is in the midst of a flawed and abundant culture. Is that nudge for peace about filling a void and being satisfied or about knowing it is already there and seeing it everywhere?

Learning ways to search are the spiritual practices and the gifts of community. I’ll share more about those next time. But first it is time to rest in questions, pondering and looking around the next corner for how Peace and Love are revealed.

Wishing you all peace this season and all year!

10 Things You Want to Know Before Going to War with ISIS

by Ryan Gear

Following the recent terrorist attacks, a few presidential candidates and other political leaders are calling for an increased U.S. military presence in Syria. For example, the CNN Republican presidential debate this week produced an unusually substantive debate on the wisdom of the U.S. engaging in regime change. As the political debate intensifies, followers of Jesus must once again reevaluate our stance on war.

For centuries, Christians have debated the most Christ-like position regarding war. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas developed the doctrine of Just War, and the Catholic Church includes their concepts in its catechism. Conversely, pacifists generally trace the origins of their nonviolence to Jesus.

One of the titles Christians use for Jesus is “Prince of Peace.” While living in a violent empire, Jesus taught his followers:

“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment” (Matthew 5:21-22).

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:43-45a).

As conflict with ISIS escalates, how should followers of the Prince of Peace think about war? What questions should we ask before supporting a war? And how should we respond to those Americans who seem to be eager to go to war?

Here are 10 things followers of Jesus should keep in mind about a war with ISIS.

  1. ISIS wants a war with the United States to fulfill their apocalyptic scenario.

ISIS intentionally releases slickly produced videos of gruesome murders like beheadings and the burning of the Jordanian pilot, and they claimed responsibility for the Russian plane bombing and the terrorist attacks in Paris. They want their videos and attacks to be viewed by as many people as possible. Why? Perhaps ISIS releases these videos as propaganda in order to enrage the U.S. and other world powers with the goal of drawing us into a war.

Graeme Wood reports in “What ISIS Really Wants” that ISIS has their own version of the apocalypse. After drawing the world (Dajjal, in their view) into a final battle in the Middle East, “Jesus—the second-most-revered prophet in Islam—will return to Earth, spear Dajjal, and lead the Muslims to victory.”

You read that correctly. ISIS wants a final war, and they believe Jesus will come back to save them. The more rage and fear they can create within the United States, the greater their chances of drawing us, and the rest of the world, into their final war.

  1. The American news media profits from war coverage.

I believe that there are many honest and decent news journalists, and I most appreciate journalists who are willing to give a self-critique of the American news media. We know that the advertising profits of commercial television channels depend on advertising that is driven by ratings. When a war begins, news channel ratings go up. When news channel ratings go up, so do advertising profits.

On top of that, some media outlets are more fear-based than others. Psychology Today suggests that fear-based news follows a two-part formula – 1) Create fear with the headline, then 2) Suggest that the fear can be relieved by watching the newscast. What could possibly create more fear-based ratings than a war with terrorists? Again, I deeply appreciate honest journalism and responsible media. We must be aware, however, that war financially benefits those who give (actually, sell) us information.

  1. War will likely not stop terrorist attacks.

In Matthew 26:52, Jesus famously tells Peter, 52 “Put your sword back in its place… for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.”

In other words, Jesus says that violence begets violence. With every bomb that falls, ISIS terrorists are emboldened to kidnap and execute more hostages and attack more innocent people. The perpetual conflict in the Middle East is an illustration that the cycle of violence can last for hundreds of years.

  1. Christians who do support war cite Just War Theory, not a desire for vengeance.

Just War Theory began as a doctrine of justifiable war created by followers of Jesus such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. While I am not Catholic, I find the catechism of the Catholic Church enlightening regarding war. Criteria include:

  • The damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
  • All other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
  • There must be serious prospects of success;
  • The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

The second criteria of “All other means…” could be endlessly debated, but it demands the question, “Are there any other means by which to address this conflict other than violence?” Certainly followers of Jesus should lead the way in suggesting alternate means of addressing a conflict.

  1. There are potentially more effective ways to decrease extremism than war.

If one criteria for war is “All other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective,” we must ask, “What are some other means to put an end to conflict?

ISIS appeals to disenchanted young people who feel marginalized by using a twisted interpretation of Islam that moderate Muslims reject. Consequently, perhaps the two most effective means of confronting ISIS are to 1) Address the reasons for marginalization and 2) Promote the voices of moderate Muslims.

