Sermon for 1-29-06
I am doing a new sermon series called "Weird Christian Beliefs." The first sermon in the series is about the intelligent design debate. For the text of the sermon see:
How Intelligent is Intelligent Design?
Scriptures: Genesis 1; Ephesians 1:3-12
Intelligent design has been in the news recently. The debate that goes back to the Scopes trial has been raging once again in the courts. And I admit to being somewhat offended by what I read in the news of the latest decision in Pennsylvania over the Dover School Board’s desire to add a statement encouraging them to take a look at Intelligent design and stating that evolution was “just a theory.” The judge made what I thought to be inflammatory statements about the “breathtaking inanity” of the Dover policy and, as the DMN states,” accused several board members of lying to conceal their true motive, which he said was to promote religion.” DMN December 21, 2005 p. 11A.
I have to say after looking at the case in full and the decision in full, after looking at the writings of the Intelligent design people, I kind of have to agree with him. Regardless of whether or not ID theorists have a scientific point, that does not seem to be why it was proposed at a part of the curriculum. I think it is pretty clear that only people with a certain religious viewpoint would propose these changes. Having been a scientist before I was a theologian and preacher, I once again feel that I should address this issue.
I have been thinking about this issue for a lot of years now and I have come to some conclusions. The first is that there is nothing in the book of Genesis that contradicts the theory of evolution. The first chapter, the one we read today tells us that God spoke the world into being with careful thought, with order and with intent. The second chapter tells us that we are made out of the same stuff as the earth (which no one would dispute) but also tells us that we are somehow different. Neither gives us a biological mechanism for understanding the "hows" of creation, both give us a theological framework for understanding the relationship between ourselves and other creatures and ourselves and God
First I should say that I do, of course, believe in “Intelligent Design.” I think it makes logical sense. A parable told by John Leslie and cited by John Polkinghorne in Traffic in Truth: Exchanges between Science and Theology is one way to explain to others why belief in a creator makes sense:
You are about to be executed. You are tied to the stake and the rifles of ten highly trained marksmen are leveled at your chest. The officer gives the order to fire and the shots ring out . . . You find you have survived!
What do you do? Do you just shrug your shoulders and walk away, saying “That was a close”? Of course not. So remarkable an occurrence demands an explanation. Leslie suggests there are only two rational explanations of your good fortune:
(a) Maybe many, many executions are taking place today. Even the best of marksmen sometimes miss and you happen to be in the execution where they all miss. Of course there would really have to be a vast number of executions scheduled today to make this a plausible explanation, but if there were enough going on this would be a conceivable way of accounting for your escape.
(b) Maybe there is only one execution scheduled today, namely yours. However, more was going on in that event than you had realized. The marksmen were on your side. They missed by design. (33-34)
However, though I believe in Intelligent Design, I am also convinced that it is time Christians stopped fighting evolution. Not only does it make us look provincial, sneaky and sometimes downright stupid, but in fact we have better things to do with our time. In particular we need to start helping our children (and the rest of the world) reflect on the theological implications of evolution and the scientific advances that we are making. We need to help our communities and our nation come to terms with what it means to be stewards of creation. We need to assure those who are searching for meaning in life that they are made in the image of God.
1.
A. The theological implications of evolution.
There is a scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The knights ride up to a spot in the mountains and there on the top of one of the ridges is a man dressed in long robes, causing explosions all over the place. He simply creates explosions for the sheer joy of it. Tim the Enchanter has very little reason for his actions. He creates explosions because he can. At the risk of seeming somewhat irreverent, I think that some people see God in that fashion. But science, including evolution, maybe especially evolution, tells of a world that has incredible complexity, incredible planning. If your child or your atheist friend asks you how God is involved in evolution, consider reflecting with them: “Isn’t it amazing that God set up the world in a way that could adapt to changing circumstances, that could constantly come up with new and varied plants and animals. Isn’t it amazing that God set up the world in a way that could give us all this variety with just a relatively few differences in DNA.” It seems to me that evolution, far from denying the existence of God enables us to see the elegant and sophisticated plan of the Creator. Not a “poof, I think I’ll make a giraffe” kind of creator, but one whose plans are very long-term and well laid out; who never stopped creating and has provided a way to be continually and intimately involved in that creation.
In addition this is a God whose natural laws can be trusted. The next time you drop a dish, or trip over a rock, after you have said the quick expletive, remember to thank God for gravity, that amazing force that is so very small and yet so very important. Give thanks that our trustworthy God created a trustworthy world. This is not a God of whimsy, capriciousness, and magic, but a God of steadfast love and everlasting covenant.
