Useless Ministries - The Creation Museum

Here's a conversation I'm tired of having.

ME: Hello, I heard you asking about Christianity.  I am a Believer, myself, and would be happy to talk to you.


STRANGER:  Ah, I see.  Yeah, Christianity can be confusing for me.


ME:  Believe me, I understand.  What's on your mind.


STRANGER: Why does the Bible say that people and dinosaurs lived together?  Doesn't that make the entire Bible wrong?  How can you trust something that is so obviously scientifically wrong?

ME:  .......

A long time ago, someone told me that it was speculated (by someone) that dinosaurs may have lived alongside humans.  I pondered this.  Perhaps some isolated species did survive the extinction and managed to be seen by people.  I'm not a scientist, so I don't know how implausible that is, but it sounded interesting.  (And, no, it's not in the Bible.)

Little did I know that what was being speculated was different from what I imagined.  Scores of people were trying to rewrite history and claim that ancient people had lived alongside dinosaurs and considered these large beasts to be a normal part of life.  They even decided that people may have ridden on dinosaurs and used them for labor!  That's not what I had in mind.

People in ancient times left us records about the animals they knew.  Aristotle even wrote a book on zoology in which he details every creature he'd ever heard of or read about.  How good was this work?  It was the first scientific writing to point out that whales were mammals and not fish.  But he never mentions a dinosaur.

There are no records to back up these wild claims.  But there is a entire silly museum devoted to teaching this nonsense.  And when I tell people that I'm a believer, do they ask me about Jesus' life on earth or the theology of redemption?  No!  They just want to laugh at me because of this:

This makes Christianity into a laughing stock, and it keeps people from seeing the beauty of God's Truth.  The Creation Museum is fighting the wrong battle.

Useless Ministries - Annoying Street Preachers

There are almost 7 million people who live in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas - and almost every one of them has been yelled at by the street preachers in Fort Worth.

It's happened every time I go to the Sundance Square area (an otherwise wonderful place).  They gather around the block near the parking garages and yell at people who are waiting for the crosswalk signal to say "walk."  (Some of us just start running through traffic to get away from them.)  They scream in your face about needing to be prepared for the judgment seat and repenting so you don't go to Hell.  And they always mention that those of us who are Believers are not safe and must start repenting, too.  But it's not the message that annoys people; what is annoying is the hateful and forceful way they scream at people.  It's a form of assault, frankly.

Some street preachers stand behind their laurels and say that they are doing God's work and shouldn't be criticized if people are turned off by the message, but that's not what's happening.  There is no one who appreciates being verbally attacked for any cause, and no good message can be effectively conveyed this way.

 

"JESUS LOVES YOU AND HAS A GREAT PLAN FOR YOU!  ARE YOU LISTENING?  GRRRRR!"  

(Totally effective.)

These people are hurting Christianity - not helping it.  They are not suffering persecution when they are dismissed by crowds or asked by police officers to leave.  They are being very rude, and they are simply not reflecting God's love.

Remember Jesus' ministry?  Talking kindly to the woman at the well, forgiving the woman who was about to be stoned to death and criticizing her legalistic accusers, embracing children, and otherwise acting with compassion toward people were His methods  That should also be the model for your ministry. 

Violent rhetoric is not noble.  It's petty.

Useless Ministries - Those Who Can't Do

It is common to say, when you are doing some kind of charity or ministry work, that your ability is less important than your availability - but that's not always true.  Ministry should be done with some quality, and the effects can be harmful when someone can't handle their responsibilities.

I remember running into a useless ministry in college when I was getting into my truck to start the long drive home for the holidays.  As I got in, I noticed a note on my windshield that said that a local ministry had come by to clean my windshield so that I would have a safer drive home.  I loved it.  I hate dirty windshields, and I was very glad to have someone else clean it for a change.  I got in my vehicle and started driving toward the sun...

...and I couldn't see a darned thing.

I should have known.  Most of the kids from my college had never worked a day in their life (people in the dorms would say things like, "My lightbulb burned out in my room, so I think I should call my parents for help."), and they certainly didn't know how to clean off a window.  Whoever got around to my truck had smeared the dirt around so that I couldn't see very well.  I had to stop at the first gas station to clean it off myself - properly.

Unfortunately, it would have been better for all of us if those people had not decided to "minister" to us.  As I cleaned my windshield, I wondered if anyone was going to get into a wreck because of a local ministry that "helped out" by making the windows of our cars useless.

