I am out of Sydney this weekend somewhere deep in the bush south of Melbourne. Before I left I set up this post which is timed to release on Sunday morning. If I were at church this is the line up of worship and the message that I would expect to hear – or some variant of.

Worship:

Jesus Paid It All:

Better Is One Day:

Blessed Be Your Name:

O Praise Him:

Sing To the King:

The Sermon (yes Lego):

In Monday’s Sydney MX Newspaper (not online) there was an article about scientists discovering evidence to support the claim of the 10 biblical plagues as described in Exodus.

“The plagues are believed to have occurred at an ancient Nile Delta city of Pi-Rameses, the capital of Egypt during the reign of Pharaoh Rameses II and abandoned around 3000 years ago. Scientists claim the plagues could offer an explanation.

Climatologists say a dramatic climate shift created a dry period that triggered the first of the plagues, described as the Nile turning into blood.

This, the scientists say, was the toxic algae Burgundy Blood, which stains water red.

The algae set in motion the events that led to the second, third and fourth plagues – frogs, lice and flies.

The frogs would have been forced from the water, allowing mosquitoes, flies and other insects to flourish, and lead to the fifth and six plagues – diseased livestock and boils, infected by the insects.

The eruption of the volcano Thera more than 640km away is thought to be responsible for triggering the seventh, eighth and ninth plagues – hail, locusts and darkness, all caused by the effects of volcanic ash being blown into the atmosphere.

The cause of the final plague, the death of the first-borns of Egypt, is believed to be a fungus that may have poisoned the grain supplies, of which male first born would have had first pickings.”

There is a documentary on this on the National Geographic Channel on Sunday Night.

It is interesting that more than 3,000 years after the events of the exodus people are still studying what happened and developing theories for how things could have happened. If I had been in Egypt at that time and all this stuff happened as Moses had said it would I would be certainly believe that God is very real!

In the same way that science can now explain how things happened I find it still so very amazing that God can and does effect things in the world in such a way that science can show how things happen but not why they do! Only God truly knows the secrets of the universe but has given us the rules of science to help us discover them.

It is such a shame to see the church rebuke science as it does (and has done for the past few hundred years). If only the church would embrace scientific discoveries and work out how it fits into what the bible tells us – that would be a fantastic way for the church to be real and relevant to today’s society.

A few weeks ago I got into an interesting discussion with a friend about the timing of when Jesus died and what it actually meant to spend three days and three nights in the tomb. I am very strongly of the belief that Jesus died on Wednesday afternoon, while my friend was absolutely certain it was Friday.

Just doing a bit of background reading on it in the lead up to Easter this weekend I came across two good articles on the subject (both backing a Wednesday death – you can find plenty of stuff supporting a Friday death too).

The Day Jesus Died

The Friday view is based on the wording of Mark 15:42, which says that Christ’s crucifixion occurred on the day of preparation, “the day before the Sabbath”. Since the Hebrew Sabbath is on Saturday, the Church traditionally held that Jesus was crucified on Friday. However, Jesus prophesied that he would be dead for three days and three nights before his resurrection: “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” (Matthew 12:40). There are obviously not three days and three nights between Friday evening and Sunday morning.

The problem appears easily resolved by a clarification of what Mark meant by “sabbath”. Along with the weekly Sabbath day, the Jews had other “sabbaths” throughout the year, marking high holy days. In Matthew 28:1, the Greek should be translated, “at the end of the sabbaths” – a plural word – noting that there had been more than one sabbath the previous week. The first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread was also considered a “sabbath” (Lev. 23:6,7). This Feast is celebrated on Nisan 15, the day after the Passover (Lev. 23:5-6). Jesus was crucified on the Passover and Mark 15:42-43 notes that Joseph of Arimathea desired to take Christ’s body down from the cross before the high sabbath began.

Good Friday is a Myth; Jesus Died on a Wednesday!

