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On Being Christian

Monday, Aug. 09, 2010 3:59 AM

While participating in a thread on a friend's Facebook page, another person weighed in with this gobstopper:

If you believe in evolution, you cannot possibly believe there is a God.

The statement is repeated several times. You cannot be a Christian and believe in evolution. Christians don't believe in evolution, and evolutionists don't believe in God. Evolution and God are two entirely different things, one has absolutely nothing to do with the other. Oh, and the vast majority of scientists don't believe in evolution, so why should you?

Apparently, the reasoning behind this is that life could not have arisen spontaneously (nothing is too hard for God, so why would God need evolution) the Bible is literal truth (except for those parts that are figurative), and evolution is how Satan gets people to disbelieve in God.

::: facepalm :::

The mental contortions are astounding.

But the essential meaning is one I've heard repeatedly: that you cannot be a Christian, because you don't act like the other pod people who self-identify as Christian.

And let's be honest. It's not just a belief in evolution that will keep you out of this club, it's support of same-sex marriage. It's denying that the Bible is chock full of absolute truth, because it was written by the divinely inspired.

It's reducing faith to a small, safe, narrow place where everyone agrees with you, God becomes an excuse for your prejudices and hatreds, and anyone who doesn't shout Amen! in the same way is conveniently damned.

Faith is well and good when you are striving to bridge the gap between the observable and the unknown. It is less useful and even dangerous when it completely suborns or substitutes for rational thought, which we must engage in to follow the Ten Commandments, to engage in the self-examination called for in the Lord's Prayer, or even fulfill the stricture of doing unto others as we would have them do unto us.

It is not condemnation and exclusivity that become Christian virtues, therefore, but honesty and empathy. To enshrine the former as your defining traits whilst discarding the latter moves you further from being Christian, which is not only to espouse a reverence for Him, but to emulate Him in thought and deed.

(Apologies to my regular readers for the Sunday Sermon.)


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Brin aka Bindyree - 2010-08-09 15:02:07
"If Christ came back and saw what people are doing in His name, He'd never stop throwing up." -- from Woody Allen's 'Hannah & Her Sisters'