  1. Children and other innocent persons will die in a war.

This is a fact we would like to ignore, but innocent people are killed in every war. The innocent dead will include children who are every bit as valuable to God as your children and mine.

  1. Our children will be the ones fighting the war.

Those sent to fight will be the sons and daughters of peace-loving Americans. While the murders committed by ISIS are horrendous and inexcusable, a war will lead to the deaths of more people.

  1. Few Americans have been killed by ISIS, while thousands of Americans are killed annually within the United States.

Ten thousand Americans are killed by other Americans with guns every year, and “In fact, far more Americans were killed by gun violence in 2013 alone (33,636) than all the Americans killed on U.S. soil by terrorists in the last 14 years, and that’s including 9/11.”

According to CNN, U.S. officials are not sure how many Americans ISIS is currently holding hostage. One official said there may be “a number.” The article states that approximately 80 journalists from various countries are now held. Every life lost is tragic and horrific, but the number of Americans killed by ISIS is small relative to common causes of death within our own country.

Just across our southern border, staggering violence is occurring that is largely ignored by the American media. According to the Huffington Post, over 100,000 people have been killed in gang-related violence since 2007 in Mexico. Why do we see daily reports from the Middle East and far less reports about horrific violence closer to our country?

Motivated by love for our neighbors, followers of Jesus want to relieve misery, protect the innocent, and save lives. Relative to the causes of misery and death in our world, is a war with ISIS warranted?

  1. A war with ISIS will cost American taxpayers.

Much of American politics is an argument over how much the government should collect in tax revenue and how it should be spent. The Harvard School of Government found that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost U.S. taxpayers $6 trillion. That’s $75,000 for every American household. How much would American society benefit if that sum of money were to be invested right here in the U.S. in the form social programs, infrastructure, education, etc.?

  1. It is certain that more Americans will die in a war with ISIS than the number already killed by ISIS.

ISIS has claimed responsibility for the deaths of five Americans, and it is a certainty that more than five Americans will be killed in a ground war with ISIS.

On September 11, 2001, 2,996 Americans were horrifically murdered by terrorists. During the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, 6,802 U.S. service members were killed, over twice the number of Americans killed on 9/11. Several thousand more U.S. contractors were killed in the two conflicts, and the number of civilian deaths is massive, perhaps between 100,000 and 200,000 people. Many times more people lost their lives in the wars following 9/11 than in the terrorist attacks themselves.

While I, personally, accept Just War Theory, I believe that Christians should sober-mindedly consider the teaching of the Prince of Peace regarding violence– do not murder, pray for those who persecute you, and those who live by the sword will die by the sword.

Whether or not you support an escalated conflict with ISIS, as the drumbeat of war intensifies, those who follow the Prince of Peace should march to a different beat.

Trapped in a Single Story

by Tyler Connoley

In July of 2009, Chimamanda Adichie gave a Ted Talk in which she talked about the danger of the Single Story. The talk recounts the ways in which we trap groups of people by only telling one story about them. “The single story creates stereotypes,” she said, “and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.”

The same is true for the metaphors we use about God. When we only say that God is our Father, and forget that God is our Mother, we trap people in the Single Story. That trap can be damaging for someone who has difficulty connecting with father figures. The same goes for any metaphor that becomes the only metaphor we use for something that is beyond our understanding.

I learned this lesson most-profoundly from a hospice patient I met when I was a chaplain. This woman, who I’ll call Hope, was a devout Christian who was certain that God would welcome her when she died — and yet she was terrified of dying. As I visited Hope over the course of weeks, I couldn’t figure out why she was so afraid, until one day when she opened up to me about the one and only time she had left Grant County. She and her husband had gone to Phoenix to visit his family, and within twenty-four hours of arriving, she had begged him to take her home. “I hate traveling,” she said. “I’ve never left Grant County again.”

As I pondered why she needed to tell me this story now, I finally realized what was making her so afraid. This was a woman who loved life and laughter and exploring ideas, so her family, her friends, and the hospice staff were trying to help ease her fears by talking about the “amazing journey” she would soon be going on. But she was thinking, “I hate traveling.” All she could think about was that trip to Phoenix.

So, we began to talk about “going home.” I invited her to share stories about her mother and father, whom she loved and looked forward to seeing. We talked about her sister, who had died the year before. They loved to cook and eat together, and we imagined the banquet God would prepare for her on her arrival. Hope’s family and friends agreed to use this metaphor when they talked to her, as well. And soon, she was not afraid, but looking forward to her home-going.

