Re: [asa] Fw: Fresh look at creation - article

Hi Iain,

Greg Boyd commented (positively) on Winter's ideas at
http://gregboyd.blogspot.com/2007/07/ralph-winters-modified-gap-theory.html.
We had a discussion on this in July ... see
http://www.calvin.edu/archive/asa/200707 and start at David O.'s post at
http://www.calvin.edu/archive/asa/200707/0278.html.

thanks,

On 11/13/07, IW <iain@secure.holuwon.com> wrote:
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> I found the below article fascinating. It was sent to me sans sources
> so I am not certain where this originates (book, article etc) and have
> been unable to find out who to ask permission from to disseminate. My
> understanding from the person who s ent it is that it is free to pass
> on. I apologize in advance if wrong.
>
> I agree with it that Genesis describes A beginning and not THE
> beginning. I am skeptical of some of its postulations but await the
> collective and formidable brainpower on this list to respond first.
>
>
> Missions' Greatest Enemy, Greatest Violence
> Ralph D. Winter
>
> Probably few Evangelicals can easily imagine how the longstanding
> interpretation of Genesis 1:1 by a Dallas Seminary professor (Dr.
> Merrill Unger) could possibly lead to a momentous reinterpretation of
> our conventional concepts of Christian mission in terms of enemy and
> violence. However, this paper actually has three different purposes:
>
> This paper attempts to defend the trustworthiness of the Bible in the
> eyes of the average well-educated secular person by showing how the
> Bible does not necessarily conflict with the idea that the universe
> started with a bang and is immensely old, and that the Earth itself is
> very old and displays a steady progression of increasingly complex life
> forms. Even if all that all were true, what would it do to the Bible?
>
> While this paper accepts what most paleontologists believe for the sake
> of discussion, its conclusions do not depend on the validity of the
> views of contemporary paleontologists. And, for the record, it does not
> give an inch to the idea of Darwinian evolution or to a fallible Bible.
> Secondly, it is a serious attempt to take the Bible literally and yet
> to be capable of belief in both "the young Earth" and "the old Earth"
> points of view. I feel sorry when I hear that a famous Bible College
> graduate faculty believes in "the old Earth" while the undergraduate
> faculty believes in "the young Earth," thinking they are contradictory.
>
> Much more important, in a way, is the proposal that our current
> concepts of Christian mission work are good, but incomplete, and in
> fact are much too narrow if we are really setting out to glorify God
> who is constantly blamed for evil. The novel element here is the idea
> that the full implications of the New Testament's concept of Satan have
> been largely lost in Western Christianity to the extent that we have
> been influenced by Augustine's neo-platonic view of a God who, often
> with mysterious reasons, initiates both good and evil with Satan only a
> "bystander."
>
> A larger interpretation of mission goes like this: we have
> been recruiting people all over the world into God's eternal family,
> which is an activity as basic and as significant as you can get. But
> while our new "recruits" are now all dressed up in their new uniforms
> they do not know they are military uniforms, and are more often hoping
> to flee evil rather than fight it.
>
> Personal righteousness, both
> "positional" and actual, would seem to be very thin if it does not turn
> around and fight evil. Worse still-far worse-is the fact that if we let
> the world fight disease, corruption and violence, God is generally
> blamed for "allowing" such evils. We puzzle over evil if we think God
> is "behind" all evil--instead of "in front" making good out of evil.
> Such a theology requires books that help us to understand When God
> Doesn't Make Sense.' However, suffering and violence in a war against
> an intelligent enemy don't need to be explained, and for that reason
> neither does the verse, "All that will live godly... will suffer
> persecution."
>
> We are in a war! Summary Opening the AD 1611 King James
> Bible we read "In the beginning God created. . . ." Over the next 400
> years this interpretation has been cemented in the minds of millions of
> people. It conveys the idea that the Bible begins by describing the
> beginning of the entire universe, not merely the new beginning of the
> human story. However, not even in 1611 was the universe well
> understood. It was likely far less clear to the "holy men of God"
> writing in the days of Genesis.' In fact, the "known world" of Moses
