Can you imagine this:

You are in Washington, D.C. You walk down Pennsylvania Avenue and stoll into the white house. You walk into the oval office, sit down in President Biden’s chair……and make yourself at home.

How’s that for equality?

It is also unthinkable……absurd……impossible. Even if you could pull it off…….it would just be wrong.

The simple fact is that we live in a two (or more) tiered society. And we are OK with that. We recognize that there is a hierarchy…….that the hierarchy is essential to the function of our world. We recognize that when a large group of people ignore, defy, or even attack the hierarchy…….chaos ensues. Sometimes, out of the chaos, a new and better hierarchy arises. But, society cannot exist without a hierarchy. Society without hierarchy is anarchy. And there are organized groups in our society who want just that. Portland, Oregon……and many of our other cities are victims of this anarchy. They are emblematic of what happens to a society when the hierarchy fails.

We call this “the rule of law”. And the vast majority of us accept and follow the rules set up by the hierarchy……even when we disagree with them…….because we know that, taken as a whole, the rules of the hierarchy are essential to our well being.

Where we come into conflict is the extent of the hierarchy. Who is at the top of the pyramid?

Mom and Dad……the Mayor……the Governor……the President……….God.

We accept the reality of the hierarchy. But, what if our focus is too narrow? I propose that the true and most essential hierarchy is two tiered. The most essential hierarchy is not the multiple levels of human government.

The most essential hierarchy is the physical world and the spiritual realm. The consequence of defying, ignoring or attacking this hierarchy is the same as with our earthly hierarchy………..chaos. And it is hard to argue that the chaos in our world is not increasing. The chaos in our world is a direct result of the widespread denial of the spiritual realm…….of our creator, God……..of his two essential rules…….Love God and love your fellow man.

So……there is your choice…….our choice as a society:

Deny the spiritual realm……and enjoy chaos

Or

Accept the spiritual realm and our creator……and enjoy love.

“”You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus……explaining Christianity in 3 sentences.
Matthew 22: 37-39, ESV

“What we have here…….is a failure to communicate.”

A line from the movie “Cool Hand Luke”

Last week, I sent out about a dozen text messages, several dozen emails, and left about 4 messages in voice mail boxes. This was a pretty typical week. Your week was probably similar. Technology has made it very easy to send information to another person. But, I am beginning to wonder…….has technology improved our ability to communicate? You see, half of those messages did not garner a reply. Half of my messages were not even acknowledged. Now, it’s true that sometimes a message does not require a reply. But, I don’t know for sure that the messages that I sent were even received.

Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not having a pity party. I don’t respond to every message. I certainly feel no compunction to respond to commercials masquerading as texts, voicemail, and email. But, I am going to try to be better with non-commercial messages. A message from another person…..sent to me should at least be acknowledged.

And that brings me to the point of this post.

I believe that God is far more involved in the details of our daily lives than we suspect. God probably intervenes in our lives many times a day. Sometimes, this is direct. Sometimes, he gives someone else a little nudge to do or not do something to us or for us. I can recall several incidents where I felt a little nudge to do something that was unusual…..something that was way outside of my typical behavior. Sometimes I act on the nudge……sometimes I ignore it. In either case, I believe that these acts were prompted by God. These tiny, subtle interventions are, in effect, communications from our creator.

My point is that daily, God sends us a message, a little nudge, perhaps even a gift, or maybe he spares us from a disaster. And it is like the texts that I sent last week.

I suspect that most of the time, when God reaches out to us…… he doesn’t get a reply. Most of the time, when God reaches out to us……..we don’t even acknowledge him.

Maybe God deserves a reply…….Maybe God wants an acknowledgement………instead of “a failure to communicate”.

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

Jesus, Matthew 25:31-40, ESV

Success, Failure….and Sin

Years ago there was a weekly sports show. It began with a video clip of an athlete succeding and another athlete failing…..spectacularly. We live every day with success and failure. Typically we set a goal, work toward it, and we either achieve it…..or not. We succeed or we fail. By the time we get to work in the morning, we have succeeded or failed a dozen or so times: shower, leave the house, find a parking spot, arrive on time, etc. These are small successes. There are bigger goals…..bigger successes and failures: graduate college, find a mate, raise a family, retire, etc. Today, I want to focus on success/failure on an even larger scale.