One of the most common questions asked by new Christians is, “How could Jesus have been in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights if He died on a Friday afternoon and rose before sunrise on a Sunday?” Most Christians duck the question, since at most they can only come up with one day and two nights (Friday nighttime, Saturday daytime, and Saturday nighttime in our measure of days). If they add in the Friday daytime they get two periods of daytime, even though Jesus would have died in the late afternoon on a Friday. This late afternoon death is consistent with the Passover lamb being killed between the two evenings of Jewish teaching. The lamb was killed between 3 and 6 PM on the afternoon of the 14th of Abib/Nisan and prepared, because the 15th was the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which was an annual Sabbath observance (the first and last days of Unleavened Bread were annual Sabbaths in addition to the normal weekly Sabbaths). This search of the scriptures is important, not because it affects salvation, but because it answers the questions posed on whether Jesus kept His Word, and whether the Bible is true in this matter. A legitimate concern and question for all Christians!

Finally to really be provocative how about throwing Easter out the window and bring back the Passover celebration and in particular highlight how Jesus is revealed through the passover service.

Christian symbolism in the Passover occurs early in the Seder (the Passover dinner). Three matzahs are put together (representing the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). The middle matzah is broken, wrapped in a white cloth, and hidden, representing the death and burial of Jesus. The matzah itself is designed to represent Jesus, since it is striped and pierced, which was prophesized by Isaiah,  David, and Zechariah. Following the Seder meal, the “buried” matzah is “resurrected,” which was foretold in the prophecies of David.

Earlier tonight I was having a conversation with a friend about some stuff that had happened more than a year ago.

The conversation brought up a particular event which at the time was a big thing but in hindsight really was more petty than serious and all that needed to prevent/solve that event was for a few people to step back and listen to what everyone else was saying.

And that is how the conversation ended.

Fast forward a few hours and I am now trying to sleep but this stuff in the past is now turning over in my head. And the head is a funny place sometimes. It is funny because in hindsight the events that happened in the past you completely regret happening the way that they did, but at the same time there are parts of them that you really enjoyed.

And this has got me thinking, thinking enough to get my laptop out typing, and typing enough to get me blogging. But I digress what I am pondering is why do we [sometimes] desire those things that are so wrong in life? Why do we desire to break rules and push boundaries? Why do we [sometimes] find sweetness in revenge?

You know we are meant to seek after the healthy things in life and find fruit and goodness in the light. But, sometimes the darkness can also bring (albeit temporary) satisfaction and enjoyment, sometimes even more so than doing the right thing.

And in all of this all I can keep playing over in my mind is The Prayer of St Patrick (The Breastplate – Lorica – of Saint Patrick, 5th Century):

I arise today
Through a mighty strength,
the invocation of the Trinity,
Through the belief in the Threeness,
Through confession of the Oneness
Of the Creator of Creation.

I arise today
Through the strength of Christ’s birth with his baptism,
Through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial,
Through the strength of his resurrection with his ascension,
Through the strength of his descent for the judgment of Doom.

I arise today
Through the strength of the love of Cherubim,
In obedience of angels,
In the service of archangels,
In hope of resurrection to meet with reward,
In prayers of patriarchs,
In predictions of prophets,
In preaching of apostles,
In faith of confessors,
In innocence of holy virgins,
In deeds of righteous men.

I arise today
Through the strength of heaven:
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.

I arise today
Through God’s strength to pilot me,
God’s might to uphold me,
God’s wisdom to guide me,
God’s eye to look before me,
God’s ear to hear me,
God’s word to speak for me,
God’s hand to guard me,
God’s way to lie before me,
God’s shield to protect me,
God’s host to save me
From snares of devils,
From temptations of vices,
From everyone who shall wish me ill,
Afar and anear,
Alone and in multitude.

I summon today
all these powers between me and those evils,
Against every cruel merciless power that may oppose my body and soul,
Against incantations of false prophets,
Against black laws of pagandom,
Against false laws of heretics,
Against craft of idolatry,
Against spells of witches and smiths and wizards,
Against every knowledge that corrupts man’s body and soul.

