Tuesday, September 30, 2014

People-Pleasing

from here: http://lysaterkeurst.com/2012/08/people-pleasing/

People-Pleasing

Hello, my name is Lysa and I want people to like me. So, I will sometimes say yes when I really want to say no. And when I do say no, I sometimes worry about how much I’m disappointing that person.
I would much rather write this blog in past tense. Like, “I used to struggle with this but I’ve really matured past it all. So, let me share how I bravely say no and never fret over that decision.”
But this isn’t a past tense issue in my life.
Though I have gotten better, I still have quite a ways to go. When I wrote Unglued, I confessed how hard it is for me to be honest with some people. My tendency to just stuff and smile has at it’s root, this desire to be liked.
No matter how I want to spin what this is, I have to call it people-pleasing.
It’s part of my DNA to love others. Love them and not disappoint them. But I have to realize, real love is honest. Real love cares enough about other people to say no when saying yes would build up a barrier in the relationship. Real love pursues authenticity rather than chasing acceptance.
So here’s how I’m challenging myself to break free from people-pleasing…I have to make peace with these realities:
* I am going to disappoint someone.
Every “yes” will cost me something. Every “no” carries with it the potential for disappointment.
Either, I will disappoint this person by not meeting the full extent of their expectations, or I will disappoint my family by taking too much time from them. Do I wish I could say yes to everything and still keep my sanity? Yes! But I can’t. So here’s how I will say no:
“Thank you for asking me. My heart says yes, yes, yes-but the reality of my time says no.”
A good verse for this is Proverbs 29:25, “The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe.”
* I must pause before giving immediate answers.
Sometimes it might be realistic for me to say yes, but I’ve learned to let my “yes” sit for a spell. Pausing allows me to assess how much stress this will add into my life. The person asking me for this favor probably won’t be on the receiving end of my stress. It’s the people I love the most that will start getting my worst when I say yes to too many people.
So, here’s how I will give myself time to make an honest assessment:
“Thank you for asking me. Let me check in with my family. If you haven’t heard back from me by the end of the week, please connect with me again.”
A good verse for this is found in Proverbs 31. Tucked between all the responsibilities she has is a verse that reveals her attitude. Proverbs 31:25 says, “She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come.” What this says to me is she doesn’t set her heart up to dread what lies ahead.
* Make peace with the fact some people won’t like me. In an effort to keep my life balanced, I will have to say no to many things. If someone stops liking me for saying no they’ll eventually stop liking me even if I say yes right now.
There are some people I won’t please no matter how much I give. And some people won’t stop liking me no matter how many no’s I give. My true friends are in that second group and I love them for that.
When looking for my "best yes" in a situation, I must take charge of my tendency to be a people pleaser. www.lysaterkeurst.com
Here’s a great verse for this: “For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man I would not be a servant of Christ,” (Galatians 1:10).
Now, I want to hear from you. Do you have some people-pleasing tendencies you know you need to work on? Or, have you discovered some things you’d like to share to help those still working through this?
I’d love to hear from you on this topic today. Let’s chat it up in the comments below.
And if you happen to live in city where there’s a K-LOVE radio station, I’ll be on the morning show today from 9-11 am EST and tomorrow from 7-9am EST. We’ll be discussing Unglued and taking callers. I’d love to hear your sweet voice.
But if you need to say no to me, I’m all about that. I will clap my hands and be so proud of you. See? We’re making progress on this people-pleasing thing together.

Friday, September 26, 2014

The greatest hoax - Evolutionary theory is riddled with contradictions.

from here: http://creation.com/greatest-hoax

The greatest hoax

Evolutionary theory is riddled with contradictions.

