TKOG=mstd()

Mark 4:30-34

by Daniel Harrell

Chalk it up to a diminishment in dexterity, or perhaps it’s just my age, but I haven’t quite been able to master the whole texting thing with my phone. Let’s just say I’m all thumbs. I recently marveled at my adolescent niece’s agility, as well as her obsession, with this cryptic form of communication. She and I have this running cribbage grudge match that stretches back several vacations; it can get pretty intense. Only this last time as we played, our game was being constantly interrupted by her vibrating phone. She was having a “conversation” with some boy out in Oklahoma, a digital dialogue that took precedence over the audible dialogue she was simultaneously having with her very present flesh and blood uncle right in front of her face. Figuring it must be terribly important stuff for her to be so rude, I got her to show me the exchange. With apologies to radio and podcast listeners, it went something like this. Allow me to translate:

Hi

Sup Whassup?

WRUD What are you doing?

NMU Not much, you?

9TV Watching TV.

WRU9 What are you watching?

~(_8^(|) The Simpsons (You have to cock your head to the left to get this.)

TTLY Totally

G2gb Got to go bye

cul8r See you later, (by which they meant about 10 seconds later when the whole cycle would start over again).

Given the obvious lack of urgency to such banter, I wondered aloud why my niece couldn’t wait until we had finished our cribbage game to reply to her cowboy. She informed me that this is not how texting works. One of the Ten Commandments of Texting (according to a recent New Yorker article) reads:

u shall b prepard @ all times 2 tXt & 2 recv

You can be sloppy and you can be blunt, but you cannot be slow. To delay is to disrespect. In fact, delay is the only disrespect. Any other misunderstanding can be cleared up by a few more exchanges. Back when most computing was done on a desktop, people used to complain about all the pressure they felt to respond quickly to e-mail. At least, in those days, it was understood that you might have walked away from your desk. But now, there is no socially accepted excuse for being without your cell phone. “I didn’t have my phone!” just does not sound believable. Either you are lying or you are depressed or you have something to hide. “I’m sorry, I have a breathing human being in the room with me?” No, I’m afraid that doesn’t cut it either. What about “I’m in church?” Unfortunately, no. If you receive a text, you are obliged to reply to it instantaneously, if only to confirm that you are not one of those people who can be without a phone. The most common text message must be:

k

Which means “I have nothing to say, but heaven forbid that you should think that I am a loser.”

If you haven’t heard, e-mail is so 2006. Texting is quickly becoming the way to communicate. Somewhere in the area of three billion people own cell phones from which are sent more than a trillion text messages each year. Granted, a trillion messages on the vast sea of language is hardly a ripple. But such insignificance only displays texting’s power as all the more remarkable. This past week’s election of Barack Obama as president is attributable in part to texting. Cell phones greased the enormous network of volunteers and contributors that fueled Obama’s victory. One Republican strategist described Obama’s election campaign as an “army of grass-roots activists trying to change the world in 160 characters or less.” Having given up on getting people to turn off phones during services, churches are integrating texting into worship. One church invites folks to text questions during the sermon(!). Since it’s assumed you’re going to be texting someone anyway, why not the preacher? Another church texts reminders of upcoming events and prayer requests (though the actual prayers themselves should remain verbal). A youth pastor strategically texts the 350 kids in his youth group at opportune moments such as weekday mornings before school, during lunch hours and on those late Saturday nights when they’re most vulnerable to temptation.

WWJD?

“Most of the people I hang out with are glued to their cell phones,” the youth pastor says.

As this is the closing Sunday of our missions conference, are there suitable missions strategies for texting? In many developing countries it costs less than a penny to send a text. Most people don’t pay for a monthly plan but buy their time as they go. You can send a hundred texts for the price of one phone call. It could be a very quick and economical way to spread the gospel:

J+ 59 (Jesus Christ Loves You)

Though you would have to get everybody’s cell phone number first.