I return to Chimamanda Adichie, and her observation about stereotypes. The Single Story is a trap that can be damaging. The problem is not that our metaphors for the Divine and the Beyond are untrue, it is that they are incomplete. We need multiple stories, so each of us can find our place in the stories of God’s people, so the child of a single mother can know his God loves him like his mom, and so Hope can know she’s going home.

Christmas & Bowen Family Systems

by Amos Smith

Christmas is a time for family. Above is a picture of my family growing up. Family is never perfect. Every family I have encountered in ministry has challenges. Some hide the challenges better than others. Yet, challenges are always there.

How we deal with the challenges of our family of origin has profound repercussions for the rest of our lives. Family and the dynamics of family relationships give us the blueprint that tends to define our future relationships. I have a high regard for Family Systems Thought or Bowen Family Systems as it is commonly called. Bowen Systems has given me and many other ministers and rabbis a more accurate understanding of faith community dynamics than any other paradigm.

One of the counter-intuitive insights of Bowen Family Systems is that all of our relationships are inter-connected. In other words, if a man is having challenges with his wife, instinctively one might think that the best thing for him to do is to work on that relationship. Yet, often Bowen Systems would say, “If you are having challenges with your wife work on your relationship with you mother.” If a woman is having challenges in her relationship with her son, she may need to work on the relationships she has with her ex-husband, husband, or brother. And the list goes on… For a humorous representation of what this might look like in the twenty-first century you may want to take a look at the television show “Modern Family.”

During the holidays many people are stressed by all the preparations. Yet, what is more important than the meals, the stuffed stockings on the mantel, the lights, and the presents under the tree, are our relationships. Seen correctly, beyond shallow commercial and cultural trappings, Christmas at its best is a time to work on our relationships with the people we love. And when one relationship grows in honesty, good boundaries, respect, and love it will have ripple effects on our other relationships.

Merry Christmas!

Advent: Living in the Dark

by Amanda Peterson

The beginning of Advent is a time to stop and make a choice of how to enter this Holy season.  The darkest time of the year is an invitation in many traditions to celebrate and acknowledge the Presence of God in several forms.  As a contemplative Christian, the invitation is to dwell in the dark, unknown and not yet.  It’s a call to dwell in the reality of darkness. Darkness has a way of surrounding and causing a sense of coming within.  It slows life down and is the invitation to sleep.

When I lived in Alaska the winter darkness did not have a good effect on this desert rat.  I had to sit under a lamp that mimicked the sun so many hours of the day just to stay sane.  Even though my life was busy, I knew if I didn’t take the time to bathe in that light, my life would totally stop with depression.  Too much darkness without the promise of light can kill.

I can also remember summers in Alaska with 24 hours of daylight and the challenges of trying to put a 1-year old to bed.  To be honest, in a way I was glad when long days were coming to an end I was given a chance to rest.

Too much light can kill, also.  I tend to think in our age we are bathed in too much light.  Any time in our lives there can be light.  Even when the darkness calls, switches are flipped and work and business continues.  

The same principle applies for the darkness within. When anxiety pops up, TVs are on, phones are checked, or some other distraction is available to shoo it away.  For some there is a sense of being out of practice with what to do when it’s dark, whether literal darkness or internal darkness of death, terror, pain, or loss. It is overwhelming and frightening.  There is a desire to control it, yet sometimes in life there is no light switch to flip.

The honoring of seasons like Advent gives an opportunity to remember that darkness is just the other side of light; that God is in the midst of it all.  Rather than using it as a count down to Christmas, it is an opportunity to dwell inwardly, learn how to see in the dark and look for the little candles of light.  Learning to stand in the dark heightens awareness and creates vulnerability , empathy, and trust.  In my home we always turned out all the lights in the living room when we lit the advent candles.  Those flickering lights created a hush and an instant dwelling place in the reality that life is so much more when we take the time to be quiet in what is.  It was a time to remember that God has entered this world, one of dark and light.

Practice:  Take an evening and don’t turn on any lights or other electronics.  Use alternative light like a candle or a flashlight.  See what is noticed as you dwell in what is.

The Un-evolving Relationship between Evolution, American Christians, and Climate Change

by Ryan Gear

Last week marked 156 years since Charles Darwin published Origin of Species. Had Darwin lived an incredibly long life, he would be able to see that a high percentage of Christians in 2015 still have trouble with his theory that species evolve over time.