Christ to shield me today
Against poison,
against burning,
Against drowning,
against wounding,
So that there may come to me abundance of reward.

Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down,
Christ when I sit down,
Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today
Through a mighty strength,
the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the Threeness,
Through confession of the Oneness,
Of the Creator of Creation.

Amen!

A few days ago I blogged on the struggle I was having finding a church that I fitted into (see Rebuilding Conservatism through Modern Churchanity).

Over the last few days I have continued to look at churches and there are two things that are really bugging me about modern churches: prosperity theology and social justice.

Now social justice is something I really believe in and have a real passion for, not just feeding and housing the homeless but also having an impact in the wider community amongst work mates, schools, social clubs etc. For me social justice is about Christians being out in the world as lighthouses amongst the darkness. John 13:35 (NIV) says “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

However, I am finding many churches who are so insular and cater for their own membership and do little for the wider community – or when they do it is through the indoctrination of specific religious beliefs upon people – and this is always bound to end up in massive controversy. Something that I always wonder is why can’t we just go out into the world and serve people first, show them the love of Christ rather than ram church down their throats and then “rescue them”?

Jesus didn’t go out into the world and say in order to be healed you have to first believe this and that and something else and attend church every Sunday, and the special program for people like you on every Tuesday night. No, instead he spoke to people and they were healed in fact sometimes he didn’t even speak to them he just told them to get up and walk. Sure after this they most likely believed but it seems the opposite of what a lot of churches are preaching whereby in order to be healed you must first believe. Surely God can heal those who don’t believe and through that healing they will believe?

Anyway I am already sidetracked; my main gripe/dilemma/issue rests with prosperity theology.

So what is prosperity theology? A really interesting article in Christianity Today puts it this way:

The teaching that believers have a right to the blessings of health and wealth and that they can obtain these blessings through positive confessions of faith and the “sowing of seeds” through the faithful payments of tithes and offerings.

There are a number of verses that are often used to back up this belief, in particular Malachi 3:10-12 (NIV):

Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not cast their fruit,” says the Lord Almighty. “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the Lord Almighty.

Now I certainly have no issue with giving to the church, however, the modern church is so focussed on a money tithe. It was not like that in the past, the reason why the verse says storehouse and not bank is because in the past the tithe was giving of what you actually produced – not just material wealth but also giving of time, and goods, etc.

Lots of modern churches have this focus on giving 10% of your financial income to the church. I whole heartedly disagree with this (and could spend a whole another blog post on this). I believe you should give to God and the church what God has placed on your heart to give. I may not agree with most of what the church I have been attending over the last few weeks but having said that when I got paid I gave what God placed on my heart to give. In addition to this I give to God through serving in other areas both within church and in the wider community (although not much at the moment until I find a new church and get settled).

Opps, I am off on a sidetrack again. Coming back to the idea of Prosperity Theology I fundamentally for a few key reasons:

First the lives of the apostles in the book of Acts certainly do not seem to agree with prosperity theology, in the healing of the crippled beggar in Acts 3:6 (NIV) Then Peter said, “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” That verse has always spoken to me we don’t need material possessions to follow God, to heal people, or to do God’s work all we need is ourselves.

Jesus actually spoke in many places about the greed associated with building up massive amounts of wealth. And I could go on for many paragraphs about the love of money being the root of all evil and/or how hard it is for a rich man to enter heaven. And I am certainly not saying that you can’t be rich or God can’t bless you, if your heart is in the right place then it is awesome that you have such a blessed life. But there is something that just seems so wrong about preaching that if you give more and more and more to God that you will get more and more and more back. If you don’t get more back does that mean you’re doing something wrong, or your faith is not strong enough?

Second, the book of Job is all about God letting terrible things happening to someone but their faith remaining strong the entire way through. Job didn’t give up just because he gave his whole to God and God didn’t bless him with abundant wealth instead he knew that the reward in heaven was so much more than what we can ever have on earth. (And I know this is a massive over simplification of the entire book).