Jonathan Sarfati talks to 
Published: 8 May 2014 (GMT+10)
(First published in Australian Presbyterian magazine, Autumn 2012, pages 3–6; republished with permission.)
Dr Jonathan Sarfati is the bestselling author of Refuting Evolution (more than 500,000 copies in print), Refuting Compromise and The Greatest Hoax on Earth? Refuting Dawkins on Evolution. This last book is one of the most detailed examinations of Richard Dawkins’ views available today. Jonathan was born in Ararat, Victoria, and obtained a PhD in physical chemistry at Victoria University, Wellington. He now lives in Atlanta in the USA and works as a research scientist, speaker and editorial consultant for Creation Ministries International.
At the 2012 Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne the view of Richard Dawkins, the author of The God Delusion, was again proclaimed that science is essentially anti-God and that no scientist could claim to be both a Christian and rational. How should we respond to such a claim?
I think Dawkins needs to revisit the history of science and the assumptions that make it work. Science, by its very nature, presupposes an orderly universe. The philosophical basis for modern science was actually derived from a common belief in the biblical God of order. Science would be impossible without presupposing the reality of order in the universe. Without this conviction, we have no basis for assuming fundamental scientific laws.
Dawkins faces a huge problem in that atheists cannot provide a proper philosophical basis for scientific enterprise in the first place. When he claims that science is anti-God, he is effectively cutting off the branch he is sitting on.
Is it possible to make any real progress in science on the basis of atheistic naturalism?
No, not really. Scientists who are committed to the view that the world is largely the result of chance have no logical basis for thinking that we live in an orderly universe. You can’t derive that idea from atheistic naturalism. To the extent that they see the world in this way, they are hijacking the Christian worldview. Loren Eiseley, the American anthropologist and philosopher, said that the foundations of modern science could be traced to belief in a rational designer.
Naturalism has a very ancient pedigree. Do cultures that have this outlook have a basis for scientific advance?
Naturalism itself doesn’t provide any basis for thinking about the universe in terms of order. The Greek philosopher, Epicurus, was a naturalist. He thought about the world in terms of ‘atoms’ that came into being by time and chance. Of course, the problem with his worldview is that a chance universe cannot provide the uniformity that’s required for science.
Jeff Buck [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
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Many Christians are convinced that there’s a reasonable basis for believing in the Creator God of the Bible without necessarily relying on the Bible itself to establish their belief. As a scientist, do you see any compelling evidence to establish the existence of the Creator God that we find in Scripture?
For me, one of the most compelling pieces of evidence relates to the origin of the first living cell. Where did it come from? Evolutionists need to be able to explain how that cell came into being. We now know that a single cell is incredibly complicated. It’s got oodles of biochemical machinery and massive amounts of coded information and decoding machines. All these mechanisms are essential for the life of the cell and, on the evolutionary model, they need to be in place for the process of evolution by natural selection to get under way. However evolutionists like Dawkins cannot provide a credible explanation for the existence of this first living cell.
Antony Flew, who was a leading atheist philosopher, said that Darwinian evolution requires this first living cell for the process of evolution to occur. However, he pointed out that neither Darwin nor Dawkins can provide a reasonable account for the existence of this cell and therefore evolution is effectively dead on the starting-line. I think that’s a very powerful argument for a Creator God—the complexity of even the simplest living things.
I think another piece of compelling evidence is the incredible fine-tuning of the universe as a whole. In fact, the constants are tuned as precisely as hitting a bulls-eye at the other end of the universe. If just one or two of these laws were varied then atoms couldn’t form. When you consider that some of these leading evolutionary cosmologists suggest that multiple universes may exist, it’s even more amazing that we just happen to live in the universe with the right conditions. Their assumption actually concedes the point that our universe is incredibly unusual and that it wouldn’t arise by chance. So, in fact, the evolutionists are actually confirming that our universe bears all the marks of design by a greater intelligence.
Richard Dawkins has admitted that his theory of naturalistic evolution is not watertight and has many unsolved mysteries. What are the main difficulties with which scientists like him struggle in attributing the origin of human life to evolution?
Dawkins has admitted he is, as yet, unable to solve the problem of the origin of life. He also admits that the origin of sexual reproduction is a big mystery to him. He says that one day he might pluck up the courage to solve it. He cannot explain how the first sexual being actually arose and how it mated with another creature of its own kind.
