Oklahoma! where the crap comes sweeping through the schools

I'm not sure you guys are getting the point of my Shetland pony analogy - in fact, you seem to be inferring the opposite of what I was trying to say. The reason I juxtaposed the pony to the camel instead of "a tiny little pill" is because I realize that even affirming the non-Christian's belief on science is not enough to let them swallow it. In fact, I have stated multiple times in these comments that it is the Holy Spirit who draws; the Holy Spirit takes the initiative. But to deny that there is a potential role for Christians to play in making the gospel appear more reasonable - but only when it is more reasonable - is to deny that Christians have any role to play in evangelism whatsoever; just send 'em off down the Romans Road with a pat on the hindquarters and let the Holy Spirit do all the work. Paul needn't have bothered with his sermon on Mars Hill: "All your gods are imaginary! Turn or burn!" Instead, he made a conscious and obvious choice to present Christianity as not wholly incompatible with a pagan religion, or at least to accentuate the points of commonality. I make no concessions to lies just because it makes Christianity seem more palatable, but before I write off unbelievers as hard-hearted or "vessels of destruction", I will make darn sure that I have examined whether all the stumbling blocks lying in their way are necessary stumbling blocks. This really needs no further defense.

Pete, thanks for coming by, and the kind words about this blog. I am glad for your contribution! Sometime you've gotta tell me about your conversation with this transgender Christian... :)

Leah, I hope you realize I do appreciate your "accusations" in spite of the fact that I have played along in the role of Job here and insisted, "I am upright before God."

Leah,

To me, Steve’s response (the Shetland pony metaphor) made it seem like there were all these folks who were so close to belief if not for this one issue, and that it’s the job of people like him to lead these horses to water, and then all the Holy Spirit has to do is make ‘em drink (sorry I keep beating this dead–well, never mind).

I totally agree with you. I even said as much in my first response though it got edited out because my wording was poor. But that is not to say that it isn't a valid objection that people have; and there are people making it very clear that you can't believe the Bible unless you believe in a 6 day creation. Check out AiG are the myraid of smaller independent sites which claim this everyday.

The gospel would be a lot easier sell in my neck of the woods (I finished an MFA in creative writing two years ago) if I could embrace the arguments of GLBT Christians who find justification for their behaviors in their particular takes on Scripture.

This is such an incredible coincidence because I had a transgender Christian in my office just this afternoon, just minutes after I wrote my first response, and I discussed this very issue with him. We can save the particular conversation for a different time.

Lucky for you guys, you have an issue that lots of Christians don’t give a rip about. Public education has seen to that. Sure, you’ve got your vocal fundamentalists, but lonely, Pete? C’mon! You’ve got C.S. Lewis on your side! You want to look like a freak and totally shut a door of utterance to sharing the gospel in the liberal arts?

We have C.S. Lewis and maybe Benjamin Warfield and basically no one else. And my fundie friends will tell you that even these two wouldn't have succumbed if they “knew what we know now” mainly that large body of YEC propaganda which has been created since the 60s. We can probably count on one hand the number of evangelical theologians who have come out defending evolution. Case in point: I can't find a single evangelical church here that doesn't rule out evolution in its statement of faith specifically. I'm not exactly sure how that defines as 'not giving a rip' I think that evangelical church gives a big rip about it.

But I don't disagree that it will be hard to share the gospel to those in the GLBT in certain contexts. Stanford would have been perfect example of that as well. Here in the Bible Belt (my friend notwithstanding) it is pretty much a non-issue. If you rub shoulders in the creative writing circles maybe GLBT dwarfs evolution as a topic. My experience is probably different for all my education and employment is science/engineering related. But I wouldn't accept or reject GLBT depending on how much of a stumbling block it is to non-believers. I didn't accept or reject evolution on this account and to be clear, when I was at Stanford I did not accept common descent. I accept common descent not because of the affect it would have on my witnessing but because it is true, just as the earth is not flat nor the center of the solar system.

Pete, I guess my point with that little quote was to say that the objections will take the shape of the individual. Of course evolution comes up--constantly. But is it the real issue? The gospel is absolutely preposterous!!! The idea of one man's martyrdom being some sort of contract between sinful man and a holy God is insane. And yet it is truth, truth that can only be laid hold of by grace, through faith. To me, Steve's Shetland pony metaphor made it seem like there were all these folks who were so close to belief if not for this one issue, and that it's the job of people like him to lead these horses to water, and then all the Holy Spirit has to do is make 'em drink (sorry I keep beating this dead--well, never mind!) That particular take seemed to minimize the role of the Holy Spirit and inflate the role of the big bad Christian intellectual--to my mind, anyway (a clash that may come down to a Calvinist/Arminian debate if unmasked, eh, Steve?)

