Kreitsauce's Musings

The new Star Trek movie has revived the sci-fi lover in me. It’s been so long since I’ve seen anything Trek that I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed it. I guess I’m a nerd, but that’s not really a shock to anyone. Anyway, I remember growing up thinking how cool it would be to fly a spaceship through the universe and see all of those heavenly bodies up close. I also remember thinking how dangerous it would be to fly blind through a nebula. Picard and company always seemed to have a hard time with that. Nebulae were dark, mysterious lonely places where it was easy to get lost and you never knew what new danger the crew of the Enterprise would find.

My other passion involves a good mystery. I enjoy a whodunnit?, conspiracy theory, or whatever. Anything with an excellent plot is sure to make me happy. I think that’s key, though. There’s got to be a good plot, a train of thought or order of events I’m supposed to follow.

It seems to me that there is some tension in modern Christianity as to whether or not we’re supposed to treat our faith- propositional truths and experiential reality- more like a nebula than like a good mystery novel. Mysteries can be understood and followed. They serve a purpose. Nebulae, well, at least Gene Roddenberry’s conception of nebulae- seem to be unsolvable and ultimately unknowable. That just doesn’t seem to be the kind of faith Jesus wants us to have, yet such a perspective persists.

Some in Christianity have taken on a post-modern perspective on faith and emphasized the journey over the destination. Now, don’t get me wrong, there is something of a journey involved in Christianity, and it’s one to be enjoyed. My point is that the journey must have purpose. There must be progress made. There must be a sense of compulsion to move onward, and, while a humble expression of humility is refreshing, to simply say “I don’t know, but let’s talk about it” ad infinitum just doesn’t seem to be what Christianity is all about.

This perspective effects every area of the postmodern (some say “emergent”) Christianity.

1. Evangelism- According to Dave Tomlinson’s book The Post-Evangelical, “Evangelism should be seen as an opportunity to ‘fund’ people’s spiritual journeys, drawing on the highly relevant resources of ‘little pieces’ of truth contained in the Christian narrative.” (Which pieces of the Bible aren’t truth? Do people ever reach the destination of their spiritual journey?)
2. The Bible- Tomlinson also writes in the same book: “To say Scripture is the Word of God is to employ a metaphor. God cannot be thought of as literally speaking words, since they are entirely a human phenomenon that could never prove adequate as a medium for the speech of an infinite God.” (Funny. That’s not what Jesus means when He says “My words shall not pass away.”)
3. Salvation- In his book How (Not) to Speak of God, Peter Rollins says that “we need to be evangelized as much, if not more than those around us.” (So we never finish being evangelized? When can a person be defined as a Christian?”
4. Apologetics- Rob Bell says in his popular book Velvet Elvis: “You rarely defend the things you love. You enjoy them and tell others about them and invite others to enjoy them with you.” (This is just plain ridiculous. I don’t know that it’s within the scope of this post to talk about Bell’s statement, but I thought it was too crazy to pass up. Who doesn’t defend someone or something they truly love when it’s necessary?)

And that’s just a start!

In the postmodern (emergent) view, God ceases to be knowable, because you have emphasized the nebulousness of faith and even God and de-emphasized the point of the journey. God’s infinity swallows up His knowability. Salvation must be pieced together, and we may never fully arrive. This isn’t the way Paul spoke though. On Mars’ Hill he said: “For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.” It sounds like a mystery worth solving to me!

Mystery does not remove human responsibility or the importance of theology and knowing God. Didn’t Paul chide the Jews for having zeal without knowledge in Romans 10:2? Didn’t Jesus chide the disciples for being of little faith in Matthew 14:31? Doubt may be a part of the Christian life, but it isn’t the emphasis of the Christian life. Uncertainty is not proof of humility.

In the end, such postmodern believers insist that the Christian life is all about examining ourselves more and more deeply and not so much about examining the details of doctrine. I would say that postmodern believers simply need to grow up. Yes, there is value in finding our own weaknesses and being honest about failures and hurts. Maturity, however, requires us to stop being so fragile. Spiritual maturity demands growing in grace and in wisdom, laying aside weights and sin, and making Christ our everything. Love covers sin, and we would do well to fall so in love with Jesus that we don’t fall into the temptation of glorifying past failures.