There are other significant difficulties that evolutionists face such as the origin of human language and the existence of morality and ethics. If, according to evolutionists, we are essentially animals, how do we explain the notions of right and wrong that are universally accepted? Evolutionists can’t really justify morality on their own terms. They do talk about certain things having survival advantages, but right and wrong mean nothing in the evolutionary scheme. For instance, two evolutionists wrote a book suggesting that rape was simply a way of men propagating their genes. When one of them was challenged in an interview about the morality of his position, he had no way of explaining why rape would be wrong from an evolutionary point-of-view.
Do modern discoveries about the genetic code help us to determine which is the better model—creation or evolution?
Yes, I believe that recent discoveries about the nature of the genetic code point strongly to the existence of a Designer. The reason for this is that our genes consist of multiple codes and these codes can only come from an intelligent source. Just as language and computers operate on various codes, so do the basic building blocks of life. Our DNA contains complex codes which are read by enormously complex machines.
Evolutionists like Dawkins cannot provide a credible explanation for the existence of this first living cell.
One problem for evolutionists is that the instructions that create these machines are on the DNA itself. The DNA is meaningless without these decoding machines and, to add to the complexity, you can’t build the decoding machines without the instructions on the DNA.
Furthermore, not only is there a main genetic code, but there are other codes that overlay it. So, our DNA has at least three different codes on it. It’s hard to think of a sequence of letters that could make sense in English and in French, as well as making sense backwards and by skipping every other letter. However, that’s the sort of thing that we have in our DNA sequence, which means that it makes sense in several different languages. And that’s why we can have 20,000 genes coding for 100,000 proteins, because we’ve got these codes upon codes to enable this to happen.
So the likelihood of it happening by chance is just non-existent?
I think even one code by chance is almost non-existent, but codes upon codes makes it inconceivable.
Dawkins has claimed that evolution has been observed. If it’s true, doesn’t this mean that creationism has been disproved?
Actually, what he said was, “evolution has been observed; it’s just that it hasn’t been observed while it’s happening”.
Of course, what Dawkins is performing here is the old game of “bait and switch”. He engages in equivocation because he redefines evolution as meaning “change in gene frequencies over time”. Now the interesting thing is that if that’s what evolution means, you and I must be evolutionists as well. No one disputes that things change over time. However, we do dispute the idea that everything came from a single cell and that that cell came from a primordial soup. That’s the real issue that’s at the heart of this debate and no one ever observed this process. So Dawkins plays “bait and switch” by using two different meanings of evolution.
NPS [public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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Does Dawkins make a number of self-contradictory comments?
Yes, he does. For instance, in his book, The Greatest Show on Earth, he says that he is not anti-religious but of course he wrote the book called The God Delusion, which is ferociously anti-Christian. So he changes his tune depending on the audience to whom he is speaking. The problem is that some of his statements are at odds with one another. For instance, he says that evolution means a “change of gene frequency over time” and in the same breath asserts that “40% of Americans deny evolution”. However, 40% of Americans do not deny the change of gene frequency over time. In fact, I can’t think of anyone who does.
Does the fossil record provide us with any indications that human life may have evolved from more primitive life forms?
Not in the slightest.
Why do people keep saying that it does?
It’s a case of wishful thinking. Darwin knew that the fossil record didn’t provide the intermediate forms and so he had to make excuses as to why these links were missing. Evolutionists often talk about the discovery of “missing links”, but the so-called discoveries are very inconclusive. When I went to school I was taught that Ramapithecus was a missing link. However, scientists no longer believe that.Ramapithecus is now thought to be a variety of orangutan.
Neanderthals and Homo erectus seem to be just varieties of modern man because their genomes, structure, and technology are quite clearly in the range of modern man. Neanderthals could make cosmetics, which requires a certain chemical know-how. They made a kind of super-glue and Homo-erectus seems to have been able to make long sea voyages. So they were every bit as human as we are.
There are also a number of dating methods that point to a far younger earth than billions of years.
Over the last few decades we’ve had claims made about a so-called hominid, “Lucy”, in Africa. What is the status of those claims now?
Mary Leakey, an anthropologist, found human footprints that were associated with this discovery and assumed that they must have been made by someone/thing like “Lucy”. However, the footprints were human and there was no evidence anything but a human made them. “Lucy” also had very curved bones in her fingers and toes that are typical for an arboreal creature that hangs onto branches. It also had particular bones on its wrist that could lock, which is typical of a knucklewalker. So on the ground it would knuckle-walk and it probably lived in a tree, which is why it had the curved finger bones. The evidence more likely suggests that it was an arboreal knuckle-walker. It was really a unique type of creature that was not related to humans.
How reliable are artistic reconstructions of the so-called evolution of man? Are they based on scientific evidence? If not, what are they based upon?