As for big objections, human sexuality comes up a lot too, doesn't it? The gospel would be a much easier sell in my neck of the woods (I finished an MFA in creative writing two years ago) if I could embrace the arguments of GLBT Christians who find justification for their behaviors in their particular takes on Scripture. I'd almost like to agree with them. It would make being a Christian in that world a heck of a lot easier for sexuality to be a nonissue. But those are some clown shoes (to use Steve's earlier metaphor) that I'll never be able to take of Christianity. Lucky for you guys, you have an issue that lots of Christians don't give a rip about. Public education has seen to that. Sure, you've got your vocal fundamentalists, but lonely, Pete? C'mon! You've got C.S. Lewis on your side! You want to look like a freak and totally shut a door of utterance to sharing the gospel in the liberal arts? Just cherish some outmoded notions about men being men and women being women and the biological entity that produces offspring being somehow superior to the current gender free-for-all.

My own cowardly response was silence and retreat from academia (back to my comfort zone, I suppose, Mike) for the present, so I do appreciate grapplers like my friend Steve who are trying to navigate these murky waters. I'm just trying to be the kind of friend he's asked us to be (like Job's) and honestly ask him to check his motivations. I believe his heart is pure, but sometimes his statements seem to be more about making Dr. D. feel comfortable in his skin as a Christian (a temptation I recognize because I've surrendered to it) than about what he has stated his purpose to be. He's convinced me that he means otherwise, but when he skirts that dangerous line, it's my job as a friend to at least bring it up, right? That's what I'm hearing.

Mike,

I was simply piggy-backing (or pony-backing, if you will :) ) on Steve's metaphor, which I found ill-conceived in light of what his heart and purpose seem to be. I don't know you, so I've just been accusing my friend Job here (since that's what he asked for a few posts back).

Futurism is of course NOT one of the "less important" issues I referred to earlier, as Steve well knows, and I applaud anyone's efforts to straighten that crook in the Body's spine.

Leah,

Wanted to comment on your following quote.

“Gee, you know I could swallow that whole virgin birth thing, the substitutionary death of a Jewish carpenter for the sins of the world, if Christianity just didn’t include that ridiculous God-creating-the-world stuff.”

Denying 6 day creationism is not about denying that God acts supernaturally. It is simply that there is an overwhelming amount of evidence that this is not how God created. And for anyone who has come in contact with such evidence, it certainly is a stumbling block to tell them that to believe in Christ they have to ignore obvious reality. It would be the same as if we continued to assert the earth was flat, as the church once did, or that it did not spin, as the church was did; making our case from Biblical exegesis both times. Let me rephrase your paragraph as such,

“Gee, you know I could swallow that whole virgin birth thing, the substitutionary death of a Jewish carpenter for the sins of the world, if Christianity just didn’t include that ridiculous notion that the earth is flat”

Just about everyone familiar with the evidence for common descent (and I'll set my standard on this as someone who can coherently articulate it back to me) is at this point where denying its reality is about as intellectually honest as denying that the earth spins.

“I’m having a hard time imagining the tiny demographic of would-be believers you keep referring to...”

I'm not sure what your definition of tiny is here. And I'm guessing it depends what crowds you find yourself running in. When I was at Stanford University, the concept of evolution was always front and center and any witnessing that concluding a positive assertion of 6 day or even progressive creation was pretty much pointless. Now I live in Austin Texas, or even more precisely, just north of it on the conservative side. Here in the Bible belt, even the non-believers are skeptical of evolution and either way, no one really takes an interest in it. But that is not to say it doesn't come up. About a year ago my pastor related a story to me about meeting with the son of one of our elders. His son is an atheist and when they met together to speak what was the main topic of conversation...? The atheist asserted there is just to much evidence for evolution for Christianity to be true. Now my pastor, who had already by talking to me about this was right to emphasize that the reality of Christianity centers around the resurrection, not one interpretation of Hebrew poetry. And it is just for those situations that this blog exists.

But finally I think this blog exists for people like me. Steve is an individual blogger expressing his own thoughts and I am glad for it because at this time in my life I need some people to talk this out with. For I was one who grew up in a Christian home, influenced by YEC, and trained and motivated to defeat the evils of evolution. And then I made the mistake of actually learning about common descent, from actual science books instead of apologetic websites, and was startled to learn that it is actually true. And if it weren't for this small band of bloggers and the few brave theologians who have attempted to attack this issue; I would find myself very alone indeed.