What our world needs is authentic Christians (not transparent Christians) who are willing to – as a friend of mine says- enter the Mystery and abandon themselves to God. But the Mystery need not be nebulous.

“Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” -Jesus, Matthew 16:24-26

Are Jesus’ words simply a command? Oh, I have no doubt that He is telling us what we ought to do. It’s just that it seems to me He is also describing reality for us. He’s stating a fact. He tells us that self-denial is required if you and I want to experience the abundant life. It’s like me telling my students that they have to learn their vocabulary and grammar lessons well in order to become an effective communicator or to master the English language. I’m not simply commanding them to work. I’m explaining to them “how to get there from here.”

We can either live our lives for contemporary happiness (pleasurable feelings) or classic happiness, a life of righteousness, wisdom, peace, and goodness. Philosophers call this “the good life.” Jesus says: “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” He calls this very same sense of classic happiness “the abundant life.” A pleasurable life is completely dependent on external factors- health, wealth, success, money, power, fame, beauty- while true happiness is the result of the internal working of God’s Word and God’s Spirit in a person’s life. It’s the result of a life of conformity to the way God meant life to be lived. This is why Jesus said that those who live out the Beatitudes of Matthew 5 will be “blessed.” That word we translate as “blessed” is the same word that is elsewhere translated “happy.”

How much better is the life of a disciple than the life of a person who is addicted to themselves? If pleasure is the holy grail, then you and I have no choice but to run forever, chasing the next adrenaline rush, the next calorie-filled binge, the next romance, the next purchase, the next sexual encounter….maybe even the next inspiring or energy-filled church service. Since none of these things work well as ends in themselves, we end up like T. S. Eliot’s Hollow Men.

Discipleship, in contrast to narcissism, brings true satisfaction with life, because life gains a whole new sense of meaning and purpose. We have real freedom to do what is right, to live a life of intimacy with God. This life of discipleship and self-denial does not mean living without desire or without anything that brings pleasure. God does not call us to the monastery but to live life in the world but not of the world.

Living the life of the disciple, rather than being a difficult one, is actually quite liberating. There’s no stress from being constantly consumed with the need to feel happy. There’s no need to be in control. There’s no need to keep up with the Jones’ when it comes to possessions, or to mask feelings of emptiness by living vicariously through celebrities. Where would our twisted form of capitalism be without Americans’ codependence on material things and spiritually-bankrupt celebrities? Gary Sinise notwithstanding, that is.

Jesus said that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. Is it possible that self-sacrifice, self-discipline, and yielding to Christ is actually easier than the path most people take? Perhaps God intended for us to live this way, and the initial difficulty in being a true disciple of Christ is merely the same difficulty with forming any good habit. Perhaps it is that a life is discipleship is something you and I can actually get “good” at, a skill that we can learn.

Maybe just as one gets better at soccer, singing, or math, we can get better at the art of discipleship, the art of self-denial.

If you know anything about ABC’s sitcom Scrubs, then you know that narcissism is a major theme of the show. I don’t necessarily endorse the show, but check out the list of episodes and see if a pattern doesn’t emerge. Besides the pattern of the episode titles, there’s the name of the lead character itself- John Dorian. His name is a reference to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. I won’t spoil the whole novel for you, but suffice it to say that Wilde attempts to show what selfishness and pleasure-seeking will do to a person. In Wilde’s novel, the picture of Dorian is an outward reflection of his inward destruction caused by narcissism. Such selfishness and pleasure-seeking are the two primary characteristics of a narcissistic individual, and it is just such an individual that is becoming predominant in today’s society. Most of our culture has taken on the temperament of an adolescent- no, an infant.

While individuality is a good thing, the sort of individualism seen today is something to be astonished at. We make decisions based on life goals and personal interests as though we weren’t responsible for the well-being of the community at large. We are superficial; we objectify people and are driven only by self-interest. We are passive so long as we are entertained, but we hate boredom. That is the chief evil, since pleasure is the greatest good to be achieved. We define our level of happiness according to how often our cravings for food, entertainment, clothing, and goods are met. We’re concerned with sex, outer beauty, and feeling good. Since these cravings can never bring ultimate satisfaction, they merely form an addiction that will never end.

“Take up your cross and follow Me.”

“Forget it,” our culture says.