Since as far as we know, Jesus did not have a cell phone, we can’t know whether he would have advocated texting as a missions strategy. However, we do know from tonight’s parable that he did advocate using seemingly insignificant means toward world-changing ends. Since last Easter I’ve been working through the sayings of Jesus recorded in Mark’s gospel, the words printed in red in some of your Bibles. I decided to do this due to a popular book entitled Red-Letter Christians, by Tony Campolo, who argues that Jesus’ words carry political implications, appropriate for this election year. Jesus preached the Kingdom of God as a clear indictment against the oppressive kingdom of Caesar―but he didn’t use much by way of political rhetoric to preach it. Instead he used botanical rhetoric, no doubt disappointing those who would have preferred some scary fire and brimstone instead. For the third time in a row, Jesus compares the kingdom of God to little seeds, with tonight’s comparison to the smallest seeds in Jewish proverbial thought: mustard seeds. Had Jesus used a cell phone, he could have texted it like this:

TKOG=mstd ().

The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. So what? Jesus goes on to describe how mustard seeds grow into the largest of garden plants with branches big enough for birds to perch. But again, so what? Not much if all you hear is the botanically obvious. But hear it politically and you realize Jesus says much more. The image of a mighty tree in which birds perch traces back to the Old Testament book of Ezekiel where the prophet spins his own parable of God lopping off a “tender sprig” that would grow to rule the earth. If you’re familiar with Old Testament metaphors then you know “tender sprig” is code for Messiah. Ezekiel portends a potent Kingdom, albeit one with humble beginnings. Unfortunately, centuries of heightened Messianic expectation made it so that a twig would no longer do. Israel expected a mighty sequoia of a Messiah, not some mustard bush. Jesus’ corrective here was intended to readjust expectations—but only in regard to the Kingdom’s origins. As in Ezekiel, the kingdom’s outcome would still be a mighty tree in which birds would nest―birds being symbolic of all nations coming into God’s shade. The word Jesus uses for “smallest” in verse 31 is the same word he uses elsewhere when he talks about the least being the greatest. Here he applies it to himself.

Jesus was no towering sequoia. He was a tender twig. An apparent nobody, a mustard seed of a man whose defeat and death, and death-defying resurrection, changed the world. “On the mountain heights I will plant him;” said the Lord in Ezekiel, “he will produce branches and bear fruit and become a splendid cedar. Birds of every kind will nest in him; they will find shelter in the shade of his branches. All the trees of the field will know that I the LORD make the low tree grow tall and flourish. I the LORD have spoken, and I will do it.” In Matthew and Luke, Jesus has the mustard shrub turn into a tree to make the Ezekiel connection clear. This parable is a parable of hope. God’s power is manifest in weakness. The least becomes the greatest. As our guest preacher for next Sunday, Bishop NT Wright, puts it: “God will redeem the whole universe; Jesus’ resurrection is the beginning of that new life, the fresh grass growing through the concrete of corruption and decay in the old world. That final redemption will be the moment when heaven and earth are joined together at last.”

We’ve looking forward to Bishop Wright’s visit next Sunday. He’s pretty famous as far as preachers go. Maybe you’ve read one of his gazillion books, seen him on the news or on the Colbert Report. He’s speaking at all four services, so it’s a great opportunity to invite a friend to church who may be interested in Christianity. Hopefully at the 6pm he’ll be taking questions after his talk in order to get a bit of a dialogue going. We were even thinking about letting people text their questions, you know, since asking them in public might be too intimidating. According to that same New Yorker article, one attraction of texting is that it avoids dreaded face-to-face, or even voice-to-voice exchanges like you have over the phone. Many people don’t like having to perform the amount of self-presentation that’s required for a personal encounter. They don’t want to deal with the facial expressions, the body language, the verbal cues or the obligation to be witty or interesting.