Leah,

My pursuit is not to justify Christianity to anyone, because as you and I have both asserted, intellectual assent does not bring anyone into relationship with God.

You said,

And ultimately, I don’t think Dr. Life-of-the-Mind comes to Christ (in the end) in so different a way from Carlos or Gomer. We can get as far as we can with available truth about God and still need a blinding light on the Road to Damascus to make us see.

Absolutely, positively agreed. And I look to those instances such as the conversion of C.S. Lewis and recognize that some seekers really do have minor, unavoidable intellectual misgivings that are based in misunderstandings, the removal of which frees the mind from any offense so that one might well mollify one's conscience without scandalizing his mind.

At the heart of this is my belief that Christianity doesn't conflict with truth. The problems the Thinker would have with "that whole virgin birth thing, the substitutionary death of a Jewish carpenter for the sins of the world" are not quite the same as those he would have with the origins question because those theological truths are not illogical given the notion of a supreme God of truth. What would seem contradictory to that notion for the intellectual seeker is the acceptance of a historiographic reading of early Genesis, because it would suggest that God has deceived us by forming the near perfect illusion that the fields of biology, geology, astronomy, and anthropology together agree upon.

How I expect this problem to be solved is not through a small band of lone ranger ambassadors to the Dark Side like Mike and me. It's no good trying to change the perception of our targets so that they stop assuming that Christendom embraces inaccurate beliefs about reality while the fact remains that most of Christendom does embraces inaccurate beliefs about reality! That's a task, but somebody's gotta give it a shot.

Leah,

You wrote:

Trying to make Christianity easier to swallow seems to this prophet to be a dangerous proposition.

Please don't think that what Steve or I are doing is an attempt to "make" Christianity easier. Christianity is what it is. There is only ONE truth, and Steve and I don't think that young-earth creationism, intelligent design, or futurism accurately depicts that Truth. They are flawed paradigms that, while they may not necessarily hinder a particular person's spiritual walk (especially if they grew up in those traditions), they do hinder others' ability to accept the truth that is Christianity.

In short, Steve and I are working to tear down those paradigms and remove those stumbling blocks for those "others," not you. If you want to remain in your theological comfort zone, that's fine. But please don't accuse us of attempting to "change" Christianity to make things easier.

Point taken, Teach. I guess it is a case of clashing motivational gifts. You have to think and write differently for the people you are trying to reach, and I appreciate the distinction in giftings and callings.

If what I wrote in my late-night commenting (I deleted about half of what I had written because I was dozing off and it no longer made sense) sounded like I devalued the intellect, I’m really sorry. Of course I value the intellect. I just don’t consider it capable of discerning things that can only be discerned spiritually. Too, I’m having a hard time imagining the tiny demographic of would-be believers you keep referring to, the ones sitting around like Rodin’s Thinker, musing, “Gee, you know I could swallow that whole virgin birth thing, the substitutionary death of a Jewish carpenter for the sins of the world, if Christianity just didn’t include that ridiculous God-creating-the-world stuff.”

The origins debate is not a huge concern for me (though I disagree), it was just the example at hand, and I get what you’re saying about removing the obstacles. I just think that you’ll keep running into new ones. Trying to make Christianity easier to swallow seems to this prophet to be a dangerous proposition. Ask folks to open wide for a Shetland pony and the Gospel will become a whale--it will always be the stumbling stone, the rock of offense. For the rich young ruler (who had embraced every tenet), the price of belief became the one thing he could not surrender, his riches. And ultimately, I don’t think Dr. Life-of-the-Mind comes to Christ (in the end) in so different a way from Carlos or Gomer. We can get as far as we can with available truth about God and still need a blinding light on the Road to Damascus to make us see.

It certainly sounds like you're saying that only experiences -- love, desperate situations, and the Holy Spirit's wooing, perhaps signs and wonders -- are responsible for people coming to know God. Anything that plays with the emotions are also useful, such as music or poetry. So, basically, the Holy Spirit is okay with everything except engaging people's minds. In fact, if the beliefs you expressed are at all typical of others I've encountered who make the kinds of arguments you just did, any emphasis on the intellectual is practically useless and perhaps even more of a barrier than an open doorway. Chalk it all up to God and sentiment. If I heard all this coming from anyone but you, I'd guess that s/he was 1) a Southern Baptist, 2) a Pentecostal, or 3) a Calvinist. Maybe even some rare hybrid of them all ;) .