The thing is, we don’t have fossils of the soft parts of animal or human tissue. Mostly it’s bones and what you put inside the soft part depends on what you think is ape-like or humanlike. In my book, The Greatest Hoax on Earth?, I document how one such artist, Ron Ervin, was told to make his illustrations either more ape-like or human-like, depending on the conclusion that the writer wanted to make. It’s possible when you are simply shown bones to have a fair bit of artistic licence in portraying the outward features of a person or an animal. For example, you could make someone with a Neanderthal skeletal structure look relatively human. There are certainly people around today with the big brow ridges that have some resemblance to this type. You sometimes see these characteristics in certain European populations. You probably wouldn’t even notice them walking down the street. So a lot of it is based on artistic licence.
For evolution to be true, the earth needs to be billions of years old. Can we know this for sure? How reliable are modern dating methods?
All dating methods have certain built-in assumptions. You can certainly measure radioactive decay over time, but of course you have to make an assumption about how much of the material was there to begin with. That’s a huge assumption. You have to assume the rate that we observe today has always been this rate, and again that’s an assumption. In fact, we do know of things that can change decay rate. So dating methods are built upon one assumption after another.
We undermine the entire message of Scripture if we try to introduce the idea of evolution into it.
I think it’s only fair to point out that there are also a number of dating methods that point to a far younger earth than billions of years. These dating methods make more sense. The things that point to an older age can be explained under a young earth framework but not the other way around.
One of the best dating methods I think is radiocarbon, which decays so quickly that if the whole earth was made of radiocarbon, it wouldn’t last a million years. Yet we’re finding radiocarbon in coal and in diamonds. Diamond is the hardest substance on earth, so it can’t be contaminated. But we find diamonds that are dated as billions of years old and they still contain radiocarbon. So it means they can’t have been that old because the carbon would have disappeared by then. In coal as well, supposedly 300 million years old, we still find radiocarbon. So once again, this puts an upper limit on the age of coal and diamonds. The upper limit is on how long the C-14 would last—less than a million years. So here is a case where the famous Carbon-14 dating proves to be an ally of the biblical creation models.
There are many Christians who believe in the processes of evolution as an explanation of the origin of life. On the other hand you’ve got people like Richard Dawkins who claim that biblical, and especially evangelical Christianity, is fundamentally incompatible with evolutionary theory. Who’s right?
GFDL, via Wikimedia Commons
9392-fish-fossil
Here is one case where I agree with Dawkins. The thing is the Bible is very clear about certain things. It says that the world was created in six days and that a flood covered the whole earth. It’s also very clear that the death and suffering we see around us is a result of the fall of Adam and Eve. The New Testament is emphatic about this. In Romans 5, and 1 Corinthians 15, Paul tells us Adam brought death into the world and Jesus Christ, the last Adam, brings the resurrection from the dead.
So the whole gospel of Jesus Christ depends on a literal happening in the Garden of Eden where Adam sinned against God and brought God’s curse upon us. Evolution undermines this account of our origins by putting death before sin. The Bible also says that death is the “last enemy” (1 Cor. 15:26); yet theistic evolutionists would have us believe that God used his last enemy to create things which then became “very good” (Gen 1:31). However, according to the evolutionary view there was death, suffering and disease for millions of years. Frankly, I find it hard to imagine how that can even remotely be described as very good.
Christians who believe in evolution also have to face the problem of restoration. If Christ is going to restore or “regenerate” the world, what will He restore it to? Will we simply experience millions more years of death, suffering and disease? Once Christians accept an evolutionary hypothesis they are buying into a worldview that not only denies just a few verses in Genesis; in fact, evolution is opposed to the biblical ideas of creation, fall and redemption. We undermine the entire message of Scripture if we try to introduce the idea of evolution into it.
Where does this leave Christians who believe that evolution resolves the conflict between religion and science?
You lose your ability to understand where this death and suffering comes from. You lose the ability to understand Jesus as the Kinsman-redeemer, who is our blood relative because He comes from Adam and all the rest of us come from Adam. But if there’s no real Adam, then the Kinsman-redeemer concept gets thrown out the window as well. The authority of Scripture is undermined because there’s no real way you can develop evolutionary ideas from Scripture. This means that fallible evolutionary science becomes the underlying hermeneutic for Scripture. Is this something that evangelicals can afford to tolerate?
We easily forget the warning of people like the late leading biologist Jacques Monod. He said that evolution is the cruellest, most wasteful, and inefficient way that anyone could imagine of creating the world. I think Monod is right. Evolution leaves us with a supposed God of love who uses a cruel and wasteful process to eliminate the unfit. The gospel of God’s grace, however, is about the God of mercy who delights to save sinners.

