Don’t Be Double-Minded

Under immense pressure from secularists and other religious groups, the evangelical Christian church has been forced to defend herself in the western world more and more as today’s culture seeks to increasingly criticize, marginalize, and ostracize the Bible—the very bedrock upon which the church structure stands.

Everyone’s an Apologist

Even pastors and lay-Christians who would not consider themselves apologists have increasingly seen the need for a defense against attacks such as The Da Vinci Code, The God Delusion, Misquoting Jesus, and a plethora of other anti-Christian and “revisionist history” propaganda.

Of course, offering an impenetrable intellectual defense requires an unswerving apologetic, one that applies logic and a consistent hermeneutic in defense of our theology—otherwise, intelligent opponents will root out and emphasize any inconsistencies in order to claim victory over the Christian worldview. Enter the book of Genesis.

The Genesis Foundation

Genesis 1–11 is the ultimate seedbed of all major Christian doctrines. So, those theologians who offer an inconsistent application of the meaning of Genesis (gap theory, theistic evolution, progressive creation, etc.) have been some of the easiest targets for Christianity’s opponents for quite some time.

Try answering this philosophical objection to the Christian faith while holding the worldview that God used evolution and/or millions of years to create the earth: “If you have a God of love, then why is there so much pain and suffering in the world?” Answering this question while your Genesis foundation is built on evolution will allow your opponent to quickly expose your inconsistency in claiming God is “good” (and likely use it to eviscerate any future arguments).

“So—you’re saying God used millions of years of death, bloodshed, diseases, cancer, and mutations to create the earth, and then called it ‘very good’? Death is how God created? What a nice guy!”

Believing sin and death entered into the world as a result of Adam’s rebellion (Romans 5:12) is a bitter enough pill for some to swallow, but every logically-consistent thinker will reject the thought that a good God used a mechanism where death, cancer, and birth defects are just a “natural” part of his design.

Of course, deep time cannot be logically inserted in the biblical timeline after Adam and Eve arrive on the scene, so all that death and suffering must be relegated somewhere within the six days of creation, all prior to Adam sinning—which means the punishment came before the crime—which is also totally inconsistent.

For in six days the LORD made the heavens and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. (Exodus 20:11)

Public Examples of Inconsistency

Public embarrassment of Christians in apologetics has occurred for a long time now.

For example, while being interviewed by an inconsistent Christian on television in 1976, atheist biologist Jacques Monod called out his interviewer’s (John) jumbled and syncretic worldview when he made the following comments to his theistic evolutionary host:

John: “One could conceive of God using randomness, just so long as there was the pattern which he was imposing upon the results of the chance mutations.”

Monod: “If you want to assume that, then I have no dispute with it, except one (which is not a scientific dispute, but a moral one). Namely, selection is the blindest and most cruel way of evolving new species, and more and more complex and refined organisms. . .”

John: “Cruel?”

Monod: “The more cruel because it is a process of elimination, of destruction. The struggle for life and elimination of the weakest is a horrible process, against which our whole modern ethics revolts. An ideal society is a non-selective society, is one where the weak is protected, which is exactly the reverse of the so-called natural law. I am surprised that a Christian would defend the idea that this is the process which God more or less set up in order to have evolution (emphasis added).”1

Notice that it was Monod (not the Christian theistic evolutionist) that was being logical. Of course, this was not the first time Christians had been taken to task on the inconsistencies of believing the plain reading of the text in the New Testament while bowing to secular “scientific” understandings of origins and applying these to the Old Testament.

Commenting on the possibility of God using evolution to create, famous atheist and evolutionist Richard Dawkins said,

I find this a rather pathetic argument. For one thing, if I were God and I wanted to make a human being, why deliberately set it up in the one way in which it looks as if you don't exist?2

And again, Dawkins is, of course, being logical.

