It may interest some of you to know that I went through a period in my life when I didn’t say much. I enjoyed sitting quietly and listening to the conversations around me. A few years ago, as I was talking to a girl who knew me back in those quite days, she exclaimed, “Wow! You actually have things to say. I always thought you were just… stupid.” I suppose I may have appeared to be a bit awkward back then. Perhaps I still do, but oh, the things people will say around you when you appear to be too ignorant to perceive them. I was just thinking today about a conversation I overheard once while sitting quietly. This conversation was between my sister, Marcy, and a man whom I remember vividly as being an unwavering Armenian. “So, tell me again”, he began, ”exactly why you are a Calvinist?” After a short pause, Marcy replied sheepishly, “I don’t really know. You might say it’s because my Dad says so, and that’s good enough for me!”
Since that time, Marcy has become quite an independent thinker. She is no longer willing to adopt a concept simply because others have said it’s the thing to do. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Marcy’s willingness to think outside of the box, and not be maneuvered into accepting the majority opinion. Having the audacity to think for one’s self is, I think, the first step toward discovering truth in its uncorrupted and pure form. However, if we cannot trust everybody else to influence us and tell us how and what to think, what should be the basis for our belief systems? After all, we should have some sort of foundation on which to build our beliefs, shouldn’t we? The answer is yes. Without a scientific, doctrinal, or logical basis for our beliefs, we are left building our own ideologies and then desperately trying to support them with anything that looks like a suitable prop.
Consider Charles Darwin. I’ve not made time yet to read Darwin’s book “The Origin of Species”, but I intend to soon. Darwin’s theories have always interested me. Not so much the theories themselves, but the originality of them. Considering scientists are still looking for “the missing link” that would not just add substance to, but would create the entire foundation for the theory of evolution, one must ask himself, “What on Earth did Darwin base his theories on?” After all, in order for Darwin to present the clumsily extravagant theory of evolution, he must have had some shred of evidence to impel his research, right? Nope. Darwin never presented any evidence that had been directly observed. His evidence was theoretical at best, and the problematic evidence that he did present, such as certain species possessing common traits, has since lost merit as valid evidence. The dispelling of Darwin’s evidence is a direct result of advances in bioscience and chemistry, including DNA analysis. This was Antony Flew’s observation which he mentioned in his final book titled, “There is a God” (It was, in fact, the new findings in the field of chemistry among other sciences that caused Flew’s paradigm to be shifted).
Many times I’ve asked myself, what kind of man must Darwin have been. What power of persuasion did he possess? At what moment did he conclude that all species share a common ancestor? I can just imagine the entire scenario playing out at the Darwin house one morning during breakfast. Just before his first sip of coffee that morning, Charles, turned to his wife Emma and blurted out the words, “…Suppose we came from hippos… no, perhaps… monkeys. Yes, monkeys. And they changed and stuff. Then after a real long time, like years, thousands, no… millions, or even… hundreds of millions of years, they attained the perfect form of the human being.” At that moment Charles’ elbow slid off of the table causing him to spill coffee on himself. “You know Charles”, Emma responded sympathetically, “you’ve really got something there. I think you should run with that. Maybe someday, they’ll even teach that in our schools.” Unfortunately, her prognosis would have been accurate. However, I really don’t think that if I had said those words to my wife, she would have even looked up from her morning paper.
Darwin’s assertions would have made so much more sense to me had the “missing link” been found first. At least then he would have had some sort of logical basis for his theories. Be that as it may, scientists have spent the last century spending countless billions of dollars and tens of thousands of man-hours attempting to prove Darwin’s morning coffee drivel. I’m once again reminded of E. Michael Jones’ pronouncement of the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead’s corruption, “She tailored her data to suit the ideology she went there to substantiate.” Simply put, Mead already knew what she wanted to believe, and she set out to build a foundation for it.
Darwinists are obviously no different from Margaret Mead, but what about us? What about Christians? Are we able to support our belief system with substantive doctrine? For instance, do you know why you vote the way you do? If somebody were to ask you why you are a democrat or an independent or a republican, would you only give them a rehearsed speech? My hope is that you would be able to give them the facts, because you’ve studied them. Do you have a biblical basis for how you vote, or have you simply allowed yourself to become comfortable voting however somebody else has told you to? If you are a Christian, do you use the Bible to guide your belief system, or do you ignore the inconvenient scriptures? Do you take the time to read and familiarize yourself with biblical concepts, or do you only quote the verses that you’ve heard the preacher say? I firmly believe that, as Christians, we are fighting a spiritual battle. Ultimately God will win, but we have a responsibility to stand strong and fight the good fight here on Earth. Satan is making tremendous headway, and perhaps this is because so many Christians have grown too complacent to build foundations of truth beneath their pick and choose Bible touting. Wake up Christians! Wake up and look around at what is going on in our churches, with our families, and in our White House. Break away from the watered down boring god that is being falsely worshiped in our churches. Stop putting yourself out to go to drab buildings where, as soon as the preacher shuts up, everyone can get together and gossip about what a pitiful job the music director is doing. Find for yourselves the God who is capable of exciting you and giving you a focus and desire for praise and worship of Him and in his presence. Then follow him according to His word that He left as a guide for those times when He seems distant. Use His Word as your foundation of truth. Without that, we are no better off than Darwin.
Nathan Gray