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Monday, September 22, 2014

The good about not having it all together…

from here: http://www.lovegodgreatly.com/2014/06/the-good-about-not-having-it-all/
I sat quietly in the waiting room with tears streaming down my face. My unstable emotions were even catching me off guard.
After all, I’m the one who’s always supposed to have it all together.
And oh, how I long to be that person. The low-maintenance one who always encourages. Who always has a smile on my face, is generous with my time, and helps ease the burdens of others. I despise neediness in myself. Call it mercy, call it middle-child-syndrome, or call it a bad case of wanting to be in control. Whatever it is, it just plain stinks when you’re not.
The week before, our like family small group had overwhelmed us with love and practical care. My husband and I sat on our living room floor and wept as our friends surrounded us and lifted our sick little boy up to our capable Father. He alone could make him well in a moment, but for His glory and our good, He had taken us on an unknown journey that had lasted years.
A crazy hereditary condition had landed us in children’s hospital waiting rooms far more often than we would have liked. As far as conditions go, we always knew that it was “fixable,” but the road would be uncomfortable. Our kids would endure test after test and difficult hospitalizations, and I’d cry hard tears with each visit as I listened to my sweet toddlers cry out, “Aaalllll done, Mama. Aaalllll done.”  It sometimes seemed unfair that so many other couples had such healthy kids, but on my unselfish days, it especially seemed unfair that our kids would get through this, while other children with more severe health issues weren’t looking at outcomes as optimistic as ours. The waves of emotions alone were honestly more than this seemingly all-together girl had signed up for.
The waiting room chairs were hard and uncomfortable, a perfect match to the state of my heart. Some stranger had wheeled my boy through those doors without me hours before, and now surgery was taking much longer than expected. For Your glory and my good, God? No, thank you. My Bible was open to the Psalms, the pages now wet; first with fear, and then with tears begging for forgiveness for my doubt in the One who holds all things together.
I was so tired of not having it all together. And now I wanted to cry out, “All done, Father. I don’t want to carry this anymore.”
But God meant it for good.
Those familiar words from Genesis kept pressing in on the walls of my hard heart with each waiting room visit through the years, reminding me that in each victory and each set-back in life, God has a greater goal than my comfort in mind. It’s actually through those vulnerable times when I don’t have it all together {which, let’s face it, is all the time} that I’ve come to understand more of who He is.
The God who forms in the womb, who sees my every thought and need, who loves me in spite of myself – He understands and has compassion for me in my weakness. He willingly walked a road that no perfect man deserved and sympathizes with my suffering – no matter how big, or how seemingly insignificant. And praise God that He loves me too much to leave me immature and lacking.
God, the Master Weaver. He stretches the yarn and intertwines the colors, the ragged twine with the velvet strings, the pains with the pleasures.Nothing escapes his reach. Every king, despot, weather pattern, and molecule are at his command. He passes the shuttle back and forth across the generations, and as he does, a design emerges. Satan weaves; God reweaves. ~ Max Lucado

The good about not having it all together?
My dependence is greater.
My priorities are refigured.
My will is broken.
My heart is made tender.
My compassion grows stronger.
My ministry becomes more effective.
God shines brighter… for my good, and His glory.
I’ve learned over the years that all-together people don’t exist. And I’ve also learned that even if they did, I don’t want to be one of them. In my weakness, I’ve seen more of Christ, and He is more beautiful than before. I’ve watched Him weave this grace-laced story – messy and twisted underneath - into a magnificent, intentional and clearer presentation for the world to see more of Jesus in me. I’ve learned that the world doesn’t need one more fake all-together Jesus-follower. The world just needs Jesus.
So mold me to be more like you, Father. Whatever it takes. Because nothing escapes your reach, my confidence is in You. Shine brighter, for my good, and Your glory.
“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses,
but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. 
Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence,
so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”
~ Hebrews 4:15-16
At His feet,

Friday, September 19, 2014

Taking the Bible seriously?

from here: http://creation.com/taking-bible-seriously

Taking the Bible seriously?