UG2BK

I know, “you’ve got to be kidding,” but it’s true. So true that we were thinking it might even make sense to have Bishop Wright just text over his talk from England. It would be more efficient, faster and cheaper too. So much so that it makes you wonder why we don’t just text sermons every Sunday; why we don’t adopt texting as a missions strategy, and why God didn’t use it as a strategy himself. Putting a cell phone in the hand of everyone in the entire ancient world might have been a bit much (since he’d have to create phone companies and build towers and calling plans too, even though there would have been no dead zones). Being God, surely he could have texted the gospel in the clouds or bore it directly into people’s brains.

JOHN 3:16

God could have avoided dreaded face-to-face exchanges, the body language and the obligation to be witty or interesting. He wouldn’t have had to deal with Pharisees or any sinner for that matter. But instead, God so loved the world that he came in person. And not just as any person, but as a poor and humble person, one who as least of all was accessible to all. It wasn’t cheap. Jesus gave his own life in order to give us life. And it hasn’t been fast or efficient either. God brings on his kingdom patiently in ways that look small and insignificant―using mustard seeds like you and me―people who touch rather than text. Real people are the way the gospel gets spread. Just as Jesus came as God in the flesh, so we, the church, exist as Jesus in the flesh, the body of Christ on earth, living good news of God’s grace in all that we say and do everywhere we do it. The flags that surround you represent all the places Park Street Church does this―as real people, church planters, doctors, translators, teachers, prison workers and businesspeople—in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Yemen, Thailand, China, India, South Africa, Mozambique, Kenya, Cameroon, Sudan, the Czech Republic, as well as here in the United States where we support those who share the gospel on college campuses as well as those who work among the poor on the streets.

It’s not cheap. Last year it cost upwards of 1.8 million dollars, all of it given in mustard seed fashion by week to week. We pull it off because we all pull together to do it, just like churches are supposed to. However it is a challenge. I read a recent sociological study about how twenty percent of committed Christians in America, the ones who go to church weekly and say they live like Jesus daily, 20 percent of committed Christians give nothing, no money to the work of God on earth. Zero.

O

Zip. According to the same study, the rest of us who do give only give something like 3%.

OMG

Even though Jesus warned us not to store up our treasures on earth and to be generous toward the things of God, we mostly spend all of our money on ourselves.

: O

Do you know what we could do if committed Christians in America simply obeyed the Bible and gave a measly mustard seed of their money (which by the way is all God asks)? If just the committed Christians tithed

10%

there would be an extra 46 billion dollars a year available to fund, for example, 150,000 new indigenous missionaries; 50,000 additional theological students in the developing world; 5 million more micro loans to poor entrepreneurs; enough food, clothing and shelter for all 6,500,000 current refugees in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East; all the money for a global campaign to prevent and treat malaria; resources to sponsor 20 million needy children worldwide.

If simple texting can change the government of the United States, simple tithing can do even more. As the study concludes, “Reasonably generous financial giving of ordinary American Christians would generate staggering amounts of money that could literally change the world.”

I want to give you a chance to be reasonable tonight. Each year we ask our members and regular attendees to pledge money to missions so that we can do what God calls us to do as his church on earth. Our primary calling has never been to serve ourselves but to serve the world, starting here in Boston and stretching to the ends of the earth. Make a pledge to missions.

Beyond the Obvious

Mark 4:26-29
by Daniel Harrell

As election day approaches we’re back to the political sayings of Jesus, those verses printed with red in some of your Bibles. While some may think that coloring Jesus’ words red bodes well for Republican John McCain, the color is actually supposed to represent blood. A Christian magazine editor back in 1900 decided it might be a good idea to print Jesus’ words in red since Jesus said, “this cup is the new testament in my blood shed for you.” Blood―red―New Testament, you get it. I’ve been focusing on the red-letters of Jesus due to a book called Red-Letter Christians by Tony Campolo. He wrote it to coincide with the presidential election since in his view the sayings of Jesus carry political implications. My ongoing interest in these political implications led one emailer to ask, “Why is it really worthwhile to spend time as a church or a pastor on political things? Don’t they pass away? Being relevant is nice but there are plenty of worthwhile personal/moral/spiritual issues to talk about and plenty of those the culture needs to hear. Voting or politics or this country in one time and place is petty and parochial almost I think. We have hard things to do in loving our neighbor on a personal level and that clearly has eternal value and is hard enough. So why jump to issues that seem so temporary and I’m not sure how they merit even being part of a church effort at all, because we have more important things to do?”

