Evolution

No need to be frightened. I am not going to attempt to sway anyone to my opinion. Nope. Today it’s a rant. A rant about fundies, as my friend Aiden calls them. And in fairness, it’s not only the fundies that do this, but they seem to be the ones most in your face about it.

Today I was half listening to the radio and someone on the radio was going on and on about evolution being taught in the public schools. It was obvious this person believes in intelligent design. Understand, I am in no way finding fault with this person. I, too, happen to believe in intelligent design. I’ll go so far as to say I believe in the Genesis account of our world’s creation at that. So, suffice to say I am not finding fault with this person’s views on how exactly it was that we came to be and how our world has come to be.

What struck me as terribly shortsighted was this woman’s railing against the teaching of evolution in our schools. She went on and on about how it went against her beliefs and how she was teaching her children the truth and she didn’t want them learning about evolution.

How shortsighted can you be? I want my child to learn about evolution. And any other theories out there. If you don’t allow your children to learn about other theories, how are they ever going to know that what you taught them is right? In order to know what you believe is right you have to be able to look at the world around you, compare your beliefs and draw your own conclusions. You can’t hide your children away in a box, tell them what to believe, and then when they turn eighteen, turn them loose and expect that they will have any type of true understanding about their religious beliefs. Further, you’ve just set your child up to be unable to defend his religious beliefs.

I would also hazard to say that if you feel the need to go on and on about evolution, humanism, etc being taught in the schools, then you probably doubt the job you’ve done to teach your child the way he should go. If you fear so greatly that your child will abandon your teachings, then I would say it is time to look in the mirror and ask yourself why this scares you. If you are honest with yourself, you would probably realize you feel you’ve failed in this area. Maybe you have, maybe you haven’t, but honest self-evaluation will make it clear where this fear is coming from, and that will give you the basis for addressing your own fears instead of trying to instill fear into your child in an effort to force him to blindly accept what you’ve taught him.

Of course that opens a whole new can of worms. I find that fundies and their cronies really get upset when a child is taught to question. They accuse the child of being disrespectful. How does that work? How does a child learn if he’s not permitted to question? All the great scientific advances have come from people who question. Dare I say that religious enlightenment comes from questioning? If Martin Luther hadn’t questioned and then posted his Ninety-Five Theses on the door of the Castle Church of Wittenberg, where would we as believers be today? If Galileo had listened to the church and blindly accepted geocentrism, how far behind would we be today? Are you telling me that these two great minds are “bad” and “disrespectful”?

And perhaps my biggest question is this: Do you trust God so little? Yes, we all have free will, but if you’ve taught your child well and brought him up as he should have been brought up, he is going to follow the Holy Spirit’s prompting. He isn’t going to suddenly become a pagan heathen and start sacrificing virgins.

Perhaps instead of having a fit over the teaching of evolution in our schools and cowering within our church walls like rabbit hole Christians, we should arm our children with a strong foundation in our beliefs and encourage them to go boldly forward into academia and…dare I say it?….question. And when they come home, talk to them about what they are learning. It’s so simple!

Most of my talking with my son is done while we’re in the car. (We spend a lot of time in the car!) We often discuss politics, religion, values, morals and current world and national news while we’re driving. It’s non-confrontational and nobody gets their panties in a bunch because they feel like they are being signaled out and preached to. Following are his takes on the evolution issue:

While he was in private Christian school: “Yeah, so we’re going to have this “debate” about evolution in science tomorrow. It’s so stupid. I’m on the evolution side and Miss Loyd told us we aren’t even allowed to research evolution. She’s giving us what we’re allowed to say about evolution. What does she have to hide anyway? Why is she so afraid of us learning about evolution? She must think we can’t think for ourselves and turn into a bunch of devil worshippers just because we learned about evolution.”

After a year of public school: “We talked about evolution today. It really didn’t make a lot of sense. Seems like there are a lot of holes in the theory. And Murray is crazy. He thinks we’re recycled stars. Whatever. It’s no big deal.” Then he starts laughing and says, “I don’t know why those crazies at my old school were so worried about evolution. Any idiot can see evolution is wrong.”

Well be still my racing heart! They talked about evolution. Nobody tried to force them into believing it was the only possible answer. Nobody attacked their religion. And, wonder of wonders, my kid didn’t turn into an atheist. Imagine that!