Globally……is your life a success?

Taken as a whole, has your life achieved its goal?

I always told my sons, “the first step in solving a problem is to accurately identify the problem”. The first step in measuring the success of your life is to accurately identify your goal. If your life was a business, this would be your “mission statement”.

So, as a human being, what is your goal in life……your mission statement? I’ll give you a clue. If you can’t clearly state it in one sentence…..in the next three seconds…….you don’t have one. And if you don’t have a goal for your life, your life is going to be a failure…….even if you drive a Ferrari. This is why we have mid-life crises. This is why we lie on our death bed with regrets.

This is the great failure of secular humanism. SH has a great many short and medium term goals……many of them noble. What it lacks is a cohesive, global, achievable, long term goal……a goal that applies to every last one of us. The increasing conflict and craziness in our world grows out of us all pursuing conflicting personal goals. We abort our children……we bomb abortion clinics. We go to war.

Christianity is different. Christianity offers a unifying goal that applies to every one of us:

Draw closer to our creator……God.

How’s that for a mission statement?

Which brings me to the flip side of today’s post:

What is failure?

Failure, writ large, is like the guy on the ski jump. We set a goal and fail to reach it. Small goals lead to small failures. Medium size goals lead to medium size failures.

Global failures lead to failed lives.

If my goal is to draw closer to God, then anything that I say, do, or even think that doesn’t achieve that goal is a failure……..and it happens every day.

And failure to draw close to my creator is a very good working definition……..of sin.

For the Christian, the opposite of success……..is sin.

You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy (God). It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards will do the trick.

Indeed, the safest road to hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, advice to a young demon

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Jesus, Mathew 6:33, ESV

But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you

Isaiah, 59:2, ESV

Today’s post is both for those who do not believe in a creator……..in God……..and for defenders of the creator. Because creation……bringing the universe out of nothing……bringing life out of nothing……is the defining act of God. Creator and God are synonymous.

Today I will focus on “how did life begin?”……..but the same argument applies to “how did the universe begin?”

Once I met a committed secular humanist. She asked, “do you actually believe in creation in seven days?” I said yes…….and she laughed. The encounter has caused me to spend years exploring my beliefs on creation……my “creation story”. The question that she asked was terribly effective……..secular humanists use it frequently…….because they find my “creation story”……..they would call it a “creation myth”…..to be laughable. And as Christians………we are intimidated………we are silenced. And that is the entire point of the question.

The secular humanist begins with the requirements that any explanation for the beginning of life must occur in a closed system and cannot rely on an outside intelligence or any phenomenon that current science cannot explain. Using those ground rules, the secular humanist tells us that intelligent design is laughably impossible.

Today I want to turn the tables……to ask the hard questions of the secular humanist. My first question is: “how did life begin?” The usual answer is one of the following:

Lightning struck a puddle of “primordial ooze” (simple, non-living molecules) causing them to come to life. Those simple molecules then assembled themselves into mRNA which then reproduced and generated proteins which then assembled themselves into living cells and reproduced.

Or

Primordial ooze coalesced into blobs which then assembled a surrounding membrane to become protocells which then became alive and reproduced.

The problem is that there is not a whiff of hard evidence that any of these things ever actually happened…….or that they are even possible. Even with the intervention of a scientist in a white lab coat (read…..intelligent creator), these explanations cannot be reproduced in a laboratory setting. Generations of scientists have tried.

And that brings me to the second question for the secular humanist:

Absent any proof that any of these things has ever happened…….absent any proof that any of these things is even possible……..why do you believe them?

The secular humanist will often reply with a barrage of interlocking theories, many of which do have merit…..but many of which rely on other unprovable theories and assumptions. This is a “primordial soup” of circular logic. When push comes to shove, if you throw out all of the unproven theories and assumptions, the hard evidence for the beginning of life out of non-living material simply does not exist.