I responded that while politics may eventually prove irrelevant some day, you could hardly argue that to be the case presently. Moreover, the Bible itself is stocked full of God’s interactions with governments be they brutish (as in Egypt, Babylon and Rome) or benevolent. Likewise, Paul and Jesus both speak often of issues like money, taxation, poverty, justice and war, all of which are clearly political. Moreover, words like savior, salvation, peace, gospel, church and Christ derive from the political lexicon of the Roman world. Gospel was what the Romans called their political propaganda and church was what they called their political assemblies. In pillaging Roman language, Jesus takes aim at Roman power. If all we do in church is view Jesus’ words through a grid of personal piety, we quickly sever ourselves from God’s public redemptive activity. How can any faithful Christian community do that?

Granted, my emailing friend was particularly wary of the ways church and government have become so entwined, sublimating any prophetic power to worldly manipulation. This is always a danger. And yet, the church that separates itself from the world renders itself irrelevant in ways that being the kingdom of God in the world never implies. The gospel’s intent is much more than merely one’s own individual salvation. Jesus did not get crucified for preaching about how to have a personal relationship with him. What got him killed was preaching about the imminent Kingdom of God, political language considered treason by the Romans and blasphemy by the Jews. To be the kingdom of God in the world is to be a visible countercultural community, a corporate body politic transformed by grace whose life together defies the status quo of the Roman empire or of any empire. To believe the gospel is to not be swayed by the seductions of military or monetary power. The Bible uses the word saints to describe such alternative communities, a noun meaning holy ones or set apart. But don’t confuse set apart with separate. Consider instead the King James Version which renders holy as peculiar. To be holy is not to be separate, but to be noticeably different: different from those outside the church and different from the way we used to be when we lived just for our own selves.

The kingdom of God is political language alright. Yet Jesus’ red-letter words tonight do come off as more agricultural than political. They read like some description out of a seed catalog. “Plant your seeds and they will sprout with first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, put a sickle to it, because the harvest has come.” The farmers in the audience had to be thinking: “Tell me something I don’t know.” Actually, the main thrust of these verses seems to be that nobody does know how seeds grow, though that’s not totally true. We all know that seeds contain a tiny embryo under a protective coat, that when given the necessary amount of water and oxygen, and exposed to the right temperature, they will grow, break through the coat, and push their way up through the soil. A seed stores all the energy it needs to germinate, even though to look at a seed makes it difficult to imagine it as a living organism. It looks dead. The fact is that seeds have evolved the ability to remain in a dormant state until conditions are favorable for growth. Some seeds will germinate after hundreds of years if the conditions are right. What does this have to do with the gospel?

For one answer let me shamelessly plug a book I’ve written that has finally appeared up on Amazon and CBD (see right) entitled Nature’s Witness: How Evolution Can Inspire Faith, (which, I know, for some of you sounds as ridiculous as politics inspiring faith). The controversy between Christian faith and science has been exacerbated by increasing mounds of scientific data that lend weight to evolution. Paleontology, biochemistry, cosmology, physics, genetics—you name the discipline—each regularly puts forth newly discovered evidence in support of Darwin’s simple idea of descent with modification. While some people of faith choose to keep their doors closed to such ideas, I argue that shutting out science is not necessary. While Christian faith is grounded in extraordinary events that defy scientific explanation (like Jesus’ resurrection), God is not only present where science is silent. The expansiveness of the universe, the remarkable makeup of human consciousness, the beauty and complexity of organic life—all naturally explicable occurrences—are also understood by Scripture as manifestations of God’s handiwork. Christianity consistently asserts that all truth is God’s truth, implying that faith and science, despite differences when it comes to explaining why, nevertheless should agree in regard to what is. Why bother talking about God if he has no relation to observable reality? That the earth manifests the handiwork of God means that Christians can welcome accurate scientific descriptions (if not scientific interpretations of those descriptions). We should welcome accurate scientific descriptions as revelations of divine truth.