Come on parents! Have some faith in your kids. Trust that you’ve done your job right and that you’ve nurtured their brain and fed their spirits. Let them venture forth into the world and learn. They’re coming home to you at night and that gives you plenty of opportunity to mull over what they’ve learned with them. You never know, you just might gain a new insight into your own beliefs in the process. Imagine that!

Lyrical Debauchery

Music represents an intriguing dichotomy. On the one hand music can be the tie that binds. On the other hand music can be extremely divisive. Few issues seem to be more divisive than music. I find this to be especially true in Christian circles.

Often music is blamed for a myriad of ills. I find it interesting that religious leaders not only blame lyrics, but also the beat of the music. This is an intriguing concept to me. I can’t say that the beat of any music has ever done anything more than inspire me to dance. Yet to hear some religious leaders tell it, the beat of music has inspired everything from drug use to murder. I truly fail to comprehend this concept. I will allow that the lyrics may inspire the weaker minded among us to do things that are universally considered wrong, but I simply cannot see how the beat would do that same thing.

I’ve also often heard fundamental leaders say that music for worship can’t be of the contemporary genre. Why? Why is contemporary Christian music considered bad for worship? One argument I’ve heard often is that contemporary Christian music cannot pass the Philippians 4:8 test. According to these people, contemporary Christian music is not honest, just, pure, or lovely. They contend worship music hast to be 100+ year old hymns. Obviously I have an issue with this.

Music is continually evolving and changing. One hundred years ago those hymns were contemporary Christian music. Thus, those hymns are every bit as “bad” as current contemporary Christian music if we apply the reasoning equally across all time periods.

Don’t misunderstand me. I like the old hymns as much as the next fundamental Baptist. However, I also truly enjoy incorporating contemporary Christian music into my worship. I’ve been told this is because contemporary Christian music appeals to my emotions and that I’m wrong to follow my emotions because emotions lie to us and lead us astray.

Really? Really?!

Wow…

Let me try to wrap my mind about this…

Isn’t religion the marriage of a purposeful decision born of a conviction? Isn’t that conviction predicated on emotion? Does not worship of it’s very nature demand an emotional response? If your emotions are not involved in your worship is it worship at all? Our whole existence as humans is an emotional one. How could one separate such an integral part of our earthly lives from out spiritual lives?

When I go to worship I feel peace, well-being, contentment, happiness and sometimes even sadness, unease or guilt. Does this mean my worship is wrong? Perhaps my belief in and of itself is no more than my emotions leading me astray?

At it’s very core worship must involve our emotions. The love we profess for our God is an emotion. So, if emotions in worship are wrong, bad, lead you astray, etc that would mean our belief in God is bad, wrong, errant, etc. when we apply this logic. And, logically speaking, that makes no sense at all!

If we actually look at this logically, music has the ability to bridge even the largest of gulfs between people. Why not take advantage of that? All types of music can be beautiful, enjoyed and incorporated into worship. Simply because a certain style may not be your choice doesn’t mean people who use that style of music to worship are wrong.

Instead of infighting about the type of music to use in worship, wouldn’t it make more sense for us to be cooperative and go into our communities and put actions to the faith we profess? We don’t have to agree on music to work together, to take food to the homeless or labor with others to build a house for the needy. Let’s focus on the many needs of our communities and what we can do to meet those needs rather than bashing each other for the type of music we use in our respective houses of worship.

Conservative Christians

Recently I left a discussion group that claimed they were a group of conservative Christian woman. The reason I left is that these women were nothing but mean hateful biddies! They were more concerned with raking people over the coals for tiny insignificant things that simply didn't matter instead of being concerned with important things like exploitation of children, the starving people in our own country or witnessing to others. I was simply taken aback that these people wanted to go off on someone saying crap, but never talked about witnessing or reaching the unsaved for Christ.

Within that group I noticed something that I've noticed within our churches. These women, and so many in our churches, want to hold the title conservative Christian when the title they should hold is Legalist. What these people fail to realize is that you don't have to live by this huge set of rules in order to be a good Christian.

I've been away from those hard hearted biddies for about a month now and I can't believe how much happier I am! It's amazing how truly beautiful life can be when you don't have the shadow of legalism blocking your ability to see the wonderful life God has given you!