If we are being honest. The “scientific” explanation for the origin of life is no more plausible than intelligent design.

There is only one honest answer to question number two.

The secular humanist believes in the “scientific” explanation of the origin of life……..because it has to be true. Because if it isn’t true their entire belief system fails.

So…….given two unproveable creation stories……..what drives the choice between them?

We tend to believe the ideas that serve us.

Secular humanism puts man at the top of the pyramid….we are in charge and can do as we please with impunity. The secular humanist wants power and control. Most of all……he wants to be in charge.

Intelligent design puts a creator who has expectations of us at the top. We are rewarded for meeting his expectations. We are punished when we fail. God is in charge……not man. Most of all…….the Christian wants eternity in paradise.

And what is God’s expectation?

Only that we recognize him and love him.

The choice, in the end, is a choice between living under external expectations……..that serve God…….and creating our own expectations…….that serve us.

And that is the way to answer……..when someone asks you about your belief in intelligent design.

And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

Paul, Hebrews 11:6, ESV

in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self………lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.

Paul, 2 Timothy 3:1-5, ESV

Sarah giving Hagar to Abraham

Slavery was common…..accepted in both the old and the new testament. Many, if not most of the patriarchs owned slaves. Many leaders of the early Christian faith owned slaves. Paul’s letter to Philemon is a plea to Philemon to show mercy to his slave Onesimus. Some slaves were field hands, some were household servants, and some were sexual slaves. Abraham, the patriarch of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity had a slave named Hagar……she was a household servant……but she was also a sexual slave. Hagar wasn’t found, she didn’t volunteer……she was sold to Abraham’s family……by a human trafficker. She was owned……and when she was no longer useful…….she was discarded. If you had asked Abraham why he owned slaves, why he didn’t free his slaves, you would hear a long list of justifications. The most common would have been, “I can’t afford to free my slaves”. What this really means is that Abraham’s standard of living would deteriorate if he didn’t have his slaves.

Let me be clear……..slavery is evil. Slavery violates rule number 2: “love your neighbor”. Abraham was wrong…..and his justification was and is a sham.

So where am I going with this?

I am a Christian by faith and a conservative in my politics. Christian conservatives generally defend the idea of a wall……the idea of limiting immigration……the idea of keeping the millions of refugees in Mexico.

I want to examine our motivation, as Christians, for supporting “the wall”. If you want to keep the cartels and the drugs out, I am sympathetic. But; the most common reason that I hear is “we can’t afford it”. No wall means millions of poor people, many of them families, inundating our social services. They need food, shelter, medical care, and jobs. They will need this for decades and neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have a clue how we will pay for it.

The simple truth is that we can’t afford to take care of these people. Letting them in will increase the federal deficit which will inevitably lead to higher taxes and lower spending on existing entitlements……like social security, medicare, and medicaid.

An open southern border will cause a deterioration in the standard of living for Americans for decades. This is a reality.

And yet……..”Love your neighbor” demands that we be hospitable to refugees…….to soujourners.

“We can’t afford it” is the same cop out that Abraham would have used. For me to sit down at Jersey Mike’s and eat a $15 sub while saying that I can’t afford to help a hungry, homeless family from Honduras waiting at the border…….is dishonest.

To enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world……..and say that we can’t afford to help the people piling up on our southern border is disingenuous.

Yes, accepting millions of refugees into the country will lower my standard of living.

But, letting them into America and caring for them is the right thing to do.

What iced this for me is an epiphany that I had a year ago.

If Jesus was standing on the southern border today…….would he be building a wall…….or passing out bottled water?

You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.

Leviticus, 19:34, ESV

Do justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place.

Jeremiah, 22:3, ESV

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,

Matthew, 25:35, ESV

I spend some time each morning with the Bible. Needless to say, it is a big and complicated book. Sometimes it seems to be going in two directions at the same time. Recently I have come to understand the different parts of the Bible better by looking not only at what they say but why they say it. I spend some time considering what God was accomplishing.

