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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.