B. In addition to the grist for the theological mill provided by evolution, we need to remind our children and the rest of the world that seeking the truth is a fundamental part of our life as Christians. Truth, whether scientific, psychological, philosophical or whatever, never hurts us but always leads us closer to God. It is, after all, God’s creation that we study. If Christians truly believe that God is Creator, then we should be unafraid of the answers given by science. Fights over evolution or any other scientific theory; fights that are not based in science; fights that are based on fear, display to the world not a strong vital faith, but a weak, shaky faith.
2. Secondly, as Christians, instead of wasting our time fighting for intelligent design, we need to encourage stewardship of God’s world. How can we expect anyone to take seriously our belief that God created the world if we fail to treat the gift of this world with the respect that it deserves? Believing in God as creator means that we have to care for creation. That is what it says in both Genesis 1 and 2 (and, incidentally, what the Social Principles of the United Methodist Church reminds us). We were created to care for creation. If you take Genesis seriously, then you have to take our charge seriously. That means that many little everyday decisions have to be made differently. On a personal level we have decisions like, “Do I buy the more luxurious car or the one that gets better mileage?” “Should I have my child immunized or is it a danger?”
On a community level, “Do I support recycling?” “Is spraying for mosquitos a greater health concern or should I be more worried about West Nile Virus?”
On a national level, “How can I encourage intelligent debate on the merits of valid environmental concerns versus valid business concerns?” “Should we support stem cell research for the good that it will do or withdraw our support because of the potential for abuse?”
Christians, as good stewards of creation need to be educated about science and willing to enter into the conversation on these topics. It is not just a good idea, it is what God commanded us to do in the first chapter of Genesis.
4. Finally, however, I worry that the focus on Intelligent Design has the potential for taking our focus away from the most important issues - what it means that God called creation “good”; what it means to be made in the image of God and how that gives life meaning. Next week I will be preaching on sin; but it is difficult to see ourselves as sinners if we cannot see God’s plan for us. It is difficult for us to see how our sin affects all of creation if we can’t see God’s plan for creation. It is difficult for us to read that passage in Ephesians with full understanding without first reading Genesis. But the passage in Ephesians gives us help in knowing what it means to be made in the image of God.
A. First let’s address the question of “How can creation be ‘good’ when things like Hurricane Katrina are so awful?” This is where the belief in the goodness of creation and the trustworthiness of God’s natural laws have to come together.
As John Polkinhorne points out:
The role of happenstance can then be understood as the Creator’s gift, allowing creation to explore its potentiality and to make itself-just as the regularity of the laws of nature can be understood as signs of God’s faithful reliability. (17)
Indeed, science’s gift offers theology modest help with the greatest theological problem of all-the problem of pain and suffering. There is an unavoidable cost involved in a world allowed to make itself. (18)
In other words, Hurricane Katrina is the result of the same fundamentally reliable laws that enable us to trust that the sun will come up every morning and go down every evening. We can maintain our belief that God is still interacting with the physical world, and thus we continue to pray for rain. But we also need to realize that asking God to overturn the basic laws on a massive scale would be asking God to overturn the laws we need to live.
B. Not only has God designed the laws of the universe, but Ephesians tells us that God has designed us to be God’s children. God has designed us to be able to choose to accept the adoption that God wishes to give us. God has designed us for spiritual blessing, for living in the heavenly realm as well as the earthly realm. In other words to live eternally. We can give God pleasure by returning God’s love and accepting our adoption as children. God’s great pleasure is to forgive us and lavish us with mercy. God’s plan for salvation includes not just human beings, but all things in heaven and on earth. All of the misery in creation will one day be overcome by Christ’s death and resurrection. If we want to fully understand what it means to be made in the image of God we have to look at Christ. If we want to be remade in the image of God, then we must live in Christ and allow Christ to live in us.
In the end, intelligent design is not about what gets taught in schools. God’s design for creation is the plan of salvation. Thus, a belief in Intelligent design means a belief in the foolishness of the cross. God has a plan even if we mess up. God can restore the world even if we try to destroy it. God can bring us life even if all we can see is death. God’s design can incorporate all the twists and turns of our lives and bring us all into the glory of God’s kingdom.
So do you believe in Intelligent design? Do you believe that God created the world? Is that belief firm enough to stand in the light of whatever truth science provides? Read Genesis again this week and reflect on it as a statement of our relationship with God.
Do you believe that you are a part of God’s intelligent design? Do you accept that you are made in God’s image? You may not want to think of yourself as ‘the image of God’ because that will mean that has implications for your actions. If you think you are a long way from the image of God then the only solution is to ask Christ into your life. You do that by praying this prayer: Dear God, I am sorry for the times that I have walked away from you. I am sorry for all of the things I have done that I know are wrong. I want to change my life and I accept the power that you give me to become a new person in Christ. I accept the forgiveness that you offer and I now know that you will always be with me. Thank you God for allowing me to trust you. Amen.