It’s like peeling off the layers of an onion. Each layer of the Bible has a different purpose. Taken together, they are a cohesive whole with a profound message.

The first layer is the old testament. This begins with a history that begins with broad strokes and becomes more specific as it goes along. It transitions to a series of prophets who tell us what is coming…….what to expect. The old testament is foundational. It establishes basic rules. It sets the groundwork for a revolutionary change in how God runs the world.

The next deeper layer is the Gospels, and the letters of the new testament. These are supporting documents that establish the character of Jesus. They support his divinity. They tell us who Jesus is.

The final, and deepest layer is the teachings of Jesus……the “words in red”. This is the very heart of the Bible. The words of Jesus……his teaching……tell us why he is here. They tell us why we are here. And they tell us where we are going. The teaching of Jesus show us our destiny. As such the teachings of Jesus are the most important ideas in human literature.

So……..every human being needs to read these teachings. Even if you think that the Bible is nothing but a collection of outdated myths……..you need to read the words of Jesus. It only takes a few hours.

The words…..the teachings……of Jesus are the bedrock of Christianity. Your decision to accept or reject Christianity must be based on these words. Don’t get hung up on details from the old testament or some controversy in the gospels or the letters.

Judge Christianity based on what the man said……himself.

If, at the end, you accept his teaching…….say a prayer of thanks and begin preparing for your eternity……in paradise……with Jesus.

If, at the end, you reject his teaching…….if you conclude that Jesus was a madman (because that is the only other conclusion)……..I ask you to consider this.

What was it that Jesus said that offended you?

What did he tell you to do that was a bad thing?

What did he prohibit that was a good thing?

Not much. The teaching of Jesus is sound. It is a great blueprint to build your life on.

So, we come to the final question.

If the teaching of Jesus is sound……..and there is no doubt that it is………why do you reject it?

The answer to that question will be the explanation for the popularity of secular humanism. It will define for you the logic behind most of the choices that you will make today.

“you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Jesus….Mark 12:30-31, ESV

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Jesus……Mathew 11:28-30, ESV

There is an old saying: “if you tell the truth….. you don’t have to remember anything”.

This works……because the truth doesn’t change. Situations can change. Fashions can change. But, the real truths endure. If an idea that you once believed is no longer so (human slavery is OK)…….then it wasn’t the truth in the first place.

The truth has permanence. And this goes against the grain of our modern culture. Today, the ideas that we accept as the truth change. They change with the situation. They change with the people around you. They change with our appetites. We manipulate ideas……and we call them truths…. to get what we want.

An unborn child is not a human being.

If you were born a man……you can be a woman.

Walking out of a store with $800 in merchandise is not stealing.

Climate change is not real.

These are ideas that were absurdities when I was young. And yet today they are widely accepted as true…….they are even codified into law.

I can safely say that as a culture we have entered the “post truth era”. Truth has become malleable. We have become comfortable with amending the truth to satisfy our short-term needs. And the more that we accept ideas that are not true, the easier it is to accept the next untruth…….to use it as though it were true……in order to get what we want. And when that idea no longe serves us, we discard it and replace it with another idea…….a new truth. The greatest abominations of human history have come about as the result of people accepting as truth an idea that was false.

There is another way.

Instead of believing and acting on the current “truth du jour”………running our lives based on what our favorite “talking head” tells us to believe……today, we can follow a set of truths that have not changed for over 2000 years.

The teachings of Jesus are such a set of truths:

Love God

Love your neighbor

Bless those who attack you

Care for the dispossessed…….the soujourner

Most of the people around you will not be doing this. They may even find your behaviour confusing. But each day, you will touch someone. And, maybe, by some small act of kindness, you may change the trajectory of their life.

Such is the power of the truth.

