Falwell Confidential

Dr. Jerry Falwell opined the following concerning the relationship betwen Creationism and social clashes in the U.S.

Can present-day social clashes - such as homosexual marriage and religious expression in the public square - be traced back to the foundations of our world in Genesis chapter 1? Ken Ham, the founder of Answers in Genesis (www.answersingeneis.org) says they certainly can.

Mr. Ham's contention is that church leaders throughout the centuries have consented to secular notions that counter the biblical account of creation. By doing so, these theologians and clerics have allowed the absolute authority of the Bible to be challenged.

Since the foundations of biblical truth were allowed to be challenged, subsequent generations have continued to venture further and further from the Bible's dictates, choosing instead to follow social whims and impulses.

It is no wonder then that we find ourselves, as a nation, clashing over social issues that were once non-issues when the Bible was revered as ultimate truth by our churches, our schools and even by our government.

But our nation has turned its collective back on the Word of God.

Pollster George Barna recently found that four-of-every-ten people involved in Christian discipleship programs believe that there is no such thing as absolute truth. And only 44 percent of adults - and only 9 percent of teenagers - said that they are certain of the existence of absolute moral truth.

It's really no wonder that we are losing the battle on homosexual marriage and other critical cultural issues today.

...

When we compromise the ultimate truth of the Bible, chaos is the ultimate outcome.

"If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?" (Psalm 11:3)

These church leaders who allowed the notion of evolution to be combined with biblical teachings actually unlocked the door to undermine biblical authority, Mr. Ham said.

The outcome is that many Americans, believing that the Bible's history to be inaccurate, now disbelieve many other parts of the Bible. If one part of it can be challenged, why should the rest of it be believed?

It's a worthy question.

The question that is begged is why has our nation turned it collective back on the Word of God. Both Dr. Falwell and I agree that this is a bad thing and causes bad consequences for this country. Where we differ is our analysis of why this occurring.

Both Dr. Falwell and I are inerrantists. We also both believe that when people interpret Scripture they can and do err. So, we both need to be very careful that these fallible interpretations do not adhere too closely to the text. Because, if the interpretation is disproven, then the text is disproven. This results in God's Word which is Truth being treated as utter falsehood.

Fundamentalists like Falwell and Ham present a take it or leave it package of Scripture and their interpretation of Genesis. Ham is correct. The Biblical account of Creation is key to our understanding. The existence of a Creator to whom we are personally responsible makes a huge difference in our life. But, what happens when their interpretation of Genesis gets disproven? Here is an account of the spiritual wreckage that can occur.

John Morris came to the stage to challenge me. He claimed to have been in the oil industry. I asked him what oil company he had worked for. I am going to let an account of this published in the Skeptical Inquirer in late 86 or early 87. It was written by Robert Schadewald. He writes,

"John Morris went to the microphone and identified himself as a petroleum geologist. He questioned Morton's claim that pollen grains are found in salt formations, and accused Morton of sounding like an anticreationist, raising more problems than his critics could respond to in the time available. Morris said that the ICR staff is working on these problems all the time. He told Morton to quit raising problems and start solving them. "Morton chopped him off at the ankles. Two questions, said Morton: 'What oil company did you work for?' Well, uh, actually Morris never worked for an oil company, but he once taught petroleum engineering at the University of Oklahoma. Second, How old is the Earth?' 'If the earth is more than 10,000 years old then Scripture has no meaning.' Morton then said that he had hired several graduates of Christian Heritage College, and that all of them suffered severe crises of faith. The were utterly unprepared to face the geologic facts every petroleum geologist deals with on a daily basis. Morton neglected to add that ICR is much better known for ignoring or denying problems than dealing with them."

It appeared that the more I questions I raised, the more they questioned my theological purity. When telling one friend of my difficulties with young-earth creationism and geology, he told me that I had obviously been brain-washed by my geology professors. When I told him that I had never taken a geology course, he then said I must be saying this in order to hold my job. Never would he consider that I might really believe the data. Since then this type of treatment has become expected from young-earthers. I have been called nearly everything under the sun but they don't deal with the data I present to them. Here is a list of what young-earthers have called me in response to my data: 'an apostate,'(Humphreys) 'a heretic'(Jim Bell although he later apologised like the gentleman he is) 'a compromiser'(Henry Morris) "absurd", "naive", "compromising", "abysmally ignorant", "sloppy", "reckless disregard", "extremely inaccurate", "misleading", "tomfoolery" and "intentionally deceitful"(John Woodmorappe) 'like your father, Satan' (Carl R. Froede--I am proud to have this one because Jesus was once said to have been of satan also.) 'your loyality and commitment to Jesus Christ is shaky or just not truly genuine' (John Baumgardner 12-24-99 [Merry Christmas]) "[I] have secretly entertained suspicions of a Trojan horse roaming behind the lines..." Royal Truman 12-28-99 [emphasis mine]

What I emphasized above is the real reason why many Americans have rejected Scripture. An interpretation is disproven and the Bible and Christianity get rejected. It is a sad, sad story and the stakes are higher than Dr. Falwell even alludes to. Here, he is just addressing so-called social issues. But, what is at stake is the very Gospel itself, which Dr. Falwell is presumably committed to preach every Lord's Day. If he is as concerned as he says he is for the souls of those who are increasingly rejecting Scripture and thus the Gospel, then a massive change of attitude is in order.