I hope this lj cut thing works!
How Intelligent is Intelligent Design?
Scriptures: Genesis 1; Ephesians 1:3-12
Intelligent design has been in the news recently. The debate that goes back to the Scopes trial has been raging once again in the courts. And I admit to being somewhat offended by what I read in the news of the latest decision in Pennsylvania over the Dover School Board’s desire to add a statement encouraging them to take a look at Intelligent design and stating that evolution was “just a theory.” The judge made what I thought to be inflammatory statements about the “breathtaking inanity” of the Dover policy and, as the DMN states,” accused several board members of lying to conceal their true motive, which he said was to promote religion.” DMN December 21, 2005 p. 11A.
I have to say after looking at the case in full and the decision in full, after looking at the writings of the Intelligent design people, I kind of have to agree with him. Regardless of whether or not ID theorists have a scientific point, that does not seem to be why it was proposed at a part of the curriculum. I think it is pretty clear that only people with a certain religious viewpoint would propose these changes. Having been a scientist before I was a theologian and preacher, I once again feel that I should address this issue.
I have been thinking about this issue for a lot of years now and I have come to some conclusions. The first is that there is nothing in the book of Genesis that contradicts the theory of evolution. The first chapter, the one we read today tells us that God spoke the world into being with careful thought, with order and with intent. The second chapter tells us that we are made out of the same stuff as the earth (which no one would dispute) but also tells us that we are somehow different. Neither gives us a biological mechanism for understanding the "hows" of creation, both give us a theological framework for understanding the relationship between ourselves and other creatures and ourselves and God
First I should say that I do, of course, believe in “Intelligent Design.” I think it makes logical sense. A parable told by John Leslie and cited by John Polkinghorne in Traffic in Truth: Exchanges between Science and Theology is one way to explain to others why belief in a creator makes sense:
You are about to be executed. You are tied to the stake and the rifles of ten highly trained marksmen are leveled at your chest. The officer gives the order to fire and the shots ring out . . . You find you have survived!
What do you do? Do you just shrug your shoulders and walk away, saying “That was a close”? Of course not. So remarkable an occurrence demands an explanation. Leslie suggests there are only two rational explanations of your good fortune:
(a) Maybe many, many executions are taking place today. Even the best of marksmen sometimes miss and you happen to be in the execution where they all miss. Of course there would really have to be a vast number of executions scheduled today to make this a plausible explanation, but if there were enough going on this would be a conceivable way of accounting for your escape.
(b) Maybe there is only one execution scheduled today, namely yours. However, more was going on in that event than you had realized. The marksmen were on your side. They missed by design. (33-34)
However, though I believe in Intelligent Design, I am also convinced that it is time Christians stopped fighting evolution. Not only does it make us look provincial, sneaky and sometimes downright stupid, but in fact we have better things to do with our time. In particular we need to start helping our children (and the rest of the world) reflect on the theological implications of evolution and the scientific advances that we are making. We need to help our communities and our nation come to terms with what it means to be stewards of creation. We need to assure those who are searching for meaning in life that they are made in the image of God.
1.
A. The theological implications of evolution.
There is a scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The knights ride up to a spot in the mountains and there on the top of one of the ridges is a man dressed in long robes, causing explosions all over the place. He simply creates explosions for the sheer joy of it. Tim the Enchanter has very little reason for his actions. He creates explosions because he can. At the risk of seeming somewhat irreverent, I think that some people see God in that fashion. But science, including evolution, maybe especially evolution, tells of a world that has incredible complexity, incredible planning. If your child or your atheist friend asks you how God is involved in evolution, consider reflecting with them: “Isn’t it amazing that God set up the world in a way that could adapt to changing circumstances, that could constantly come up with new and varied plants and animals. Isn’t it amazing that God set up the world in a way that could give us all this variety with just a relatively few differences in DNA.” It seems to me that evolution, far from denying the existence of God enables us to see the elegant and sophisticated plan of the Creator. Not a “poof, I think I’ll make a giraffe” kind of creator, but one whose plans are very long-term and well laid out; who never stopped creating and has provided a way to be continually and intimately involved in that creation.
In addition this is a God whose natural laws can be trusted. The next time you drop a dish, or trip over a rock, after you have said the quick expletive, remember to thank God for gravity, that amazing force that is so very small and yet so very important. Give thanks that our trustworthy God created a trustworthy world. This is not a God of whimsy, capriciousness, and magic, but a God of steadfast love and everlasting covenant.