Which is sort of what Jesus is doing here by talking about seeds. More than stating the horticulturally obvious, Jesus makes a statement about God using creation as his illustration. We know from the previous parable of the sower that seeds represent the word, which for Jesus means the word both spoken and the word made flesh in him. Whereas in the sower parable a farmer spread the word (a farmer most interpret as being God given similar Old Testament analogies), here the sower is described as just a man, meaning that it could be anybody. Just as I throw a few seeds in my flower pots each spring, anybody can plant a seed in the ground. In time the seeds sprout, though you don’t know exactly why they do this (nor do scientists for that matter), until eventually, and automatically (that’s the Greek word for “all by itself”), they produce fruit for harvest. For Jesus to say “nobody knows” is just code for saying “God knows.” The emphasis on inexplicability emphasizes the activity of God. Just as everyday seeds grow and bear fruit as created by God to do, so gospel seeds grow and bear fruit, the fruit of new creation.

Some interpret this parable as an encouragement to share the gospel with everybody because who knows, it might actually take root. Like spreading a few seeds in your garden, spreading the word should be natural and normal. Of course talking about seeds rising out of the ground is one thing, comparing that to a man rising from the dead is something else. Sure, Jesus could say it and have people believe him, but he could do miracles too. For you and me it just sounds too, well, peculiar. Ironically, this may be one reason we don’t talk about it so much. For years I’d been good friends with this guy whose lifestyle and values I readily interpreted as being shut off to any talk about religion. He didn’t like to talk politics either. He’d voiced his suspicions of Christianity, which was why it took me as long as it did to come clean about being a minister. I waited partly because I didn’t want our relationship to get goofy, with him acting all weird once he found out I was a saint. But mostly I wanted to build up some trust so that when I did talk about Jesus we could actually have a conversation as friends instead of him feeling like a target. Not that I ever expected to see him in church or anything. Are you kidding? I became his quaint little pastor buddy whom he knew he could call if ever he needed a wedding or a funeral or Red Sox tickets (we pastors get discounts). But then one night after church, I’m shaking hands at the back, and out strolls my friend, this devilish look on his face. “Liked your sermon, dude,” he said. Who knew?

In light of our missions conference that starts next Sunday, I should probably mention that this is why we send actual people into the world instead of just shooting off emails. The gospel spreads when real people spread it―real people who have been really changed by it. Not that you yourself can change anybody else. It’s God who does it, which again, I think is Jesus’ main point here. God does it in a way that defies human understanding and sometimes even human perception. God makes things happen even when we’re not seeing it. No way people could have seen in a crucified Jesus any viable alternative to Roman power. No way could anybody have seen the grace of God either. All anybody could have seen in a crucified Jesus was a criminal cursed. But just like a seed that looks dead in your hand, bury it in the ground and it comes to life.

I spent this past week in Kansas City at the theology conference where a participant asked the presenters, all New Testament scholars from across the theological spectrum, whether it mattered that Jesus actually rose from the dead. If his goal was to establish an alternative to Roman rule, and by extension an alternative to all worldly power, who cares if he resurrected? Can’t we just heed his wisdom and get the same political and personal results? The scholars shook their heads. Even the ones who didn’t necessarily believe people could rise from the dead insisted that without the resurrection Jesus’ wisdom is nothing but lunacy. The resurrection validates everything that Jesus taught and everything he did. We’re used to seeing depicted as part of Christian iconography an empty cross on a hill, but travel any road in ancient Rome and it would be lined with thousands of crosses, warnings to everyone of what happens when you cross an empire. Thousands and thousands of men were crucified, it was how Rome kept the pax. Crucifixion was not an extraordinary event. It happened all the time. But not resurrection. That only happened once. Resurrection is all that matters.