I'm honestly disappointed that you think intellectual pursuits are such a waste of time to the Kingdom of God, an overcoming kingdom that is supposed to be built on all seven mountains of influence, including Education. I'm even more distressed that you are ignoring the natural division of labor God has set up within the organism called the Church, especially as you ostensibly accept the fivefold ministry. Leave it to a prophet to tell the teacher he's wasting his time, I guess!

The Christian faith lays many stumbling blocks before the would-be believer. It's not easy to believe the gospel for several reasons, e.g. the unattractive requirements to submit to God and deny oneself. Unbelievers don't need any more obstacles than are inextricably embedded in the gospel itself. As people familiar with academia, you and I are both well aware that the "life of the mind" type of unbeliever is the most keenly aware of those difficulties and the most likely to decline a closer look at the faith because of them. Yeah, some have already made up their minds and, barring one or more of those experiences you mentioned, will not look any closer; I have no intention of surrendering the balance of them to eternal separation from God, just because they are using their God-given faculties of reason and rejecting Christianity because of false beliefs attributed to the faith at large. As Augustine put it,

If [non-Christians] find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?

That's why I am spending time deconstructing creationism, which I honestly believe to be an unnecessary hindrance to educated unbelievers.

You asked if changing your belief on the subject of origins would give you more of a heart for the lost: no, but if you had a heart for this segment of the lost, you would understand why I post on that subject.

To put it another way, let me answer it this way. If you were going to have heart surgery and you were given the opportunity to choose your doctor from a line-up of surgeons, would you choose one of those who look and speak as though they graduated from a respectable medical school or the one standing there with a clown suit on, blowing his klaxon horn and silently guffawing at the monkey on his shoulder? I daresay I know who I'd choose. Only if he were the last one there and I were in a crisis situation would I choose the clown. I'm here to rub the makeup off the Christian; I'm here to remove the red nose and oversized shoes; I'm here to send the monkey on its way, and teach the clown how to express himself coherently.

Will people choose the Christian doctor? Heck if I know; we still wear brightly colored clothing and talk sorta strange - there are some idiosyncrasies in the Christian faith that are inherent and cannot, should not, be removed. In the end, it really is the Holy Spirit working through our relationships that usually brings home the gospel to the heart of the unbeliever, but this sometimes cannot take place until after we have "become all things to all men, so that by all means [we] might save some". One of those "things" I am seeking to become is an intellectually sound Christian, and one of those "all men" is the academic type who would otherwise reject the gospel as he would a disreputable scientist's research.

Will this approach reach Demarcus? Carlos? Gomer over't the fillin' station? Likely not. But I am altogether unwilling to stand there and tell an educated, thoughtful unbeliever that he has to swallow a camel when he only has to open wide enough for a Shetland pony. I want to remove all unnecessary obstacles between the sick and their remedy. I trust God will take him from there. "...but with God, all things are possible." I think it's easier to meet needs and draw the non-academician to faith because they more readily see their need; reaching the lost who don't know they're lost is a harder job with fewer results, but for some Christians who feel called, there is no option to ignore the work. Add to this the necessity to educate and "undeceive" other Christians so that they don't continue to propagate incorrect beliefs that are turnoffs to unbelievers...

This blog is geared more toward that front of the battle. It's not as though I really have a stadium full of readers or anything; I'm just one guy trying to figure some things out and inviting a few friends to come along, contribute, and maybe learn something, too. As always, I thank you for your honest rebuke.

No, I'm not saying you should ignore issues simply because they put you at odds with your brothers and sisters in Christ. I was simply surprised that you would put such slanted material on a blog (journalistic or no) that seems to have truth as its highest goal.

If your "calling" is to make other Christians aware of their place on the platform, I'm not sure I see how many of the fights you choose to pick with common Christian positions, Biblical Creationism for example, come anywhere close to meeting your aim.

How would changing my position on this subject give me any more of a heart for the lost? Are we anticipating loads of platform jumpers when we show them how up-to-date we are scientifically, how correct our opinions on everything from A to Z? If it worked that way all (or even most) of the time, this aim of yours would make more sense to me.

But most people don't come to Christ because Christians have all their ducks in a row intellectually, they come because real Christians made a difference in their lives, because the Holy Spirit opened their eyes, because nothing else made any sense in their moment of crisis but "Jesus Loves Me."

I agree that bubble-bound Christians need to make every effort to reduce error, or at least reduce our volume about mysteries too high for us, but I think there are a lot more pressing things to call the church on the carpet about than the issues that so occupy your posts.

