eNews

We've spent two weeks on the vital topic of forgiveness.  Now it's time for a true story that came to us recently:

As a child, Drew was intelligent and happy and actively involved in his church.  After two years of sexual abuse, though, Drew began a series of self destuctive decisions that would nearly destroy him.  His high school and young adult years were filled with drugs and alcohol, and after he married, he cheated repeatedly on his wife, Sarah.

Drew truly gave his life over to the Lord at age 30, and God began to heal and change him. He stopped drinking and using illegal drugs and remained faithful to his wife ever after. God did some amazing things in Drew to heal his heart and show him His love and forgiveness, and Drew grew spiritually. However, though years went by, his wife couldn't truly trust him or forgive him for the adulteries. Even as Drew pursued God, Sarah told him move out and eventually divorced him.

For the next 12 years, Drew saw his children only rarely. Nearly every time he called, he endured scathing attacks from his ex-wife, who openly described his past failures in front of the kids. That anger and unforgiveness passed onto their oldest daughter, Liz, who held hostile resentment toward her father throughout her childhood and constantly rejected his efforts at reconciliation.

There are no good guys or bad guys in this story. There are just human beings, all of whom were injured by those who were supposed to love them. Sarah was hurt by Drew's betrayals from years before. Drew was hurt by Sarah's unforgiveness and by the separation from his kids. The children were hurt by losing their father and seeing their mother's emotional struggles.

Yet, while Sarah clung to bitterness and self-righteousness, Drew did not allow his own frustrations to control him. He returned kindness for hatred and anger, praying constantly for Sarah and the children and for healing in his relationships with them.

Then, in May 2009, Drew almost died from pneumonia. Both of his lungs were compromised, and he started coughing up blood and collapsed on the floor when he tried to walk to the bathroom. He was rushed to the hospital, but the doctors were grim about his chances of survival. At least five different churches of people began praying for Drew while machines breathed for him in the hospital's ICU. Miraculously, he recovered in leaps and bounds and walked out of the hospital only nine days after his collapse.

Just over a month later, as Drew still regained his strength, he asked his daughter Liz if he could take her to breakfast. To his delight, she gladly accepted. With tears on both sides, she told him she had forgiven him and wanted to have a good relationship with him. "It was wonderful," Drew said. "I can't tell you how wonderful that was." Drew talked about the breakfast for weeks. It was the highlight of his year. On the same visit, he was able to spend time with all the children and enjoy them, and they were happy to see him too. Even Sarah, who had spent so many years full of anger, seemed to have finally given up her bitterness and was willing to be at peace with him.

Then, in September Drew got sick again. Although he'd recovered from the pneumonia, it had still taken a toll on him, and his late work hours were hard on his body. He went to the doctor, who gave him the week off of work and a prescription. Drew went home, took his medications and went to bed. He never woke up.

On one hand, the story is tragic. For 12 years Drew's children missed out on having a real relationship with their dad. For 12 years a father missed being able to really enjoy his children. For 12 years a mother had to deal constantly with anger and bitterness and raised her children without the help of their father.  Then, just as all was healing, Drew died suddenly! All that pain could have been avoided if forgiveness had reigned years before.

On the other hand, the story is full of redemption. Drew first found God's forgiveness and healing from his past sins. God gave him four extra precious months, and Drew was able to know the forgiveness of his children and ex-wife before he died. Those four months gave Liz time to heal things with her father. As soon as she found out he'd died, she called her grandmother and said, "I am so glad I had that breakfast with him. I'm so glad!" Sarah was able to make peace with Drew too before he died, which was a mercy for her as well.

During those 12 years of brokenness, Drew did remarry and had three more children. Since September, the children from both marriages have been able to see each other several times, and Drew's new wife and ex-wife are getting along well. His wife said, "I want to keep telling him, hey Drew, guess what! Hey Drew, we're going to go see the girls again this weekend!" God answered Drew's countless prayers and the children from both marriages are now following Christ; the relationships that were lost on earth will be enjoyed for eternity.

Drew's story offers both sides of the story. On one hand, sin causes destruction. There is no doubt about it. And while it seems justified, unforgiveness only adds to that destruction. On the other hand, forgiveness and keeping one's heart clean before God can result in healing and wholeness. It's all about the power of God working in the lives of regular human beings like us.

November 24 will mark the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's book On the Origin of Species, one of the most influential books on biology ever written, and arguably the most controversial. One hundred and fifty years after Darwin made popular the idea that the diversity of life on planet Earth today descended (or ascended?) from lower life forms over millions of years, the general theory of evolution is still not accepted by vast numbers of people, to the chagrin of large numbers of evolutionary biologists.

Did all of life really descend from one-celled organisms that developed in primordial waters billions of years ago? Is that really what happened? If so, we should see plenty of evidence of it all around us, and there are significant numbers of scientists who argue that we indeed find just that. They argue that there are a sufficient number of transitional forms in the fossil record to support Darwin's theory. They argue that natural selection, acting to preserve small beneficial mutations and weed out the bad ones, can indeed slowly but surely bring about the development of sophisticated structures like eyes and circulatory systems. These scientists may disagree over specifics, but in general buy the evolutionary model of origins.

While still in the minority of vocal opponents of Darwinian evolution, a growing list of degreed scientists are willing to confess they are skeptical of Darwinism's ability to explain life on earth as we know it [see link below].  These argue that evolutionary explanations are simplistic and full of holes. Some point out problems in the favorite sequences of transitional forms, or argue that the human tree looks more like a bush without any true common stem. Some of the famous Intelligent Design theorists argue that natural selection, acting on small mutations, is vastly insufficient to explain the brilliance of even the "simplest" of life's structures.

At that point, as the weedy scientific material gets hacked through, the dirt under the scientists' feet begins to show. And what is that dirt, that ground, that foundation? It all gets down to the nitty gritty of a scientist's philosophy about how science should be done.

In his July 2002 article in Scientific American, John Rennie writes what he believes are "15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense." In that article, he offers a basic description of the philosophy of modern science, saying: "A central tenet of modern science is methodological naturalism -- it seeks to explain the universe purely in terms of observed or testable natural mechanisms."

That right there is the blessing and curse of this whole debate. Now, it's correct that scientists use the natural world to explain the natural world. After all, the only thing we can scientifically test and weigh and directly observe is the physical world around us. It is also the job of science to strive to explain things as much as possible through testable natural mechanisms.

Yet, according to this specific philosophy on the way science should be done, God can't be a part of the equation. Ever. Scientists have to proceed under the assumption that God is not, and that frankly limits modern science.

Let's have a little "what if." What if God really does exist? What if He really is the cause of things? How would modern science be able to detect Him, even indirectly? According to John Rennie, it can't.

On principle.

In other words, evolution in some form or another has to be the scientific explanation for the incredible brilliance of life.  Some evolutionists acknowledge that life looks engineered, but will insist that intelligent design is simply an illusion.  They believe the history of earth's life has to be one of microbes-to-man evolution because that is the only explanation that modern scientific philosophy allows. 

Over the next few weeks, we want to look more closely at some of the basic arguments in the intelligent design/evolution debate and examine them, including their underlying assumptions, as carefully and honestly as we can.