In a more modern context I find Prosperity Theology not holding true in the whole situation with the poor starving kids in Africa. I say “poor starving kids” a little cynically not because that isn’t the situation but rather the constant pressure in advertising to give money and the problem with go away, that is not the case, sure money is needed to fund things, but more important is people on the ground giving their time and love.

But again coming back onto topic a lot of Christians in areas of the third world have a stronger faith than many Christians do in the restful west. If prosperity theology was so true then why don’t these people just have faith in God and through some miracle everything works out right for them? Africa remains one of those situations where I fail to understand why they get such a rough ride when in the west we get it so good yet we are quite often far worse sinners. And I know there are not degrees of sin, all sin is bad, but yeah it is something I have never quite understood form a spiritual point of view.

So coming back to the hunt for a church to call home, maybe I am being really picky, maybe I am being too religious, maybe I am too focused on doctrine then on God. But the real issue for me is I don’t want religion where God is effectively dead and ritual replaces any chance for the Holy Spirit to move. However, I really seek a place which is alive in passion and worship for God. I love loud modern church music and preaching that is relevant to today.

At the same time this often goes way to far where the music becomes more of a show than worship to God and the preaching crosses over from talking about God and the stories in the bible to instead using modern motivational speaking tricks to keep the audience interested and incorporates so much modern secular business style teaching that somewhere along the way it just becomes Church Inc. I really want something in between, something that is bible based, not steeped in tradition but has respect for it, and has a real passion for both social justice and community.

So far I have not found that in between anywhere near my new house. The question I am really pondering is do I continue to attend a church that I disagree with a core preaching and style of for the purpose of attending church until I either find a church near me that I agree with, or I find an effective way to get to the outer suburbs to attend churches that I do agree with and have a passion to attend? Do I continue to attend a church that I disagree with because the people and community is awesome and being in a new city friends are what I need most?

Is a suitable modern substitute for church: podcasts, worship music, bible reading and commentary, and small group discussions at university? How long can one grow with God and not lose faith with the absence of church, at the same time what if that church is destroying your faith? Can a church destroy faith?  These are all (and there are many more) questions that I am really struggling with at the moment.

—

As a side note a few years ago The Chaser did quite a funny satire piece on one particular modern church. Now before I get ravaged by people who attend this church note a few things: a) It is comedy, b) You should be able to laugh at yourself, c) If this is how the world really sees you then maybe it is time to consider ways to change that perspective, d) You can only be offended by something if you chose to be offended by it, e) I certainly do not agree with most of it.

All week the New Zealand news media has been digging hard into Destiny Church and Brian Tamaki over the walkout of the head pastor of the church’s Brisbane congregation. Some of the media reports have been a little over the top in their criticisms and approaches such as TV3’s John Campbell who has gone from being a very good investigative journalist to be a little bit creepy in his abilities to stalk people involved in the Church. Another major criticism of the church has been the fact that it uses and EFTPOS machine for receiving offerings. In the last 10 years I would have not been in a single church that did not have an EFTPOS machine for receiving offerings.

Having said this I commend the actions of Andrew Stock who stood up for what he believed in a walked away from the church. There are a lot of things that Destiny practice and believe that I fundamentally disagree with. However, until this morning, I have been muted in heavy criticism of the church as other blogs have been doing this well. I also hold a strong belief in John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” And that the differences in beliefs between church denominations come down to additions of man and not God and that fundamentally the majority of churches that have John 3:16 as their base are on the right track.

However as pointed out by Scrubone at Half Done and before that Dave at Big News, Brian Tamaki has now gone beyond the point of just being another brand of Christianity with his personal website declaring: “Bishop Brian Tamaki is the physical manifestation of God.”

Manifestation is one of those “church words” that you hear tossed about from time to time, “manifestations of the spirit” for instance. But I am certain that I have never heard someone be described as the “manifestation of God”.  To figure out exactly what Tamaki means by this I looked up the dictionary definition:

manifestation
–noun

1. an act of manifesting.
2. the state of being manifested.
3. outward or perceptible indication; materialization: At first there was no manifestation of the disease.
4. a public demonstration, as for political effect.
5. Spiritualism. a materialization.