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

Mark Twain

“If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Jesus…..John 8:31-32, ESV

“For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”

Jesus……John 18:37, ESV

I used to keep a fish tank. It required some work but I really enjoyed my fish.Imagine that you had a big complicated saltwater fish tank. You designed it to be a perfectly balanced ecosystem: live plants to make oxygen, snails and catfish to clean out algae, and a mix of beautiful, compatible exotic fish. And you enjoyed your fish. You cared for them, worried about them, even loved them.

But, over time, things got out of balance. Unwanted species of algae, parasites, and bacteria moved in. You woke up one morning and your aquarium was an algae choked, fetid mess. You couldn’t see your fish for the scum. In fact they were struggling to stay alive. They had even begun to eat one another.

At this point you have two options:

Flush the fish down the toilet, dump the aquarium in the backyard, and take up stamp collecting.

Stick your hand down into the fetid, septic mess and clean the aquarium.

Option 1 is certainly the easy choice.

Option 2 is no fun. It even involves some personal risk. I know a guy who got a horrible infection cleaning his aquarium……almost lost a hand.

But, he saved his fish.

This is much like the quandary that confronted God toward the end of the old testament. Flush his creation, including us, down the toilet or clean up the mess…….at a significant personal cost.

God chose to clean up the mess…….our mess.

He stuck his hand into the fish tank. This is clearly not the face of God that dominates the old testament. This is not the God that Dawkins describes in “The God Delusion”:

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

I have often marvelled that Dawkins would unleash such a stream of invective at an entity that he doesn’t even believe exists…….a discussion, perhaps, for another day.

Jesus, in the New Testament. is a completely different face of God……but, make no mistake, he is the same God.

So, why the big change…….what was God’s motivation?

Justice

Persistence

Mercy

Love

Obviously, not Justice. Possibly persistence At least in part mercy.

But, behind that mercy, the driving force was, is, and always will be love. Love is the motivating force behind every act of God, from creation, to incarnation, to ministry, to resurrection, to pentecost, to paradise, and yes…….to hell. Jesus is that face of God incarnate.

Jesus is the love of God incarnate.

God’s love is a parental love. This is the central feature of God’s character. He wants…….demands…..relationship with us so that we can participate in his love. If we reject that relationship……..we reject his love.

And that is a good working definition………of hell.

In the story of Lazarus and the rich man, as told by Jesus, Abraham talks to a soul who is burning in hell. The tenor of the conversation is a sadness for the suffering of the soul in the flames.

I believe that God wakes up every day hoping that we will do better.

That hope…..is the reason why God hasn’t dumped the aquarium.

I believe that God is sad for the souls in hell…….sad that souls whom he loves are suffering. I don’t believe that God enjoys the reality of hell.

And the love behind that sadness is what drove God to stick his hand into a fetid aquarium two centuries ago.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.John 3:16, ESV

For my entire life I have been told how the human race has evolved from primitive protozoans. This idea is the theory of Darwinian Evolution. It is so commonly accepted……and taught as fact….. that we rarely take a critical look at it. Today, I want to challenge you to do just that. First, some definitions:

Genotype: the DNA that dictates the construction of your individual body and all of its functions. This is the human genome.

Phenotype: the collection of traits manifested by the expression of your genotype. This is you.

Darwinian Evolution: a theory describing the accumulation of traits as a result of random mutations in our DNA which produce traits that spread through the population and displace less adaptive traits.

Some of this is true. Random mutations do occur. They are passed on to subsequent generations. These mutations result in new traits. They result in modifications to both the genotype and phenotype of subsequent generations.

Some of this is partially true. And that is where I want to go today. Particularly, I want to explore the spread of new traits through a population.

Imagine two women. Both are struck by cosmic radiation which causes a mutation in the DNA of an egg cell.

The first mother gives birth to a baby who lacks a critical enzyme. The baby cannot metabolize food. This baby dies in a few days. The mutation and its subsequent change to the baby’s genotype and phenotype are quickly eliminated from the population. Darwinian evolution has worked. It has improved the population by eliminating a “bad” change to the human genome. This true……. this is Darwin’s theory at work.