Without the resurrection, “love your enemies” is idiotic advice. Why love the person who wants to hurt you? The same with going last or being humble or storing your treasure in heaven. Without the resurrection, all that leaves you with is getting left out and run over, without any treasure on earth. And why care for the poor without the resurrection? Sure, it’s a nice humanitarian thing to do, but isn’t that energy better spent taking care of yourself? After all, without the resurrection, this life is it. You better make the most of it and live it up. And don’t even talk about forgiving people without the resurrection. Why bother? Write them off! Be done with them. And don’t bother with feeling guilty about the bad stuff you’ve done and wanting to be forgiven yourself. Without the resurrection, that ain’t happening. Sure, Jesus may have died for your sins, but if he didn’t rise from the dead and declare victory over sin and death, you might as well say Elvis Presley died for your sins. People called him the king too.

It is the resurrection that exalts Jesus high above every name, so high as to compel every knee to bow in worship and obedience to him. It is the resurrection that proves God’s ironic power through powerlessness, the power of life through death, for Jesus and through Jesus for us too. Life out of death is God’s design. True for his creatures and true for creation too. Biology posits that there would be no life without death. If you’re willing to view the evolutionary epic as a positive process whereby the negativity of death is redeemed for the sake of new life, then you can see in it a reflection of the way God acts act to redeem the negativity of death due to sin. Just as the death of an organism will allow for its flourishing reproduction and continued genetic life (not that the Bible would put it this way), so does the death and resurrection of Jesus result in the flourish of God’s kingdom until that day when all things are raised and made new and death is no longer required. Jesus said in John’s gospel that, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single seed; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” More than stating the horticulturally obvious, Jesus is describing the way God works.

“And as soon as the grain is ripe,” verse 29, “he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.” Now the image of harvest is a common Old Testament image of divine judgment, only here in Mark, the image is not one of a grim reaper but a glad reaper. The word has done its work, as sure as any seed planted in good soil. Perceptions of insignificance and weakness to the contrary (seeds really are little things), the kingdom of God by the will of God grows and flourishes even now. Christians comprise a body politic, a body of Christ politic, the true green party, a community garden fertilized by faith producing the spiritual fruit of love and joy and peace and hope, not as personal attributes, but as public acts. Christians are people who love their neighbors and forgive their enemies, who preach hope amidst sorrow, who instill joy in the little things and make peace and do justice and speak truth and care for one another with evident beauty. These acts do seem small and insignificant, but again, isn’t that the point?

Hot Off The Press

Now available! Daniel Harrell's book

Nature's Witness:
How Evolution Can Inspire Faith.


Get it on Amazon or CBD

An excerpt is printed below with permission from Abingdon Press.



Walking across the Boston Common one cold winter’s eve, I was approached by a gentleman, somewhat agitated, who recognized me from church.

“Are you the minister who’s writing the book on evolution?”

This didn’t sound good. “Uh, ... yes?” I replied, bracing myself.

“Do you believe in the word of God? Do you believe that God created the heavens and the earth in six days, like the Bible says?” His articulation was semiautomatic—as was his tone.

I assured him that yes, I believed the Bible says that God created the heavens and the earth in six days. I also believe that rivers clap their hands and that mountains sing (Ps 98:9) because the Bible says that too. But I don’t think that the Bible means six twenty-four-hour days any more than I believe that the Bible means that rivers have literal hands.

He worried that I suffered from delusion (which as far as I am concerned is never outside the realm of possibility). However, I reminded him that there are two types of delusion. There is the delusion that believes something that is not true, and there is the delusion that fails to believe something that is true. If evolution is an accurate description of the emergence of life, as science attests, then believing it alongside the Bible should pose no threat. There’s no need to fear any honest search for truth because in the end, all honest searches for truth inevitably lead back to God.