Now it’s all about self-gratification. Pain, suffering, enduring difficulty, hard work, and self-denial are so far removed from us, the words of Christ seem foreign. Jesus knows better, though. Suffering brings gain, and losing your life means you will have abundant life.

More on this thought later.

I’ve briefly discussed naturalism’s inability to account for free will and inherent value, but now I want to turn to naturalism’s inability to account for the existence of evil. In fact, I want to go so far as to assert that naturalism cannot even identify what evil is or how it came to be, much less give a solution for the problem of evil. Understand that I’m not just referring to evil as a moral category. I’m also referring to natural evil- disasters and tragedy-as well.

There are a few people out there who believe that evil doesn’t exist, that it’s all in our heads. These are the sort of people who believe that morality is just what is for the good of society (hopefully not Hussein’s Iraq) or the good of the individual (hopefully not Charles Manson or Jeffrey Dahmer.) I think we can all see that there is such a thing as evil. There are people who do evil things, and there are tragedies that simply occurs. To the naturalist, evil is simply a man-made category, and evil cannot exist as a part of our reality. We are all just moralized atoms living in our own make-believe moralized world. This is because things cannot be naturally or morally evil unless there is such a thing as how things ought to be. There must be a standard to live by. My friend Josh can’t see all the colors of the rainbow properly, but neither can a jar of mayonnaise. Nobody is concerned about the mayonnaise’s inability to see, and, frankly, I think we’d all be disturbed if we discovered that mayo could see!

The point behind my silly illustration is that only in one case would anyone- possibly my friend’s wife- say that things aren’t the way they are supposed to be. There is a sense of “ought to” in our world that can’t be avoided. People ought to see color. Rocks ought to fall when I drop them. Mayo ought to sit in a jar until I’m making a sandwich. I ought to pay my taxes. I ought not to murder. People ought not to run over babies. C. S. Lewis was quick to point out that there is a difference between a “want to do this”, a “this is right to do”, and a third voice that says “I ought to do what is right.”

Only in a “Big Mac” universe can good and evil truly exist. Naturalism can only describe how things “normally” work when it comes to the natural world, and it is incapable of explaining how evil exists. It has no sense of where evil came from, and, as John Lennox points out, there is no ultimate justice for evil people. In the end, people like the 9/11 terrorists have gotten away with it. In stark contrast, the Christian worldview freely explains the origin, nature, and end of evil. Satan tempted the first Parents who ushered in natural and moral evil for ages to come. This is “my Father’s world”, but this isn’t the world as my Father intended it. We are told the results of our moral evil apart from God, and redemption is offered by coming to God. Evil will be punished, and the partakers with Christ will be rewarded.

Evil may be an enigma in the naturalistic worldview, but Christianity is quite adept at unmasking the mystery of iniquity.

In a previous post I had briefly pointed out a few flaws with a naturalistic worldview. It fails to explain the humanity behind being human. Free will, appreciation for beauty, and reason aren’t well-explained in terms of natural causes. Another difficulty with a naturalistic worldview is the devaluing of existence. If our lives are to have objective meaning, there must be some things that are good, right, and beautiful. Those things must be ends in and of themselves, and they must be worth pursuing. There must be people and ideals that are worth living and dying for.

Of course, we must also believe that we can know what is good, right, and beautiful. This also means that we can know what is wrong, evil, and marred somehow. The means of knowing is unsavory to the naturalist. The existence of value and the standard of value are seemingly abstract and not a part of the physical world, which of course blows the naturalistic agenda to bits. Therefore, things and people of value are flatly denied, or the value of everything and anything is readily affirmed. The problem, then, is that if everything has value we still have no basis for evaluating worth in an objective sense. I say that hard work and honesty make a person valuable, but what if you value deceit and slothfulness? Are those character traits truly valuable to individuals or societies? I dare say not! No, the naturalist would rather blithely put that all things lack intrinsic value. It is much easier to say “vanity, vanity, all is vanity” and leave it at that. That’s the sort of world Bertrand Russell believes in.

You are no more valuable than a cockroach or a star or an atom in a naturalistic world. Fortunately we know that reality is far different than the naturalist portrays it. Some things are beautiful, and some are not. Some things are valuable, and others are worthless. Some things are moral, and others are horribly immoral. The naturalistic world required to allow Darwinism to exist as a plausible theory simply cannot be.

