When theories compete, it seems that the dialogue between two “intelligent” people becomes little more than that argument you had with the neighbor kid about who’s dad could kick who’s dad’s ass. Does anyone remember getting into that fight or was it just me? We have constructs through which we think, ways that we shape the world around us, and ways that we think through those parameters in order to draw conclusions. The problem that I find, as is the plight of myself and many others, is that my parameters simply are not big enough to encapsulate the totality of any given subject. So when someone in a conversation starts challenging my construct, I have to get defensive because they’re attacking the very thing that will help me win the argument.
We come to discover in these moments that many of the things that we have embraced as widely excepted truths are at times indefensible assumptions, not facts. So back to our fathers… when someone attacks our ideas they are attacking in essence the very same thing that has 1. Created us, and 2. Has the power to define us. The irony is that more often than not, while the neighbor kids are engaged in this heated debate, the two fathers are out back cooking on the grill and drinking a beer together.
The debate that I have in mind is the assumed polarity between evolution and my faith. I don’t know how well I can fully express what I want to say without having people from either arena have an aneurism while they read this, but here we go.
In my construct, I assume a few things as a Christian. First, I assume that the bible is the “word of God”. Seems harmless enough (at least to my fellow Christian friends), but of course, this statement cannot possibly encapsulate the complexity of what the bible contains (human authors, authorial/contextual considerations for inspiration proof texts, etc.). That statement is an assumption that embraces several other subdivisions which serve as a cyclical justification for the initial proposition. The Bible is God’s word, therefore it is inerrant, infallible, it is historically accurate, and so on. If we only embrace the easy compilation of ideas into dogma, our construct will quickly collapse under the critique of those who observe our faith with much more depth and objectivity than we do. These terms do very little to extrapolate the multifaceted complexities of God and the diversity and plurality of the testimony of biblical history. We think that because we are able to reduce the complex teachings (which need contextual and literary consideration) of the bible to a few theological concepts, we are masters of it.
So with my simple construct in place, I must now defend some very unusual outcomes created by the posture I have taken (I would like to give some examples, but time does not permit and I fear that if I give any examples that just might be the aneurism inducer).
So… this is where the neighbor kid challenges your daddy by saying, “I believe in evolution.” We can’t really have a discussion about what evolution is. Why not? Because no matter what the other person says, no matter how articulate or informed they are, our parameters cannot permit for competition. Our pre-committed loyalty to our doctrine does not allow us to consider whether or not that doctrine might just need to be expanded. Therefore, we try to make our construct do battle in ways it was never intended to. Genesis 1-11 was not written to address “Origin of Species.” I really, REALLY want to get into a discourse about evolution and faith, but I think for now I’ve expressed my point. Constructs are helpful, but they have their limitations. We have to be willing and fearless about having them challenged. We can only be affirmed in our faith if we continue to grow in our search for answers.
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