The second mother gives birth to a baby who can see and hear through walls. This is a highly adaptive trait that gives the child and later the adult a profound competitive advantage. The mutation has produced an earthshaking improvement to the genotype and phenotype of the baby. And it will be passed to the next generation…….and so on. So far, so good…..for Darwin.

The problem is the spread of this trait through a world population of 8 billion souls. How many generations will it take for every human on the planet to be able to see and hear through walls? Perhaps tens of thousands of generations. How long will it take for the trait to reach an isolated tribe of cannibals in Africa? And this process has to happen over and over. Each change to the phenotype must be additive. Each and every new trait must work its way through the entire planet before the next trait begins its journey. And there are hundreds of billions of atoms in the genome resulting in millions of traits. Each of those traits must spread though the entire human race.

The propagation of such a highly adaptive trait throughout the entire world population has never been documented in human history……not once. And, even if it had, there just hasn’t been enough time to repeat that process millions of times.

And yet we accept Darwin. We teach Darwin to our Children. And worse, we laugh at those who look for a different explanation.

Darwinian evolution, as an explanation for the elimination of maladaptive changes to the human genome is demonstrably true. It happens every day.

Darwinian evolution, as an explanation for the conversion of pond scum to Angelina Jolie is statistically impossible. It has never been demonstrated in a human population in the history of man.

Darwinian evolution is a one way street. You need to begin looking for a better explanation for Angelina Jolie…….try intelligent design.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Genesis, 1:1, ESV

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

Genesis, 1:26,ESV

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

John, talking about Jesus and creation. John, 1:1-3, ESV

Every now and then, someone tells me something that is way out there……unbelievable. And I say to myself, “you must be kidding”. Sometimes I even say it to their face, though usually, out of courtesy, I just smile. Today, I want to talk about one of those things. This is something that 9 out of 10 people accept as a fact…..but that, in my opinion, is utterly absurd.

When I was young, somebody was explaining large numbers to me……it was an unusual conversation for a redneck kid growing up in western Kentucky, to say the least. They said, “if you give enough monkeys enough typwriters and enough time and enough paper, they will type the “Encyclopedia Brittanica”.” For those of you who grew up with cell phones, you can google typewriter and encyclopedia.

So……I looked it up……..on Google. The Encyclopedia Brittanica has about 1/3 of a billion characters. We’ll forget about the graphics for now. And it’s true. Given enough time and monkeys, the Encyclopedia Brittanica could be generated by a cumulative series of random keystrokes……theoretically speaking, of course. And yet, if I showed you a set of the Encyclopedia Brittanica and told you that it was typed by monkeys, you would think I was nuts. You certainly wouldn’t believe me. Because you and I both understand the difference between what is theoretically possible and what is practically achievable. We understand the difference between an abstract theory and a hard fact. The monkeys and the typwriters is an entertaining intellectual exercise……..a fun theoretical discussion, but it would be unwise to run your life based on that type of analysis. It would be unwise to wager your future on such a theory.

And then…….there is the human genome……not to mention the trillions of other genomes out there. The human genome is basically a chemical alphabet……a chemical language that contains the instructions for the construction, operation, and maintenance of the human body. It contains roughly 200 billion atoms…..200 billion characters. The human genome is roughly 600 times larger than the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

I reject the concept that monkeys could type the “Encyclopedia Brittanica” on the grounds that the theory behind it is not practically scalable. The problem with evolution of the human genome is the same. It is not practically scalable. There just hasn’t been enough time.

The great minds of our culture tell us that the human genome accumulated by a series of cumulative, positively adaptive, random biochemical accidents. They tell us that there is no creative intelligence behind it. They call this theory evolution. It is the intellectual equivalent of saying “the monkeys did it”.

The truth is that Darwinian evolution is a theory……not a fact.

But, most of us buy it. Some even ridicule those of us who reject it.

And I say, “you must be kidding! There just aren’t enough monkeys.”

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Genesis, 1:27, ESV

Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

Genesis, 2:7, ESV

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

Charles Darwin