Princeton University’s WordNet defines naturalism as “the doctrine that the world can be understood in scientific terms without recourse to spiritual or supernatural explanations.” It includes an evolutionary origin of the universe, exclusion of even the possibility of a non-physical universe, and a belief that empirical knowledge is the only kind of knowledge there is. Ironically, naturalism is neither falsifiable, measurable, nor testable, which makes it unscientific from the outset. It is, in fact, a metaphysical assertion, not a scientific assertion.

Unfortunately, in spite of the fact that naturalism is self-refuting, there are many who unwittingly believe it and teach it in the public square. It is widely accepted in the political, educational, and legal realms. There are thousands of examples of this, but I think that there is none so striking as what happened after the Columbine massacre on April 20, 1999.  Who did the nation turn to for answers? Scientists. Practically every news network and magazine featured numerous interviews with psychologists, sociologists, and neurophysiologists in an attempt to explain why it happened. Pastors were only invited when it was time to comfort the family. Theologians and philosophers were never asked to provide insight into what had gone wrong. It was one tragic example of how other forms of knowledge are considered inferior to scientific knowledge because of a naturalistic worldview.

The truth is that while Richard Dawkins insists that we are all strictly the product of our DNA (“and we dance to its music”, says Dawkins), there are a good number of things that naturalism can’t explain. J. P. Moreland writes that naturalism can’t explain the existence of human consciousness in terms of ethical (a sense of morality), aesthetic (a sense of beauty), and intellectual (a sense of reason) properties. Furthermore, Moreland tells us that naturalism fails to explain free will. There is no room for real freedom in a naturalistic worldview. I cannot be held responsible for my actions if I’m merely dancing to the music of my DNA.

Naturalist John Bishop writes: “The idea of a responsible agent, with the ‘originative’ ability to initiate events in the natural world, does not sit easily with the idea of [an agent as] a natural organism. Our scientific understanding of human behavior seems to be in tension with a presupposition of the ethical stance we adopt toward it.”  (Natural Agency, 1989, pg 1) Professor Will Provine puts it more bluntly: “Free will as traditionally conceived simply does not exist. There is no way the evolutionary process as currently conceived can produce a being that is truly free to make choices.” (“Evolution and the Foundation of Ethics”, Marine Biological Laboratory Science 3, 1988)

How then can we prosecute criminals? We cannot punish them, for they have only lived in accordance with the way they were “made.” At best, we can only hope to rehabilitate them or protect the rest of society from them. More interestingly, how can we treat drug addiction and alcoholism as a disease of sorts and yet we still hold rapists and murderers guilty because of their actions? What about the likes of Bernie Madoff? What about Pol Pot, Hitler, or Stalin? Weren’t they also dancing to their DNA’s music? In may be useful to draw a utilitarian line in the sand between a drunk and a serial killer (the drunk isn’t necessarily hurting anyone, while a serial killer harms many people), but utilitarian lines in the sand are dangerous. After all, who decides where the line should be drawn?

Naturalism may depict a world in which you and I follow the eerie tones of our DNA’s music, but that is not the world you and I know to be. You and I make choices every day of our lives, and to strictly describe our decisions in terms of motive rather than a combination of motive and purpose is to give a garbled image of what life is really like. Besides being totally self-refuting, naturalism fails to explain a host of things about being human. It’s time we drop this ridiculous philosophy and consider that there might be more to reality than meets the eye.

More on this later.

Great as a Burger, Bad as a Worldview

Who can forget the famous old-school commercial for McDonalds’ Big Mac, advertising “two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun”? I love Big Macs, but then I also have an addiction to White Castle’s Slyders. They’re little guys, but they’re this perfect little blend of a thin slice of beef, cheese, grilled onions, and a bun. Maybe it’s my penchant for anything dealing with food, but I like to relate worldviews to food. There are basically two different kinds of worldviews you and I could study, and they have radically different implications. There are Slyder worldviews and Big Mac worldviews.

Slyder worldviews are palatable to some, but they lack substance in a very real way. In such worldviews, there is no meaning or purpose. There is no objective sense of right or wrong or a means of assigning value to a person or thing. There is no God, no Heaven or Hell, no ultimate justice. There is just the physical world, and death simply ends being and consciousness. In such a view, our world just simply exists. Everything is one big accident. Bertrand Russell asserted that our world was a Slyder world in his Philosophical Essays:

“That man is the product of causes which have no prevision of the end they are achieving: that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried underneath the debris of a universe in ruins. Only on the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation be safely built.”