Published: 6 July 2014 (GMT+10)
Wikimedia commons
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A portion of The Great Isaiah Scroll.
This week’s feedback is a response to a critic whose real authority seems to be secular uniformitarian ‘science’. However, he also uses a common line from evolution-friendly theological colleges that hope to be considered ‘evangelical’: taking the Bible ‘seriously’ but not ‘literally’.  responds.
Dear Sir or Madam,
I wish to object strongly to your ministries’ representation of the Bible’s recount of creation in Genesis as a valid scientific alternative to mainstream cosmology, geology and biology.
The hallowed process of peer review is not all it is cracked up to be, either.—The Economist
As a Christian I take seriously the task of reading the Bible. Seriously, but not ‘literally’. It is significant on this first Sunday in Lent (9th Mar) the lectionary readings for the temptations of Christ include passages from Genesis about Adam and Eve’s temptation. Serious exegesis leads the reader to a deeper understanding of the human duty to resist temptation while a pilgrim on the way to the Cross at the end of Easter. The details of the type of fruit or serpent or the alleged dimensions and location of Eden are not important.
As an enthusiastic astronomer and physicist I also perfectly accept that the universe is 13.8 billion years old and the Earth 4.6 billion. Evolution occurs, just as our understanding of science and the Gospel does.
Yours faithfully,
K.G., Australia
Actually, the ‘serious’ way to take it is governed by two principles: (1) Recognize Scripture as ‘God-breathed’ … (2) The true meaning of Scripture is the meaning the original readership would have understood by the words the inspired authors used.
Dear Mr G.
Thank you for writing to CMI. My answers are interspersed with yours.
I wish to object strongly to your ministries’ representation of the Bible’s recount of creation in Genesis as a valid scientific alternative to mainstream cosmology, geology and biology.
Objection noted, but we have no intention of changing. For one thing, you have not in the slightest shown that it’s an invalid scientific alternative or that the current mainstream is right. I refer you to Michael Crichton on consensus science, where he points out that science is not decided by mainstream opinion but evidence. Also, while our Journal of Creation is peer-reviewed, peer review can tend to protect the consensus even to the point of admitting faulty data and blocking good science, as we document in Creationism, Science and Peer Review. Even the secular journal The Economist has picked up on this a few months ago in How science goes wrong: Scientific research has changed the world. Now it needs to change itself:
The hallowed process of peer review is not all it is cracked up to be, either. When a prominent medical journal ran research past other experts in the field, it found that most of the reviewers failed to spot mistakes it had deliberately inserted into papers, even after being told they were being tested.
As a Christian I take seriously the task of reading the Bible.
As you should. A follower of Christ should follow His example of taking Scripture seriously: indeed, He said, “Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35) (see The authority of Scripture). Further, He believed in a young earth, and in other parts of Scripture most scoffed at today. So why do you disagree with Him?
Photo Dr Clifford Wilson
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A Babylonian tablet fragment found at Nippur, an ancient Babylonian site in the same general location that Abraham came from. The area outlined in black is a record about the Flood. There are more than 300 known records of the Flood world-wide, with about 30 of them in writing. Some are remarkably close in their details to the original—the biblical account.
Seriously, but not ‘literally’.
Actually, the ‘serious’ way to take it is governed by two principles:
  1. Recognize Scripture as ‘God-breathed’ (θεόπνευστος theopneustos, 2 Timothy 3:16), not merely the work of its human authors. God moved (literally ‘carried along’) the writers of Scripture so that they recorded exactly what He wanted. However, God did not usually dictate the words, but superintended the authors so that, using their own individual personalities, they recorded His revelation without error (2 Peter 1:20–21). Otherwise, why bother to take it seriously?
  2. The true meaning of Scripture is the meaning the original readership would have understood by the words the inspired authors used. Note that this doesn’t concern itself with the ‘original intent’ of the author, which can raise the question of how we can know what a dead author intended. Rather, this is about the original meaning of the words he chose, according to the grammatical and historical context. Hence this is often called the grammatical-historical approach to Scripture, and is analogous to the ‘originalist’ or ‘textualist’ approach to US constitutional law. That is, even if we don’t know the intent of the writer of the law, we can know what the words meant to those who voted on them and to the people of the time. This has been explained many times, including the classic Should Genesis be taken literally?
