Fighting to help people find the truth about this world and the next is hard enough when the enemy consists of atheists and believers in false religions. It is much harder when the debate stretches to other Christians who have established a belief system that runs contrary to the teachings of the Bible.
Intellectual believers today often try to reconcile faith with a persistent pull from science. This is completely unnecessary, of course, as true scientific understanding conforms nicely with the literal understanding of the Word of God, but there will always be those who want to make concepts such as evolution fit like a puzzle piece in life. One cannot believe in the theoretical science of evolution and still be a true believer in Jesus Christ.
This is the problem with a HuffPo story from a few years ago titled, “Christians, Can We Drop This ‘Creationism’ Thing Already?”
Author David Michael McFarlane has a strong hold on his perspective that Creationism is divisive, that it hurts the cause more than it helps, and that there are more important things to worry about than whether we were created in six days or if it was something that happened over time. He is correct in many parts of the story such as stating that “God beyond the comprehension of the human mind,” but unfortunately the majority of his views are not consistent with what the Bible actually teaches.
We have everything we need to know within the words of the Bible. They do more than tell the story of a people and their Messiah. They give us the foundation of beliefs that, once followed and believed from front to back, lay out a proper framework through which we can live our lives. We are flawed and incapable of obeying all that we should, but that’s the very reason that God sent Jesus to die on the cross in the first place. We are perpetually embraced within sin and no measure of effort on our part can completely cleanse us of this. It’s a part of us now. It has been since the first bite Adam and Eve each took of the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. We messed up and we are unable to recover on our own.
Creationism is not just an opinion that one can agree with or disagree with and still do the right things in this world. Evolution is a path that pulls most away from the truth. McFarlane may very well be a true Christian, an honest believer in Yeshua as our Lord and Savior, but others out there are unable to get around the devious tenets of evolutionary theory and still see the truth that Jesus Christ is the only way through which to come to the Father. It is irresponsible of him as a Christian to try to fight against the steady push of Creationism back into the collective conscience. For many, it is the key to their path towards being a true believer.
Some are able to believe in evolution and still believe in Jesus Christ. We are not capable of knowing the correct answers to all of the various questions that we run into along our path and true belief in the Messiah does not require those correct answers. However, some need to have the correct answer in order to walk down the right path. It’s for this reason that McFarlane is taking the wrong stance on the wrong topic. It’s for this reason that McFarlane is hurting those who may be on the verge of salvation.
Creationism versus evolution is not a life or death question, but the answer to it may lead people towards or away from the light. It’s a fight that must continue and should not be “dropped” as some Christians hope.