The problem is that, like the White Castle menu item, a Slyder worldview doesn’t describe reality very well. It doesn’t explain how humans function. It’s all good and well to say that monogamy is just a social invention, but that doesn’t explain why the promiscuous are rarely truly satisfied. June Vanderkam, a 2001 graduate of Princeton knows that well: “Hookups do satisfy biology, but the emotional detachment doesn’t satisfy the soul. And that’s the real problem — not the promiscuity, but the lack of meaning.” We all hunger for meaning, and a Slyder worldview does nothing to truly satisfy that hunger. The Slyder worldview robs life of meaning, and fails to replace it with anything, well, meaningful. In our world filled with “reality” TV, celebrity gossip, pornography, drugs and alcoholism, movies, music, video games, and professional sports, one wonders if all of this hype is really just a feeble attempt to stave off society’s craving for real meaning and purpose.

Only Big Mac worldviews can satisfy this craving. Big Mac worldviews attempt to answer questions concerning meaning and purpose.  There is a strong sense of objective right and wrong, and people and things have intrinsic value. God, Heaven, Hell, and ultimate Justice all exist, and God is active in His creation. Everything happens for a purpose, and all of life carries meaning. Compared with Slyder worldviews, a Big Mac worldview is significantly more satisfying, more palatable, and more fulfilling. In a very real way, such a worldview really is what we crave.

In 2006, the biographical drama The Pursuit of Happyness graced the silver screen with a heart-warming message of hope. That hope, we are told, is one in which you and I can be truly happy if we can just succeed. We can succeed in our jobs, in our families, and in our various other goals, and if we have success (however we define it) we will be truly happy. Such is the lie of a sensate, spiritually-bankrupt culture. Reality tells a much different story.

The truth is that happiness itself cannot be experienced when it is the ultimate goal. In fact, you will see happy people in Western mansions and developing countries, in homes and orphanages, and in hospitals and gymnasiums. Happiness is not something that can be captured through seeking. It is something that must be experienced through the fulfillment of other purposes. To be honest, I’m not so sure that humans are even capable of being happy with “mere” happiness.

This is what many philosophers and poets refer to as the “paradox of hedonism.” As William Bennett once said: “”Happiness is like a cat, If you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you; it will never come. But if you pay not attention to it and go about your business, you’ll find it rubbing against your legs and jumping into your lap.” If you and I live by a modern, hedonistic interpretation of The Pursuit of Happiness, we’ll interpret everything according to that paradigm. Jobs, spouses, churches, children….even God Himself will wax or wane in importance to us based on how well they help us achieve this goal of happiness. It’s the new geocentric theory: the universe revolves around 6.5 billion individuals simultaneously!

The truth is that people must live for something bigger than themselves to even remotely experience this Happiness we all crave. We must take up some Cause, some Belief, some Purpose that we deem worthy of ourselves. Comedian Jeff Allen (Yes, I’ve quoted a comedian and a politician in the same post. It’s an off day…) once said that a man needs something he’s willing to die for to feel complete. He’s absolutely right. We need a sense of true purpose, to know that what we accomplish in life matters. We need to know what the standard for success and failure is. We need a finish line to press toward.

In a culture incapable of creating a sense of enduring worth and any sense of real absolutes, we have produced several generations of what psychologists call “empty selves.” Philip Cushman defines the empty self as: “filled up with consumer goods, calories, experiences, politicians, romantic partners, and empathetic therapists…. experience a significant absence of community, tradition, and shared meaning….a lack of personal conviction and worth, and it embodies the absences as a chronic, undifferentiated emotional hunger.” What an accurate depiction of life in these United States!

And what is the result? Martin Seligmann’s research in 1988 states that the Baby Boom generation increased tenfold in levels of depression relative to previous generations. Seligmann states that this was because Baby Boomers started living for self and not for a cause (God, family, country) bigger than they were. They forgot the Eternal in favor of the Immediate. They lost the art of becoming a wise, virtuous person. In seeking pleasure and happiness, they lost both.