As a rule of thumb, if you don't know what you are doing then you're better off staying in bed.  Of course, anyone can help out at a soup kitchen or a place that collects and sorts clothing for the needy - many of these tasks require no special skills or experience.  And most people are better at certain things than others, so find out what you can do and let that be your focus.

Concerning Marriage: Part #1 - Is Marriage a Broken Institution?

Is marriage a broken institution?  A lot of people say so.  They see the staggering divorce rates and the heartbreak of divided families and, quite understandably, wonder if it is all worth it.  In response, they declare the whole thing to be outdated or corrupted.

Sort of.  The truth is, they go on to pursue long term relationships that resemble marriage in every way.  They call each other "partners" and say that they don't like marriage, but they live together and pledge (in some ceremony) that they will remain exclusively devoted to one another forever.  (By the way, I'm talking about heterosexuals, here.  Gay couples are not the only ones using the term "partner" to refer to their life partners.)  They will put off having children until this ceremony is done and, and will take up the role of dual-guardians of their kids.  These sorts of people are one marriage document away from actually being married, but they insist that they do not like marriage.  The truth is, they just want to re-name it.

I propose that an institution is only as broken as the people that make it.  I've seen a lot of marriages struggle and fall apart, but that does not affect the strength of my own marriage.  The relationship I have with my wife is as as strong as we choose to make it, and it is not broken as long as we are not broken.

Getting married can be tough.  People have certainly had their lives ruined by marriages gone bad, but outside of marriage people still tell lies and hurt each other - running away from "marriage" will not prevent this.  Putting on a wedding band and making promises in front of a minister is not what causes people to neglect their children and cheat on their spouses, and plenty of "partnerships" have gone bad for the same reasons as our marriages.  This is human nature, and we can't fix it by attacking institutions like marriage.

But, we can take part in the process of redemption.  We can make sure that marriage is no longer a laughing stock by modeling for future generations what a proper relationship can be.  I was raised by a great family, but most of my friends grew up with parents who fought and often got divorced, so many of them assumed that romance could only led to arguments and separation.  That's depressing.  This cycle can end when we decide that we will not give that image of love and marriage to the next generation. 

Marriage might seem broken, but that's just because we are not doing it well.  Let's fix it.

(This is a big topic, so I'll be discussing it more later in the week.)

Evolution vs. Abiogenesis - Know the Difference!

Last year I attended a conference and listened to a student explain that evolution was heretical because non-living matter cannot turn into living matter.  I thought there was a problem with this approach, so I raised my hand when it was time for questions.

"Augustine said that God may have created the earth through a seminal method.  If he is correct, wouldn't that make evolution possible within orthodoxy?"  I asked.

"No," I was adamantly told, "because you can't get something like a rock and turn it into a living thing.  Evolution is impossible."

Obviously, I had worded my question poorly, so I tried again.  "But I'm not talking about getting life from non-life.  This sort of seminal creation means that God could have planted a seed that grew into the earth as we know it."

His reply: "Augustine was wrong."

His thesis had nothing to do with evolution (a change in the gene pool of a population from generation to generation by such processes as mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift).  Instead, he was arguing against the possibility of abiogensis (the theory that living organisms can arise spontaneously from inanimate matter).  This is a problem, because these two are not the same thing.

 Oddly enough, there is a board game called Primordial Soup and the object of the game is to help your amoebas evolve into higher life forms.  It wasn't a hit at youth groups.

 

I should probably make a disclaimer here and say that I'm not interested in teaching you what to believe about evolution.  I'm not a biologist.  But I do want to be sure that in our enthusiasm to understand our world we do not forget to really know what we are talking about.  Arguing that evolution is impossible by denying abiogenesis is a logical fallacy, because evolution is not concerned with the origin of life.  Also, the notion of evolution does not imply that life came from non-life.  It's unfair to criticize biologists on those grounds.


I've heard plenty of people tell me that evolution can never help us understand where we came from, but I find this to be a strange argument.  The biologists I've spoken to are not looking into their microscopes in an effort to satisfy their existential longings - they are simply curious about science.  Their observations have led them to believe that life as we know it evolved from previous forms of life, but the origin of that "first life" is still a mystery to them.


So, if you want to debate or protest evolution, then I want to ask you to do it correctly.  Don't argue against the wrong thesis, because that just shows that you haven't done your homework. Of course, whining over evolutionary theory is the sort of thing that makes Christians a laughing stock on the internet, so maybe there are better uses of our time.