Comments

[Darlene Barnes]

I,too, have had a crisis of faith after being presented with facts concerning the universe and facts concerning the creation of man. In fact, in my college biology class, I asked the instructor if the scientific community was positive about the evolution of man as presented, and she quietly whispered, "Yes." I still have not been able to come to peace with that. I wound up dropping the class. Later, to make up for this course, I took a Physical Science course on the Universe. Although the material in this class was not totally backed up by scripture, the discrepancies between what I had been taught in church from the Bible about the creation of the universe could be worked through in my mind. But, I too, have said openly, "If the creation of man and the earth is disproved with facts, what else can be challenged in the scripture." This is a scary place to be when you have absolutely believed the Word of God as infallible. Oh, by the way, I am not an 18 year old kid. I am a 46 year old woman. Darlene

[Douglas Barber]

Natural science has changed what we ask theology to illuminate.

More precisely, science has changed our understanding of the natural world, and that understanding is one aspect of what we ask our understanding of God to illuminate. The most important aspects of life that we ask our understanding of God to shed light on are anthropologically given by what is common to the situation of human beings in the world in every time and place, and those aspects haven't changed - the necessity to make choices with incomplete knowledge of their possible consequences, and awareness of the inevitability of death, to name several - but they are not the only aspects of life which we look to theology to illuminate. For example, extremely strong empirical evidence that species have evolved one from another is something new that we are asking our understanding of God to illuminate.

Perhaps you think that your theology has components less provisional than "our understanding of God," that you can make certain statements about what God has done or willed that are infallibly true, based on an infallible revelation. Tell me the meaning of any statement taken from your infallible revelation - tell me what it has actually revealed to you. What it means, and reveals, apart from your understanding of it, you do not know and cannot say. All you can tell me is your understanding of it, and however infallible the revelation may be, your understanding of it is no more infallible than your understanding of the empirical world.

It is not my intention in the least to deny the revelatory quality of the Holy Bible, nor even its infallibility. Rather, I mean to suggest that neither our theories about the empirical world nor our interpretations of biblical texts - that is, our theories about what sense God intends for us to make of them - merit some special warrant of trusworthiness. We are in no position to decide, before the fact, that when they come into conflict, we can be so sure of one, that we can assume that the other is mistaken. The task of forming a coherent view of life from a stance of absolute trust in God - for Christian purposes, what Paul called "taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ" - will sometimes require us to revise empirical theories, and sometimes to revise our interpretation of what God has revealed in sacred scripture. The alternatives to such flexibility are idolatry at one extreme, atheism at the other, and a perpetual repetition of the church's failure to appreciate one of history's great opportunities for reverent wonder and awe, when it gave Galileo the back of its hand.

We need not fear that a frank admission of our thoroughgoing fallibility detracts from the glory of God.

[Douglas Barber]

I'm sorry - in my reply above, the word "you" may seem to refer to Rich. It does not. It is meant to address any reader!

[Rich]

I took it that way. Thanks for your comments, Douglas.

[Rich]

One alternative to literal six day creation can be found here and here. It is not my interpretation of Genesis but shows that there are alternatives out there that do not force us to abandon the text of Genesis.

[Rich]

Glenn Morton has contacted me and has given a couple of web pages of how he ultimately resolved his faith crisis that I chronicled in this blog entry. They can be found here and here.

[Douglas Barber]

If I might say a little more by way of reflection on Darlene's important comment: It seems to me that God is brought to our consideration in the Holy Bible in ways powerful enough that God's presence and truth have somehow managed to shine through its pages in every age in which people have turned to it, in a consistent way that is not true of any other text or experience, in spite of all the imperfections of the ways people have gone about making sense of it. Without questioning its infallibility, I prefer to speak of the Bible as uniquely luminous with God's presence. No amount of shaking my belief in a particular way of interpreting the details of some particular text has any effect on my sense of awe before the luminous presence of God in the Exodus of Israel from bondage, in the revelation to Moses at Sinai, in the admonitions and consolations of the Prophets, and in God's inexpressibly revealing presence in the person of Jesus. No other text so powerfully challenges me to the core of my being to re-examine and set aright the way I am orienting my thoughts and actions by seeing them in the light of what is supremely important, and to do this with grateful and wholehearted trust in God. What the Psalmist said of Jerusalem, writing during the Babylonian exile, I say of the Bible in the Babylonian moment when I am tempted to think, "if I must doubt one of my interpretations of it, how may I trust any?": "By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, 'Sing us one of the songs of Zion!' How can we sing the songs of the LORD while in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy."

[Samantha]

With reference to Darlene's comments, I have been battling with two crises of faith in the last 6 months, one over evolution and the other over biblical authorship.

As well as the intellectual questions raised I feel that there are some very strong emotional issues to consider. There is the foolishness one
feels for not having read more widely or for having held what some might see as childish views. There is anger with the church that has not made us aware of wider viewpoints (even if they favour one view) and has left us unarmed
to deal with the debates. And there is anger with God - has he allowed us to be misled in this way and what does that say about our trust in him.

I'm a 41 year old who became a Christian at the age of 27. I don't yet have answers to the questions but I have decided not to react to the emotions raised but to keep trusting God and the good news about Jesus. Having become a Christian later in life (27 felt very old at the time!) I know what life is like without God's forgiveness and I am not willing to give that up. So for now I can live with the unresolved questions.

[Mike]

This stuff gives me a headache!