I think point 3 sums up what Tamaki is saying. Tamaki is saying that he is the materialization of God. That makes me sick to the depths of my stomach for a “church” leader to be saying that. There is only one person ever who was the manifestation of God and that was Jesus Christ.

Unless Tamaki is trying to say that he is the second coming of the Messiah then he is very badly off track in his beliefs. Anyone who truly believes in the words of God written in the scriptures needs to get out of that church because it is no longer a church it is as the media has been reporting now  a cult of personality.

Furthermore in doing some research into this post I came across this:

The Manifestation of God is a concept in the Bahá’í Faith that refers to what are commonly called prophets. The Manifestations of God are a series of personages who reflect the attributes of the divine into the human world for the progress and advancement of human morals and civilization. The Manifestations of God are the only channel for humanity to know about God, and they act as perfect mirrors reflecting the attributes of God into the physical world.

Now I know that Tamaki is not practicing Bahá’í, however, it just shows the terribly poor choice of words that have been used.

I just had an awesome Christian friend ask me what the meaning of this life was – as Christians.

This is how I replied (after a few minutes of pausing a thinking about it). And it is a little cliche but so what!

I think our Christian purpose in life is to be light houses, and city on the hills to the world, it is to live our lives as Christians in the world, but not of the world, so we are not isolated into little religious communities but we are interacting with other people on a day to day people, and when we interact those people we share bits of what we believe with them, we don’t force it down their throats, but through us doing good in a very dark and evil world we show what it really means to do god’s work.

Maybe tomorrow night I will expand on it a little more and include the scriptures that I have paraphrased as well.

Last night I finished reading one of the best books I have read in a long time. It is called “Save Me From Myself” and is written by Brian Head Welch formerly of the band Korn. The book is an autobiography of his life from childhood, through his drug fuelled years with Korn and his coming to Christ and becoming a Christian. I won’t give too much away about the story as it is a book that any young person should read.

The one bit that really got me from a Christian perspective was towards the end of the book where Welch describes some songs he wrote after coming to Christ:

After I’d been writing for a bit, God gave me another song called “It’s Time To See Religion Die.” To me, this song has a few different meanings. For one, it’s a song that encourages people to get out of this whole “Sunday Christian” mentality and into the world so God can use them to change the world, to help people understand that God does not live in buildings made by men (Acts 7:48). We are God’s building, because he dwells in us (1 Corinthians 3:16).

Upon reading this I grabbed my bible to check the verses mentioned in context. The full context of Acts 7:48 is from verse 48 through to verse 50, from the NIV:

However, the Most High does not live in houses made by men. As the prophet says: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me? says the Lord. Or where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things?”

The full context of 1 Corinthians 3:16 extends into verse 17 as well:

Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple.

This commentary was something that I had always known but had forgotten about. It seems too often that we get caught up in thinking that God is at Church. When God is actually right with us, right now. And church is something made by man to come together as a body of believers to worship God. Church is not God and does not create God, but we can meet God at church, in exactly the same way we can on our owns anywhere else at any other time.

Welch then continues:

That’s not the only meaning to this song though. Also, this song is for all the people that have been hurt by religion. All of the man-made religion crap in this world has to die. Whenever it’s Christian man-made religion crap or some other man-made religion crap, it all has to die. It must grieve God’s heart when he sees Christians fighting about whose doctrine is right; he doesn’t see denominations, he sees one big glorious bride. When Christians argue about doctrinal issues, all he sees is carnal people acting like children. All that prideful, controlling religious crap is what drives young people away from churches, and it has to go. Much of the world’s population is under the age of eighteen, and we have to bring the love of Christ to them without all this controlling crap going on. Because, where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

I found this point quite interesting as well. I think it is important to be able to freely and frankly discuss your differences of points of view on doctrine but many times church groups take it way too far (catholic vs protestant for instance). And it does put people off. If we put as much effort into working with young people as we did discussing the finer points of some minor piece of doctrine how many more people would we save?