Attempts to reconcile Genesis with myth or allegory meets an equally sarcastic (and logical) rebuttal from Dawkins:

Oh, but of course the story of Adam and Eve was only ever symbolic, wasn’t it? Symbolic? Jesus had himself tortured and executed for a symbolic sin by a non-existent individual. Nobody not brought up in the faith could reach any verdict other than barking mad!3

And more recently, atheist biologist and anti-creationist Jerry Coyne made his case quite succinctly while reviewing two books by theistic evolutionists Karl Giberson and Kenneth Miller, trying to reconcile “science” (read—the story of evolution) with religion:

Like Giberson, Miller rejects a literal interpretation of the Bible. After discussing the fossil record, he contends that “a literal reading of the Genesis story is simply not scientifically valid,” concluding that “theology does not and cannot pretend to be scientific, but it can require of itself that it be consistent with science and conversant with it.” But this leads to a conundrum.

Why reject the story of creation and Noah’s Ark because we know that animals evolved, but nevertheless accept the reality of the virgin birth and resurrection of Christ, which are equally at odds with science? After all, biological research suggests the impossibility of human females reproducing asexually, or of anyone reawakening three days after death. Clearly Miller and Giberson, along with many Americans, have some theological views that are not consistent with science.

Accepting both science and conventional faith leaves you with a double standard: rational on the origin of blood clotting, irrational on the Resurrection; rational on dinosaurs, irrational on virgin births. Without good cause, Giberson and Miller pick and choose what they believe. At least the young-earth creationists are consistent, for they embrace supernatural causation across the board.

Coyne also reveals what many atheists have shown in the past, that compromising Christians are used as pawns in a battle to promote the humanistic account of origins at all costs:

This disharmony [between science and religion] is a dirty little secret in scientific circles. It is in our personal and professional interest to proclaim that science and religion are perfectly harmonious. After all, we want our grants funded by the government, and our schoolchildren exposed to real science instead of creationism. Liberal religious people have been important allies in our struggle against creationism and it is not pleasant to alienate them by declaring how we feel. This is why, as a tactical matter, groups such as the National Academy of Sciences claim that religion and science do not conflict.4

Emboldened by decades of compromise, militant US atheist Eugenie Scott (US National Center for Science Education) admitted,

I would describe myself as a humanist or a nontheist. I have found that the most effective allies for evolution are people of the faith community. One clergyman with a backward collar is worth two biologists at a school board meeting any day!5

What many Christians seeking to intellectually harmonize “science” and “religion” have failed to realize is that for atheists, there will never be harmony. As Professor William Provine says,

“One can have a religious view that is compatible with evolution only if the religious view is indistinguishable from atheism.”6

Wanted—A Next Generation of Biblical Creationists

There is an old saying, “It’s easier to give birth than to resurrect the dead.” It seems that many older evangelicals (who abandoned the walls of inerrancy by giving up ground in Genesis to the skeptics years ago) will likely never admit that Genesis 1-11 should be taken like the rest of Scripture—as plainly written.

However, as many professing Christian organizations (like the discredited false teaching organization Biologos—champions of theistic evolution) are being exposed as the wolves in sheep’s clothing they truly are, the time has come for a renewed commitment to biblical authority in the church.

A new standard is emerging for the next generation of believers from the rubble of many a battered and bruised Christian community that will uncompromisingly stand on the plain reading of Scripture from beginning to end.

Tired of getting shot down in an intellectual firefight, and newly equipped with a gamut of scriptural and scientific support from a variety of modern Christian apologetic ministries, the consistent Christian understands that it is far better to do battle on the enemy’s ground than to relinquish footing on their own foundation.

No longer should “creationism” be seen as a movement from groups of isolated “fundamentalists” but should rather be seen as the backbone of highly intellectual and consistent Christian worldview, where the whole council of God’s Word is defended and proclaimed.

In that way, God’s army won’t be confused with mixed messages declaring they should take parts of Scripture as plainly written such as Jesus’ (the last Adam) life, death, and resurrection, but not the Genesis 1–11 account of the first Adam’s fall (which is why we need Jesus).

“And if the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle?” (1 Corinthians 14:8)

All Christian doctrines (directly or indirectly) are founded in the book of beginnings. The consistent apologetic view on Genesis? Read it, defend it, and proclaim it like the rest of Scripture. It’s the foundation upon which all Scripture stands.

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways (James 1:5-8).