Well, pardon me for blogging! :) See, I ran into this editorial and just decided to do the "blog" thing and post it for others' perusal and response. Obviously, neither unbiased reporting nor typical blog posting is my metier; this site is usually reserved for long essays and my own op eds. I planned to do some independent research if I didn't hear anything else about it soon, and thought it likelier that I'd end up disregarding it as one of those sensational controversies that end up coming to naught after generating lots of smoke. And because one of the most popular non-journalistic roles of blogs is as a link aggregator/catcher of initial reactions, it seemed perfectly reasonable to post what I did. Still does.

That said, I can't say that additional research has done much to assuage my misgivings with this bill. I recognize that its intent was not as simple as trying to subvert scientific standards, and in fact quite necessarily protects other freedoms of expression. As long as public education does not allow parents to have a choice over their child's public school and its curriculum, all public schools must teach the facts as determined by academia. It is the parent's and the church's responsibility to either correct those facts based upon any ideological or religious considerations or to educate them outside the public school system.

Surely you're not suggesting that I should have ignored this simply because fear-mongering atheists haven't. Should I not take umbrage over something just because it puts me somewhere at odds with "the good guys"? One of the chief intents of this blog is to get Christians to analyze their positions and to step outside the Christian bubble formed around them by AFR (for instance) so they can see things more objectively (that "sliver of road"). It's a call for a sanity check. Unfortunately, both extremes will mistake anyone standing in between them for someone standing on the other side.

Reality sees no distinction between atheists and Christians: it barrels along through whatever stands there clamoring for its attention, and I take it as a responsibility (maybe even a calling) to see that Christians don't take it for granted that they are the ones waiting on the station platform instead of standing perilously on the tracks.

Posting a very slanted editorial rather than the text of the bill is irresponsible and biased reporting, but it's your blog. Unless the "Floor Version" (whatever that means) available on the Oklahoma legislature's website greatly differs from the final version of the bill, the part the science folks are getting all huffy over boils down to something pretty benign, and legislation that probably responds to a problem that many Christian kids with teachers who strictly adhere to church-state separation have faced:

ARTICLE IV. RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION IN CLASS ASSIGNMENTS
Students may express their beliefs about religion in homework, artwork, and other written and oral assignments free from discrimination based on the religious content of the submission by the student. Homework and classroom work shall be judged by ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance and against other legitimate pedagogical concerns identified by the school. Students shall not be penalized or rewarded on account of religious content. If the assignment given by a teacher involves writing a poem, the work of a student who submits a poem in the form of a prayer (for example, a psalm) should be judged on the basis of academic standards, including literary quality, and not penalized or rewarded on account of its religious content.

Unless I missed something in my quick scan, the rest of the bill is about kids being able to pray or talk about God as speakers at school events, something that's widely accepted here in the Bible Belt but unusual in other places. I'm not saying the bill (as I read it) doesn't have its flaws, but why hop on the bandwagon with the hopping mad godless? Google this story and many of the blog responses like yours are from fear-mongering atheists, who like fear-mongering, Fox-News watching, AFR-listening Christians, sometimes only tell you part of the story. There are ditches on either side, Steve. Take care to stay on that little sliver of road in the middle.

True, Steve, that goes for the instigators of this ridiculous idea. But what about all the legislators who have already signed off on this? It's not as though Oklahoma, the Red Man's state, is such a flaming Red State. Amazing. I hope I find out what happens with this bill.

I honestly want to know: what sort of people think this is a good idea?
I bet that they have very little exposure to diversity of opinions, either culturally, theologically, or intellectually. The world is seen in black & white. They only see this law as a tool that can help them and are completely oblivious to the fact that it can be used against them.

Right -- and how could the Oklahoma legislature have let it come this far? I used to live in Oklahoma and have fond memories of it, but this is a blight on my nostalgic sentiments!

Even if I were a die-hard young earth creationist, biblical geocentrist, or whatever, I would have realized how this would not only marginalize my own position, but render college-bound kids completely ignorant of ideas necessary for any higher learning. You don't have to believe it -- but you should be aware of it.

I honestly want to know: what sort of people think this is a good idea?

My response is just an echo from the article:
"Science education becomes absurd under such a situation"

OH. MY. WORD. I can't even begin to understand what on earth would make anyone think that this could possibly be a good idea. Yet another reason to never darken a public school's doors as a teacher or a parent. We are ruining entire generations in an attempt to be fair.