Happiness is not an achievement. It is a byproduct of living the good life. Any worldview that is worth its salt must accurately describe the good life, and it must have true happiness as its byproduct. Christianity accurately describes a good life- the life of discipleship- that yields ultimate happiness and satisfaction. The lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Daniel, the Disciples, Paul, and even Jesus Himself speak of a life that may require sacrifice and choosing hard roads, but will result in ultimate joy, ultimate satisfaction, and the promise of eternal reward in the bliss of Heaven. This is the abundant life that Jesus gives. It isn’t just about length of life. It’s about the ultimate quality of that life.

I want to suggest here in this post that worship is the greatest need of any human who has walked the face of this earth. That isn’t to say that you and I don’t have other needs that are important. However, the need to worship is what we feel most strongly. The reality is that worship is what makes the world go round. I mean that both in the most positive and most negative way possible. Of course faith is important to people, and many good things have been done in the name of Christianity. Many evil things are done because of worship as well. In his book Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis says: “All that we call human history–money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery–[is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”

Ravi Zacharias defines worship as “a posture of life that takes as its primary purpose the understanding of what it really meant to love and revere God. It is the most sacred intimacy of all.” In other words, when Jesus said that He was the Bread of Life and that He offered Living Water capable of quenching any hunger and any thirst, He intended His words to be far more meaningful than most of us take it. When He said that the greatest commandment was: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, He was referring to a life of worship. He was referring to a relationship that blends together both the physical and spiritual, reverence and passion, intense celebration and deep commitment.

Perhaps this is why Jesus speaks in terms of food and water. Yes, they are needs that must be fulfilled. However, we do not merely eat to satisfy a need. We also eat and drink because it is pleasurable. We enjoy eating, drinking, and being merry. Worship also is pleasurable to us, and it brings a sort of satisfaction and joy that is more celestial than terrestial. Partaking in food and drink are also times of fellowship. Any Christian knows that fellowship and food are virtually synonymous in a church setting. Outside the church, the relationship between relationship-building and food is strong. We meet and eat for business, romance, as a stress-relief, and even as a way of showing sympathy. Worship is also a time of fellowship. It is in worship that we have true fellowship with the Creator, the God Who came near. (Is there a significance in Communion being a time of people partaking of food and drink together? I think so.)

In short, worship is about far more than music. It is about prayer, Bible study, evangelism, discipleship, child rearing, engineering, teaching, construction, rest, travel, and, yes, even meals. Worship is about the whole Being. Notice that Ravi Zacharias says that worship is a “posture of life.” It isn’t about an hour on Sunday, or even several hours every day. It is about every moment of every day being Sacred. It is about doing all to the glory of God. It is about a reverential love for the Creator and Savior.

Thomas Cranmer knew that the English word “Love” didn’t do justice to the reality it was meant to describe. Though it has gone out of practice, Cranmer changed the marriage rite in 1662 to include the line: “With my body I thee worship and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.” It was later changed to “with this ring I thee wed.” I personally like Cranmer’s version better. How much better is that line than crassly describing the consummation of marriage as “having sex”? How much more accurate is it to describe the intimacy of marriage as a type of worship, an image of the worship of God that should be a part of every believer’s life.

If it isn’t a part of our lives, we very quickly move on to worshipping something else, for we cannot restrain ourselves from doing so. We may worship power, wealth, fame, relationships, pleasure, false gods, or- ultimately- ourselves. That simply means that we haven’t looked beyond ourselves to see that there is Someone truly worthy of all that attention. If God is the only Thing in this world that can bring true happiness, doesn’t it make sense that we pursue Him with all of our Being? If experiencing Him brings the greatest fulfillment of all human experiences, what aspect of devotion can be deemed unnecessary? We must learn the Truth of Who He is, and we must experience that truth. We must seek the purity of heart He described. We must be willing to make sacrifices for Him because of Who He has sacrificed for us. We must enthusiastically revere the One Who is the chief end of Man.

Darwinistic "Tree of Life"

Dr. Geoffrey Simmons once wrote that if evolution is the explanation, then evolution has a lot of explaining to do. When it comes to attempting to trace the supposed macro-evolution of present-day flora and fauna through the fossil record, Dr. Simmons is very, very right. If evolution took place through small adaptions that culminated in major changes, one must ask how these changes took place and where all of the “missing links” went. Here’s a few examples of creatures which are too complex for adaptation over millions, nay billions, of years to explain away. And if someone were to theorize a mechanism to bring this adaptation about, there is certainly no fossil evidence for it. As one of my agnostic friends insists, those who assert a claim are responsible to validate that claim…..

