Christians have caused so much
harm and animosity against gays, and the bible so misused to bash up
gays, that the name of Jesus Christ, and the standing of God is
undermined and humanised. There is a move away from biblical
christianity as a result of our gay bashing.
When some Christians mention the
name of God yet insisting on evolution, God becomes not so much as a
Creator, a Father, a friend, but as a mystery and an abstract force
summarised as love.
But the God of Israel was
present at Creation, and History became a journey which ultimately
centered around the Jews whom God has chosen to reveal the Messiah to
bring Satan down thus closing the chapter of the fall of man at the dawn
of creation.
For many Christians, man never
fell, never needed redemption, and heaven is what we do to make it a
commonwealth. When God is mentioned, it refers to a mystery personified
by love or a common force of spirituality rather than a God we can
commune with intimately through Jesus Christ.
At Nanyang Technical University
(NTU) Campus in Singapore, the visit by Humanists to the Campus Crusade
talk on Creationism left them “appalled and deeply saddened …. To
encounter creationism in Singapore, and in a university setting no less,
is extremely troubling.”
I have no right to be angst if I
am attending a Christian humanist liberal discourse explaining their own
evolution from apes. Similarly, It’s unreasonable for
the secular humanist to be perturbed.
The speaker, Thian Yew Gan is a
professor of civil engineering of the University of Alberta. Some
Christians quickly supported the humanist and called creationism going
“back to the dark ages or inquisition”. Evolution is an awful stance of
the created rebelling against God, the Creator, claiming that their own
limited science explained their own existence by chance.
Any church that is based on
evolution may end up with our humanity and limited goodness replacing God's
miraculous and super natural power, rather than a God of relationship,
love, and grace. We become evolved intelligence, our creation and
salvation within us. We are no different than the dark ages where
people of faith becomes the centre of the universe. However, the Sun
does not rotate around the earth. We are missing out on God's creative
power, then, and continuing today.
With creationism, we are not
going “back to the dark ages, or inquisition” of the Catholic church for
inquisition and the dark ages was about the church maintaining its
absolute power and control not that the church was particularly
biblical. Jesus didn’t harm the people who took Him to His death because
He gave His life up.
On the contrary, the inquisitors
and the Jesuits were people of faith worshiping the hierarchal church
and didn’t follow the biblical Jesus who gave grace even when harmed.
Hence, access to the bible was limited, and they worshipped the saints,
and Mary, and the Pope was exalted to man-god. The Reformation was about
return to biblical Christianity to escape the dark ages and inquisition
With daring gusto, the humanist
could enter the space of Christians and decry foul when they preached
biblical Christianity because the churches such as Love Singapore and
NCCS have gone out into the secular and caused harm by using the bible
incorrectly to insist that gays be jailed and denied all rights. The
door which the Christians opened is an opportunity for harm to return.
There is a general antagonism
against biblical Christianity because Christians have used the bible
incorrectly to bash gays. When we lie about gays, the integrity of the
bible suffers. People will no longer hear the Gospel good news when we
use our liberty to limit the basic freedom of the weak and vulnerable.
Evolution despite claims by many
scientists as being a theory is at best a hypothesis. It does not take a
"rocket scientist" to see the folly of evolution. Evolution can be
equated to having a hanger full of raw metals, and after many billion
years or so, you miraculously have a Boeing 747 aeroplane.
It takes more faith to believe in
evolution than to believe in creation. Without God, who then is the
person who designed, manufacture, and tested the Boeing 747. Hence
believing in evolution just for the sake of coming against a literal
reading of the bible is a commitment to intellectual suicide.
Mankind is much more complex than
a Boeing 747 and a much greater level of intelligence and power is
required to create life. Hence, creation points to the existence of an
almighty God. The bible starts with creation of earth, it ends with the
creation of a new earth. It is a beautiful narrative of how God relate
to His creation.
The many species claimed by
scientist as a path of evolution, reflects the beauty and majesty of
God's creation. Without accepting God's creation, we could never able to
accept that God created us as Gays. If one is unable to accept that God
created them, how could one accept Jesus, the reality of God. If we are
to follow the paths of evolution, where the fittest survived, there
would not be Faith, love, and Justice, attributes that we have because
we are made in the image of God.
The creation story is intimate
with God fellowshipping with mankind at the Garden of Eden rather than
some higher distant power of the progressives. It’s a personal God. The
creation story is a foundation that the bible builds on with the story
of the fall, the redemption in Noah’s Ark, in the creation of Israel,
the crossing of the Red Sea, the coming back of God in Christ Jesus at
Jerusalem to die and be resurrected, and the final coming back of God
when Jesus comes back again to bring His people home.
The bible is a love story of
God’s grace, love, and mercy in the face of man’s fall, sin, and
rebellion. The narrative starts with the
creation of mankind with Adam, rebirthed in Jesus Christ the new Adam,
and one day a return to God for eternity in heaven.
|