Historically, religious faith, particularly Christianity, served as the loom onto which the discoveries of science were woven. It was within a Christian theological framework that scientific disclosure found its transcendent meaning. Descartes, Bacon, Galileo, Kepler and Newton, believers all, saw their work not as replacements for faith, but as extensions of it. The idea was that the best of science and the best of theology concerted to give human beings deeper insight into the workings of the universe and, subsequently, into the divine character. Scientific discovery was received with gratitude to the Almighty for the wonder of his creation. Scientists, alongside the psalmist, would proclaim, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” (Ps 19:1 NIV).

The balance between faith and science (or reason) was established in the Middle Ages by Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas, building on Augustine, established a delicate equilibrium between theology (reasoning down from faith) and philosophy, analogous to science (reasoning up from sensory data). Aquinas, unlike the Reformers who would follow, taught that human senses and rational faculties, as made by God, were competent for understanding reality, albeit from a limited standpoint. The limits were filled in by theology. Aquinas asserted that God acted through “secondary causes,” creating the world according to his laws and then giving nature room to unfold in accordance with God’s laws. Whatever was good science was good as far as God is concerned; science simply described what God had already done.

However, if God operated mostly behind the scenes as the prime cause, then it wasn’t long before people started wondering whether he was there at all. In time, reliance upon divine revelation gave way to human reason in its Enlightenment form, and soon the supernatural was rendered superfluous. As science advanced, Christians reacted by retreating into a sort of Manichean dualism whereby science was demonized and faith grew reliant on a super-supernatural world where any ordinary explanation raised suspicion. With battle lines so starkly drawn, scientists were left to assume that any move toward Christian faith was akin to committing intellectual suicide. Conversely, the faithful relied on science for their medicine or the weather forecast, but much more than that was to attempt spiritual suicide. Let a spark of evolution in the door and you were liable to catch the whole house on fire.

The controversy between Christian faith and evolution is exacerbated by increasing mounds of scientific data that lend weight to evolution. Paleontology, biochemistry, cosmology, physics, genetics—you name the discipline—each regularly puts forth newly discovered evidence in support of Darwin’s simple idea of descent with modification. While some people of faith choose to keep their doors closed, shutting out science is not necessary. Christian faith by definition defies human conceptions of reality (1 Cor 3:19). Its claims are grounded in extraordinary events that defy scientific explanation (most importantly the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus). But God is not only present where science is silent; he remains present even where science speaks loudest. The expansiveness of the universe, the beauty and complexity of organic life and the remarkable makeup of human consciousness—naturally explicable occurrences—are also interpreted by Christians as manifestations of God (Rom 1:20). Christianity consistently asserts that all truth is God’s truth, implying that faith and science, despite differences when it comes to explaining why, nevertheless should agree in regard to what is. Why bother talking about God if God has no relation to observable reality?

An avalanche of books has been devoted to the controversy between Christianity and evolution. Don’t expect a contribution to that debate here. There are plenty of other places where that conversation occurs. Instead, I’d like to look at Christian faith in the face of evolution as essentially true as most scientists assert. Now I know that just because a particular theory makes sense of the way something could have happened, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it actually happened that way. But if evolution truly provides an accurate description of life on earth, and things did happen the way evolution describes, how might we rethink the way we think about what the Bible says? To rethink what we think about the Bible is not to rewrite Scripture, nor is it to capitulate to Christianity’s detractors. Instead, rethinking and reworking our theology in light of accurate data results in a more dependable and resilient theology. To be a serious Christian is to seek truth and find it as revealed by God both in Scripture and in nature. If God is the maker of heaven and earth, as we believe, then the heavens and earth, as science describes them, have something to say about God. Natural selection need not imply godless selection. To be reliable witnesses of creation can’t help but make us more reliable witnesses to the Creator.