You can buy the book on Mighty Ape

When I was in Sydney a few months back I picked up a book at the airport to read on my flight home entitled “The Genesis Enigma – Why The Bible Is Scientifically Accurate”. I was surprised to find what at first I considered to be a creationist book in the popular science section of an airport bookshop. Furthermore the book is written by Dr Andrew Parker an Honorary Research Fellow of Green Templeton College at Oxford University, Research Leader at the Natural History Museum and a Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University none of which are the typical credentials of a creationist.

The book takes a very different approach from most books on God, science and the origins of the universe. The typical approach is to use the bible as a literal roadmap of creation and then tweak the science to make it fit the bible stories. However, Parker takes the opposite approach in The Genesis Enigma by outlining the science of the origins of the universe and life and then tests if the bible can line up with this. Surprisingly with a little less literal interpretation of the bible it does.

The main thesis of the book is:

• The bible is a historically accurate record of people and events.
• The six days of creation are not a literal six days but instead refer to the order in which science now reveals the universal comes into being. Something that no one writing a religious book a few thousand years ago would have been able to know, or understand unless the knowledge came through divine intervention.
• The evolution is an undisputable scientific fact. However atheism is not a fact or theory it is as much a religion as any other faith based religious belief.
• There is more to life and God than just science. And science cannot explain everything in the world. Science is not the be all and end all of explaining the meaning and purpose of life.

Overall the main ideas in the book make a lot of sense and while I do not necessarily agree with all of them it has provoked my intellectual thought around the subject. The end of the book also finishes with a discussion of intelligent design and atheism which is very interesting independent of the rest of the book. In particular:

“One’s reaction to the science versus religion debate is a very personal choice. Do you believe that science will take such huge steps, changing the way in which it works today, as to be able to answer those big questions in the universe? Or do you choose God? To borrow from C. S. Lewis, do you believe that the whole universe is a mere mechanical dance of atoms, or that there is a great mysterious Force rolling on through the centuries and carrying you on its crest? Creationism and atheism are neither scientific theories nor demonstrably true. If we do not allow them to cloud our judgement then God can appear as a rational answer as to why we exist on earth.”

Furthermore Parker makes a very strong case for divine intervention in the authorship of the bible by stating:

“That Aaronid priest who wrote the Bible’s first page, or Moses who may have given the ancient Israelites their creation account originally, lacked any interest in natural history. Although demonstrating attention to detail in other subjects – geography, politics, economics, law – this Aaronid priest and the character Moses, provide us with no signs of biological inclination. The scientific method, necessary to decipher the true account of how the universe formed and life evolved, with its repeatable experiments, was yet to manifest itself. The ancient Israelites were not conducting scientific experiments in their sheds – if they were, they would have written about it, as they did about everything else they did. The writer of the Bible’s first page simply roamed the desert or traversed the dusty streets of ancient Jerusalem during the day, and marvelled at the stars at night. He was without so much as a magnifying lens.

Indeed, the history books tell us that science and natural history began some centuries later with the ancient Greeks, who were influenced by very different natural surroundings. So, in terms of providing an explanation for how the universe and life came to be, the Aaronid priest given this task, or the character Moses, would not have had a clue. All the same, something was written. And it made its way to pride of place in the Bible.

As such, unprovided with evidence of any kind, the creation account on the Bible’s opening page might be assumed a fantasy. But the Genesis Enigma has told us that those enigmatic phases that ignite the Bible actually mean something – they are scientifically accurate. That would be an outrageous assertion, were it not true. The conclusion that this page of the Bible could, perhaps more than any other, represent God’s hand in the Bible. The true account of how we came to exist may have been handed to humans by God.

In any case, our strong preconception that science has, with each discovery chipped away at the notion of God is proved wrong in this book. Now we can live with the real possibility that God exists while fully accepting the science, rather than straining to find contradictions. Faith suddenly appears that much stronger.”

