Re: [asa] truth with love award

On 7/29/06, Mervin Bitikofer <mrb22667@kansas.net> wrote:
>
> There is a category of authors that I think most of us recognize – or
> flatter ourselves that we do – which might be called passionate truth
> seekers/revealers who are obviously in love with the grandeur and the
> minutiae of creation. They may be Christian, but not necessarily overtly
> so. Maybe they are even anti-Christian (often reacting against perverse
> aspects of institution) – but their iconoclasm doesn't always single out
> "religion" per se as the "bad guy". They are too open-minded for that.
> But they do delight in swimming upstream against any popular trends they
> prophetically deem damaging.
>
> I

 Having nearly finished reading Francis S. Collins's new book "The language
of God" I would have to nominate him in that category. His passion for
science, and his self-confessed awe and wonder at the DNA molecule, and his
clear expositions of all the spiritual and moral issues involved surely put
him in the category of a truth seeker. Also, overwhelmingly in his book
there is a sense of love and compassion and a continual sense of the Moral
Law - his first encounter with this concept was when, as a young atheist, he
read C.S. Lewis's "Mere Christianity", and realised that our inbuilt sense
of right and wrong is a pointer towards the existence of a God who cares
about us.

I found that Collins's loving exhortation to the evangelical churches, of
whom he considers himself a member, towards the dangers of Young Earth
Creationism, to be an example to us all, given the often harsh derisiveness
of the attacks on YECism shown on this list. This is part of what he has to
say:

A Plea for Reason

Let me conclude this brief chapter [on Creationism], therefore with a loving
entreaty to the evangelical Christian church, a body that I consider myself
a part of, and that has done so much good in so many other ways to spread
the good news of God's love and grace. As believers, you are right to hold
fast to the concept of a God as Creator; you are right to hold fast to the
truths of the Bible, you are right to hold fast to the conclusion that
science offers no answers to the most pressing questions of human existence,
and you are right to hold fast to the certainty that the claims of atheistic
materialism must be steadfastly resisted. But those battles cannot be won
by attaching your position to a flawed foundation. To continue to do so
offers the opportunity for the opponents of faith (and there are many) to
win a long series of easy victories.

--------

If that paragraph alone doesn't qualify for a "truth with love" award, then
I don't know what does.

I hope very much that Collins's book will be widely read, by Creationists
and by atheists alike. Time will tell - the book has only just come out,
and (as of yesterday) there were no reader reviews yet on Amazon.

Iain

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Received on Sat Jul 29 07:24:20 2006