B. In addition to the grist for the theological mill provided by evolution, we need to remind our children and the rest of the world that seeking the truth is a fundamental part of our life as Christians. Truth, whether scientific, psychological, philosophical or whatever, never hurts us but always leads us closer to God. It is, after all, God’s creation that we study. If Christians truly believe that God is Creator, then we should be unafraid of the answers given by science. Fights over evolution or any other scientific theory; fights that are not based in science; fights that are based on fear, display to the world not a strong vital faith, but a weak, shaky faith.
2. Secondly, as Christians, instead of wasting our time fighting for intelligent design, we need to encourage stewardship of God’s world. How can we expect anyone to take seriously our belief that God created the world if we fail to treat the gift of this world with the respect that it deserves? Believing in God as creator means that we have to care for creation. That is what it says in both Genesis 1 and 2 (and, incidentally, what the Social Principles of the United Methodist Church reminds us). We were created to care for creation. If you take Genesis seriously, then you have to take our charge seriously. That means that many little everyday decisions have to be made differently. On a personal level we have decisions like, “Do I buy the more luxurious car or the one that gets better mileage?” “Should I have my child immunized or is it a danger?”
On a community level, “Do I support recycling?” “Is spraying for mosquitos a greater health concern or should I be more worried about West Nile Virus?”
On a national level, “How can I encourage intelligent debate on the merits of valid environmental concerns versus valid business concerns?” “Should we support stem cell research for the good that it will do or withdraw our support because of the potential for abuse?”
Christians, as good stewards of creation need to be educated about science and willing to enter into the conversation on these topics. It is not just a good idea, it is what God commanded us to do in the first chapter of Genesis.
4. Finally, however, I worry that the focus on Intelligent Design has the potential for taking our focus away from the most important issues - what it means that God called creation “good”; what it means to be made in the image of God and how that gives life meaning. Next week I will be preaching on sin; but it is difficult to see ourselves as sinners if we cannot see God’s plan for us. It is difficult for us to see how our sin affects all of creation if we can’t see God’s plan for creation. It is difficult for us to read that passage in Ephesians with full understanding without first reading Genesis. But the passage in Ephesians gives us help in knowing what it means to be made in the image of God.
A. First let’s address the question of “How can creation be ‘good’ when things like Hurricane Katrina are so awful?” This is where the belief in the goodness of creation and the trustworthiness of God’s natural laws have to come together.
As John Polkinhorne points out:
The role of happenstance can then be understood as the Creator’s gift, allowing creation to explore its potentiality and to make itself-just as the regularity of the laws of nature can be understood as signs of God’s faithful reliability. (17)
Indeed, science’s gift offers theology modest help with the greatest theological problem of all-the problem of pain and suffering. There is an unavoidable cost involved in a world allowed to make itself. (18)
In other words, Hurricane Katrina is the result of the same fundamentally reliable laws that enable us to trust that the sun will come up every morning and go down every evening. We can maintain our belief that God is still interacting with the physical world, and thus we continue to pray for rain. But we also need to realize that asking God to overturn the basic laws on a massive scale would be asking God to overturn the laws we need to live.
B. Not only has God designed the laws of the universe, but Ephesians tells us that God has designed us to be God’s children. God has designed us to be able to choose to accept the adoption that God wishes to give us. God has designed us for spiritual blessing, for living in the heavenly realm as well as the earthly realm. In other words to live eternally. We can give God pleasure by returning God’s love and accepting our adoption as children. God’s great pleasure is to forgive us and lavish us with mercy. God’s plan for salvation includes not just human beings, but all things in heaven and on earth. All of the misery in creation will one day be overcome by Christ’s death and resurrection. If we want to fully understand what it means to be made in the image of God we have to look at Christ. If we want to be remade in the image of God, then we must live in Christ and allow Christ to live in us.
In the end, intelligent design is not about what gets taught in schools. God’s design for creation is the plan of salvation. Thus, a belief in Intelligent design means a belief in the foolishness of the cross. God has a plan even if we mess up. God can restore the world even if we try to destroy it. God can bring us life even if all we can see is death. God’s design can incorporate all the twists and turns of our lives and bring us all into the glory of God’s kingdom.
So do you believe in Intelligent design? Do you believe that God created the world? Is that belief firm enough to stand in the light of whatever truth science provides? Read Genesis again this week and reflect on it as a statement of our relationship with God.
Do you believe that you are a part of God’s intelligent design? Do you accept that you are made in God’s image? You may not want to think of yourself as ‘the image of God’ because that will mean that has implications for your actions. If you think you are a long way from the image of God then the only solution is to ask Christ into your life. You do that by praying this prayer: Dear God, I am sorry for the times that I have walked away from you. I am sorry for all of the things I have done that I know are wrong. I want to change my life and I accept the power that you give me to become a new person in Christ. I accept the forgiveness that you offer and I now know that you will always be with me. Thank you God for allowing me to trust you. Amen.
I hope this lj cut thing works!