As for the term ‘literally’, you seem to be using it to mean ‘woodenly literalistic’, denying any figurative language even when the text teaches it. In contrast, medieval and patristic interpreters used the term ‘literal’ to mean the grammatical-historical understanding, which could include a figurative meaning if that’s what the text taught. Thus to them, the ‘literal’ meaning of the ‘the windows of the heavens were opened’ (Genesis 7:11) would include its metaphorical usage for a massive rainfall. Rather, the ‘literal’ meaning was contrasted with a spiritualized or mystical meaning not grounded in the text.1,2 And later, the great Reformer and Bible translator William Tyndale (1494–1536) affirmed the same:
Thou shalt understand, therefore, that the scripture hath but one sense, which is but the literal sense. And that literal sense is the root and ground of all, and the anchor that never faileth, whereunto if thou cleave, thou canst never err or go out of the way. And if thou leave the literal sense, thou canst not but go out of the way. Nevertheless, the scripture uses proverbs, similitudes, riddles, or allegories, as all other speeches do; but that which the proverb, similitude, riddle or allegory signifieth, is ever the literal sense, which thou must seek out diligently.3
9522-creation-people
It is significant on this first Sunday in Lent (9th Mar) the lectionary readings for the temptations of Christ include passages from Genesis about Adam and Eve’s temptation.
That is indeed significant—precisely because the Bible regards this temptation as a real event. In two very significant passages in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15, Paul contrasts the sin of “the first man, Adam”, which brought death, with the righteousness of Jesus, “the second man” and “the last Adam”, who brought Resurrection from the dead. See our classic article First Adam—Last Adam: Both are vital to the Gospel … but exactly how? as well as deeper exegetical articles by a New Testament specialist: Romans 5:12–21: Paul’s view of literal Adam andChrist as the last Adam: Paul’s use of the Creation narrative in 1 Corinthians 15. Indeed, the Bible repeatedly links death with sin: “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), “the last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26), but your long-age dogma places death, both human and animal, before sin, thus disconnecting the biblical sin-death link. But if there is no connection between death and sin, then how could Christ’s death pay for our sin? See also The Fall: a cosmic catastrophe.
Serious exegesis leads the reader to a deeper understanding of the human duty to resist temptation while a pilgrim on the way to the Cross at the end of Easter.
Indeed it does. But the very reason it leads to this is that Adam and Eve are the real ancestors of us all, and their sin nature is imputed to (credited to the account of) us, their descendants. However, one descendant of Adam did not inherit original sin: Jesus Christ. The prophet Isaiah foretold this coming Saviour as literally the ‘Kinsman-Redeemer’, i.e. one who is related by blood to those he redeems (Isaiah 59:20, which uses the same Hebrew word גּוֹאֵל (gôēl) as is used to describe Boaz in relation to Naomi in Ruth 2:203:1–4:17). This is possible only because this Saviour is a physical descendant of the first man Adam via Mary (Luke 3:38)—and is called ‘the Last Adam’ (1 Corinthians 15:45)—which makes him the relative of all humans in all ‘races’ or people groups who have ever existed. Thus theistic evolution doesn’t just undermine Genesis and a literal Adam, but jeopardizes this vital Kinsman-Redeemer concept as well. Believers in Christ, our Kinsman-Redeemer, are saved because our sins were corporately imputed (credited) to His account (Isaiah 53:6) when He was on the cross. And His perfect righteousness was imputed to believers in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21). See also The Incarnation: Why did God become Man?
There is an ‘Edenic’ element in Isaiah’s thinking … a change in the very order of things itself: the herbivoral nature of all the creatures points to Eden restored (Gn. 1:29–30).—Alec Motyer
The details of the type of fruit or serpent or the alleged dimensions and location of Eden are not important.
We are not told by what authority you get to decide which parts of God-breathed Scripture are not important. But this is a red herring anyway. We actually are not told details of the fruit or the location of Eden, but there was still a real fruit and a real garden. This is important to understand the future. E.g. in two famous passages, Isaiah 11:6–9 and Isaiah 65:25, the prophet clearly understood the Edenic conditions of Genesis 1:30 as real history, and used them to teach about a future with equally harmonious animals, such as the wolf and the lamb, lion and the calf. Then he says “They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain,” unlike the current “Nature red in tooth and claw” (Tennyson) that we see in this fallen world (see also The carnivorous nature and suffering of animals and Why would a loving God allow death and suffering?). Irish biblical scholar Alec Motyer, former Principal of Trinity College, Bristol, expands on the Edenic connection of the first passage:
There is an ‘Edenic’ element in Isaiah’s thinking … the life of nature itself is transformed. Verses 6–8 offer three facets of the renewed creation and verse 9 is a concluding summary. First, in verse 6 there is the reconciliation of old hostilities, the allaying of old fears; predators (wolf, leopard, lion) and prey (lamb, goat, calf, yearling) are reconciled. So secure is this peace that a youngster can exercise the dominion originally given to humankind. Secondly, in verse 7 there is a change of nature within the beasts themselves: cow and bear eat the same food, as do lion and ox. There is also a change in the very order of things itself: the herbivoral nature of all the creatures points to Eden restored (Gn. 1:29–30). Thirdly, in verse 8 the curse is removed. The enmity between the woman’s seed and the serpent is gone (Gn. 3:15ab). Infant and ‘weaned child’ have nothing to fear from cobra and viper. Finally, in verse 9 the coming Eden is Mount Zion—a Zion which fills the whole earth. Peace (9a), holiness (9b), and “knowing the Lord” (9c) pervades all.4
Redeem. Restore. Recover. Return. Renew. Resurrect.Each of these biblical words begins with the re-prefix, suggesting a return to an original condition that was ruined or lost.—Randy Alcorn
The end of the Book of Revelation comes around to a future state even better than Eden, lacking any possibility of sin, but with some of its features: the Tree of Life, no death, crying, or pain, because the Curse would be abolished. Indeed, the whole point is the restoration of something that was lost, but under your long-age dogma, never existed. So what do you hope the creation to be restored to? Millions of years of more death and suffering? Randy Alcorn puts it like this:
God has never given up on his original creation. Yet somehow we’ve managed to overlook an entire biblical vocabulary that makes this point clear. Redeem. Restore. Recover. Return. Renew. Resurrect. Each of these biblical words begins with the re- prefix, suggesting a return to an original condition that was ruined or lost. God always sees us in light of what He intended us to be, and He always seeks to restore us to that design. Likewise, He sees the earth in terms of what he intended it to be, and he seeks to restore it to its original design.
As an enthusiastic astronomer and physicist I also perfectly accept that the universe is 13.8 billion years old and the Earth 4.6 billion.
As an enthusiastic Ph.D. physical chemist, I disagree, as does physicist and cosmogonist Dr John Hartnett. The baneful effects of long-age dogma on Christian theology are explained above, but the dogma also fails the scientific test—see Age of the earth: 101 evidences for a young age of the earth and the universe.
Evolution occurs,
A blanket statement without defining terms. Yes, there is change, even variation and speciation, as opposed to the ‘fixity of species’ dogma of the old-age propagandist Charles LyellDarwin’s mentor and foil. However, the dispute is about the real general theory of evolution aka from goo to you via the zoo, which requires huge increases in information content (see The evolution train’s a-comin’ (Sorry, a-goin’—in the wrong direction)).
Bottom line: we focus on Biblical authority, while the young-earth position is just a corollary of this, i.e. it follows logically from the propositions of Scripture.
just as our understanding of science and the Gospel does.
If the Gospel is really ‘evolving’, one must wonder how it resembles the one revealed in Scripture, or is it a “different gospel” that Paul anathematized (Galatians 1:8)? Consistent evolution really does lead to a “different gospel”, disconnected from its connection to Adam and sin. I’ve explained the baneful consequences of evolution appeasement before. It has also led to a downplaying of biblical morality, including support for ‘gay marriage’ by a former lecturer from the once sound Moore College, now a bastion of theistic evolution—see Gay ‘marriage’ and the consistent outcome of Genesis compromise.
I hope this explains our position. Bottom line: we focus on Biblical authority, while the young-earth position is just a corollary of this, i.e. it follows logically from the propositions of Scripture. However, you could easily have found this out for yourself, and more since our website has over 9,000 articles. Too many critics of biblical creation fail to pay us the courtesy they would expect for themselves: that is, find out what our real position is and the reasons we hold it.
Yours faithfully,
K.G.,Australia
Yours faithfully
Dr Jonathan Sarfati
Head scientist, CMI–USA (formerly of CMI–Australia)

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References and notes

  1. See also Nemetz, A., Literalness and the Sensus LitteralisSpeculum (A Journal of Medieval Studies) 34(1):76–89, 1959 | doi:10.2307/2847979. Return to text.
  2. See also Cosner, L. and Sarfati, J., Non-Christian philosopher clears up myths about Augustine and the term ‘literal’, J. Creation 27(2):9–10, 2013. Return to text.
  3. Tyndale, W.; cited in Packer, J.I., ‘Fundamentalism’ and the Word of God, pp. 101–114, 1958. Return to text.
  4. Motyer, A., The Prophecy of Isaiah, p. 124, 1993. Return to text.