Now as I stated earlier I do not necessary accept or agree with everything Parker has outlined in his book.  The remaining question for me is that if God is able to put in places the rules that govern the universe that make evolution work on both a small scale (as now commonly accepted by most creationists) and a large scale (as Parker and most of the secular scientific world believes) then why does God just stop there? If God can do all this stuff that makes the world tick over then why can he not decide to play with the rules and create a literal six day creation as well? It is not designed to make us confused about how old the world is, but rather to demonstrate that God ultimately has the power to influence and change the universe. It is about demonstrating that God is in control and not science.

After reading the book and pondering some of the ideas raised in it I went back and read some of the creationism based “science” that I had blindly followed from a few years ago. What I have discovered is that by arguing that evolution is nothing more than a myth and controlled “brainwashing” people they are essentially doing the same thing with “creationism”. Statements such as “long years of educational brainwashing in the mythology of evolutionary theory “ plant ideas in the minds of people that they have been brainwashed, ironically by planting these ideas creationists are doing nothing more than the same thing! Furthermore, the contradictions in their arguments and statements just scream this out.

For instance Chuck Missler who is well known for his Bible commentary and in particular his study on Daniel’s 70 weeks where he shows they are not a literal 70 weeks but weeks of years states here: http://www.khouse.org/articles/2004/528/ that the earth was created in six literal days because the bible says so. However, the bible does not directly say Daniel had 70 weeks of years, no it just says 70 weeks. So how do you determine when there is a literal meaning and where there is not? Furthermore Missler shoots himself in the foot in another article on the site where he argues there is a gap between God creating the heavens and the earth and the actual six day creation: http://www.khouse.org/articles/2008/821/ this makes no sense because now in one place he is arguing in an absolute six day creation, and another he argues there is a gap. What one is it?

Or for instance the finding of a city under the Black Sea as evidence for a worldwide flood http://www.khouse.org/articles/2000/299/ when anyone with any knowledge of geology would brush this off as evidence of the plates of the earth shifting and changing over the years. This is not to say that the ideas of intelligent design are completely dead in the water Kent Hovind poses some good questions that have still not be fully answered by science, in particular:

• Without a creator how did time, space, and matter came into existence by themselves?
• How and why did matter create life by itself?
• How and why did early life-forms learn to reproduce themselves?
• How and why did major changes occur between diverse life forms (i.e., fish changed to amphibians, amphibians changed to reptiles, and reptiles changed to birds or mammals).

The biggest problem with creationism is the way in which they throw out solid science and replace it with arguments that the Bible says this happened so it must be true. This would be the same as arguing the world is made of the Greek Classical Elements (Earth, Water, Air, Fire, and Aether) because this is what was written on Greek tablets a few thousand years ago. The reality is the stories written in the Bible were written firstly for the understanding of the people who lived at the time the stories were written. Yes the Bible and the stories in it still have a huge amount of relevance today, however, we cannot take every single word as literal because the very first thing we would be worshipping is a lamb and not a person who lived 2000 years ago.

A friend of mine blogged this comment last night:

When I first got out of the house, the weather seemed to pack in a lil bit and I prayed and asked God to give me just one hour of non-raining. Just 1 hour… and it didn’t rain. Was somewhat cool and chilly sometimes but not a drop of rain. Thank you Lord!

This got me thinking. Should we really be asking for G-d to make it stop raining?

Sure there are times when we are in severe drought and we need rain, or we have bad flooding and we need the rain to stop. But to pray for it not to rain so you can just fulfill your own private personal desire seems a little bit selfish.

Sure G-d is meant to be our best friend, and we are meant to pray to him day and night. However isn’t this meant to be about honouring G-d rather than him giving us our own wants?

This made me think of the clip from Bruce Almighty where Bruce decides to answer all the prayers to God with yes. It turns out that it wasn’t the best idea out. You can see the first part of the clip here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFlVr3ysCy0

We are meant to have faith as small as mustard seeds. But does this mean that we should be asking for things as small as mustard seeds to happen in our life? I thought we were given a little bit more independence than that.