Not only that, he would see that Catholics and Protestants have trouble with the science affirming some human element in climate change. According to a study by Arbuckle and Konisky, a belief in biblical literalism, the same belief behind the denial of evolution, also correlates with a denial of climate change.

While world leaders convene this week in Paris for the COP21 conference on climate change, could it be that the biblically influenced denial of science is actually what is slowing our country’s progress on mitigating climate change? If so, perhaps the place to begin is with a treatment of the Bible’s relationship with the theory of evolution.

Conservative Christian groups like the Southern Baptists and Missouri Synod Lutherans believe that the theory of evolution is incompatible with the Bible’s teaching of creation in Genesis chapters 1 and 2 (Roman Catholics and mainline Christians see evolution as compatible with Christian faith). The groups who reject evolution do so because the Genesis creation accounts appear to have God creating the heavens and the earth in six 24-hour days.

Even those who hold to a more literal reading of the Bible have proposed that Genesis 1:1 leaves room for a gap of unknown time, making it possible to reconcile evolution with a literal reading of the Bible. This is not the only way of reconciling faith and science. In a post I wrote for the religion blog Onfaith entitled 10 Things Evangelicals Aren’t Supposed to Say, I cited evidence that there are actually two creation accounts in Genesis chapters 1-2.

This evidence, however, is unconvincing to a significant percentage of American Christians. The Pew Research Center found that:

Only a minority of Americans fully accept evolution through natural selection. About two-thirds (65%) of U.S. adults say humans have evolved over time, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey on science and society. But only a little more than half of that group (35%) expresses the belief that humans and other living things evolved solely due to natural processes. About a quarter (24%) of U.S. adults say that evolution was guided by a supreme being. The same survey found that 31% of Americans reject evolution entirely, saying that humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.

As to the role of religion, a full 64% of American white evangelicals reject the evidence accepted by 98% of American scientists, that humans and other species evolved. According to the Gallup Poll, the percentage of Americans who reject evolution has remained relatively unchanged since 1982.

Evangelical Christian and scientist Francis Collins believes that it doesn’t have to be this way. As head of the Human Genome Project, Collins argues that DNA essentially proves the theory of evolution to be true, and that evolution does not have to be a threat to any religious person’s faith. As a believer in theistic evolution, Collins writes:

But I have no difficulty putting that together with what I believe as a Christian because I believe that God had a plan to create creatures with whom he could have fellowship, in whom he could inspire [the] moral law, in whom he could infuse the soul, and who he would give free will as a gift for us to make decisions about our own behavior, a gift which we oftentimes utilize to do the wrong thing.

I believe God used the mechanism of evolution to achieve that goal. And while that may seem to us who are limited by this axis of time as a very long, drawn-out process, it wasn’t long and drawn-out to God. And it wasn’t random to God.

Even though secular scientists may not agree with his explanation, Christians can. It is a better alternative to denying evidence-based science and human discovery, altogether. More importantly, due to the correlation between biblical literalism and climate change denial, it just might save our planet.

 

Advent

by Amos Smith

“The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” –John 1:5

This is the first week of Advent!

Church of the Painted Hills UCC put out an “Advent Meditations” booklet this year. It is wonderful to read people’s varied Advent reflections and stories. It makes Advent personal.

The essence of Advent and Christmas for me is the affirmation that against all odds, in the midst of darkness of global terrorism, in the midst of the darkness of massive environmental degradation, and all of our adult struggles, there is a Light in this world. This Light shined in the most obscure of places–in a backwater of the Roman Empire that no one knew about called Judea. In that backwater on a speck of planet in an average sized galaxy called the Milky Way came a brilliant Light. This Light was so brilliant that it transformed and healed everything around it and spawned a faith that eventually spread to over one-third of the world’s population.

We need to know that there is a Light in this world that participates in the Light that shown at the beginning of time (Genesis 1:3)… A Light that spoke a word into the shadowy chaotic deep… A Word that created order and beauty and meaning out of chaos (poetically rendered in Genesis 1).

When our lives are plunged into chaos after the death of a loved one, a car accident, a random act of violence, a divorce… It is in those times of darkness that we most need to know that there is a Light.

That Light of Christ is the reason for the Advent and Christmas seasons. It is the reason we lift up our hearts and voices every Sunday. In that spacious Light, in that primordial freedom, we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28).

Advent blessings!