• Bombardier beetles fire off hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone from separate glands in its abdomen. When combined, the exothermic reaction blasts predators at 500 bursts per second. How did the beetles choose those two chemicals out of the thousands available on this planet? Where are the transitional forms that developed the glands, chemicals, and firing mechanisms?
• The various species of whales can dive thousands of feet, adjust the pressure in various parts of their bodies to withstand the crushing weight of the water around them, adjust spermaceti in their heads to regulate buoyancy, store additional oxygen in muscle tissue for extended diving, and hunt by blowing a wall of bubbles to trap krill. How did they develop these abilities? Where are the transitional forms?
• The amoeba- a single-celled organism- can extend a “false foot” in any direction as it moves to attack food or escape a toxin or a predator. It lacks any apparent ancestors, yet is too complex to have been anything like the “simple” single-celled organisms mentioned by the Darwinists.
• Consider also the “migrating” body parts of some types of sea life. Leftvents have anuses that migrate from their left side to mid-line later in life, and flounder’s eyes migrate when they bury themselves in the sand. (Incidentally, one species of leftvent known as “netdevils” consist of females who function as predators and males who function as parasites, since they attach to the females and gain nourishment from their host’s circulatory system.) How did such features adapt? How did one species develop a parasitic and a predatory distinction between genders? And what evolutionary impetus necessitates a mobile anus, anyway?
• Some microbes suck out the chloroplasts of other microbes to create an internal food manufacturing system. The sea slug elysia does the same thing to seaweed. They are animals that depend on photosynthesis and nutrients from their prey for survival. How did they learn to do this?
• Fleas jump many times their body length with an acceleration of up to 100Gs. When they bite, their saliva injects blood thinner and vasodilator to prevent the blood vessel from clotting.  How did this adaptation take place?
• Nudibranchs are a type of sea slug that can swallow nerve toxins from sea anenomes and jellyfish and transfer them to their cerata to be used as a defense mechanism. If the ancestors of the nudibranchs had to develop this ability over time, how exactly did that work? Wouldn’t the first wave of ancestors be killed off?
• Cockroaches can survive over nine times the amount of radiation a human can. Their antannae alone have over 130 segments. They have an “extra” brain in their lower abdomens. They can carry a variety of pathogens yet not contract the diseases. They secrete a “suit of armor” upwards of seven times throughout their lifetimes which helps keep moisture in and bacteria out. They have a second set of teeth in their stomachs. Where is the precedent in the insect world for a second brain in the abdomen or a second set of teeth in the stomach? Did the 130-segment antennae develop all at once or gradually? How did they develop the ability to molt and secrete a new coat in such a short time?

How did all of these creatures evolve in the Darwinian sense? Gradual evolution seems nigh on impossible, yet here they are. Few serious scientists believe in punctuated equilibrium, yet if transitional forms do exist thanks to gradual macro-evolution, 99% of them have yet to show up in the fossil record. There is simply no clear-cut evidence for Darwinism in the fossil record. Why then has Darwinism persisted in the scientific community? The religious fervour surrounding Darwinism is curious. One would think the much-vaunted intellects of our day would appreciate some rigorous criticism so that they could more accurately get to the bottom of the “mystery” of how life originated.

Strangely, as James Lovelock pointed out in his book Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, “Things have taken a strange turn in recent years; almost the full circle from Galileo’s famous struggle with the theological establishment. It is the scientific establish that now forbids heresy.” Perhaps Intelligent Design is a better explanation in a scientific sense after all. True, that means postulating the existence of a Being that isn’t strictly detectable in the normal sense, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t evidence for His existence. And, as I’ve pointed out before, the ID vs. Darwinism debate only pits one metaphysical concept against another. Naturalism is a metaphysical concept which is ultimately unprovable by science, and Theism is a metaphysical concept which is just as ultimately unprovable by science. As such, the answer to the question of origins will never be strictly within the realm of science. It is ultimately in the realm of metaphysics that the solution will present itself.

The question is: which concept is there more evidence for? Job had the answer thousands of years ago:

“But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the LORD hath wrought this?” (Job 12:7-9)