> would not have even included the idea of a planet, of a sphere hanging
> in space.
>
> Similarly, "The ends of the earth" in Isaiah 49:6 never
> referred to our planet but to the ends of the earthen plain ending
> abruptly where the "fertile crescent" of the Middle East is bounded by
> the mountains rising in Turkey and Iran. In other words, the common
> interpretation of Genesis today-that the universe began 6,000 years
> ago-may simply be the result of reading later understanding into an
> earlier text. Such errors are called anachronisms. The error is
> understandable.
>
> However, the very serious result is to force the Bible
> (unfairly?) to say that the world is only 6,000 years old, and thereby
> to create the greatest stumbling block to modern man's trust in the
> Bible. Curiously, as long ago as 1958 the chair of the Old Testament
> Department at Dallas Theological Seminary, Dr. Merrill Unger, taught
> that "the geologic ages" preceded Genesis 1:1 and that the events of
> Genesis 1 portray not THE beginning but "a relative beginning (Unger's
> Bible Handbook)."3 His was not a new idea even then but today it is
> uncommon.
>
> Our problem is that most of the world today assumes that both
> our planet and the universe are much older than 6,000 years. The grim
> result, then, is that the Bible appears wrong when in fact it may in
> fact be a very accurate description of things using terms that were
> understood in that day. Thus, Unger's insight is what undergirds the
> tentative perspective of this paper, namely, that Satan fell long
> before Gen. 1:1, and began distorting all of nature from the Cambrian
> Period on, continuing that type of genetic distortion after Adam's
> fall, and although he was decisively routed at the turning point of the
> Cross, he stalks the land to this day, his works casting blame on "the
> God of Creation."
>
> This then sets the stage for a radically expanded
> concept of Christian mission. This presentation is both hypothetical
> and conjectural. It lays out the predominant secular interpretation of
> the history of the universe and more specifically the earth and life on
> earth, doing so whenever the phrase is employed "many scientists
> believe" simply describing not affirming. It does not give any credence
> to Darwinian evolution at all. But it does note that there is no
> necessary conflict with Genesis of the secular sequence and time spans,
> if, that is, Genesis 1:1 does not describe the origin of the universe
> but rather a new creation of the era of "image of God" humans. The
> story is cast in narrative form for efficiency and digestible order.
> Credit is due to John Eldridge for the concept of "Acts" in a story.
>
> He
> has four Acts in his superb little book, The Epic .4 I have split his
> third Act into Act III, the Edenic period and Act IV, the period after
> the Fall of Adam. Thus, I have five "Acts." Act I: The Creation of the
> Universe Thirteen and a half, or so, billion years ago, many scientists
> believe, a "Big Bang" occurred, producing the entire universe. (They
> don't like the word creating.)
> • For various reasons mentioned below,
> such a creation event does not seem to be what Genesis 1:1 is
> describing. Four and a half billion years ago, many scientists believe,
> planet Earth was formed. About four billion years ago, many scientists
> believe, very small forms of life appeared on Earth. For the next 3.5
> billion years life forms were still very small.
> • This astounding
> slowness of the formation of progressively more complex forms of life
> may in this case imply that God has for millions of years been doing
> that work through intelligent, but finite, intermediate beings who have
> been at work in an incredibly complex, and thus lengthy, learning
> curve. Perhaps some of them have been small enough to work directly
> with DNA. It took a century with thousands of intelligent engineers at
> work to "evolve" the Model T Ford into a Lincoln Continental. It did
> not happen without intelligent guidance at every point. Prokaryotes
> were followed by Eukaryotes about two billion years ago, many
> scientists believe.' All angels were good at this time. Then, about 530
> million years ago the Ediacaron period displayed small animals with
> "radial symmetry" similar to starfish, as well as "bi-polar
> symmetry"-with a front and a back and four legs.
> • Significantly this
> Ediacaron animal life revealed no predation or even defenses against
> predation! Still only good angels 6 Act II: The Fall of Satan Next,
> relatively suddenly, the "Cambrian Explosion" took place. A wide
> variety of different types of animals now appeared, and, for the next
> 500 million years, all of them can be characterized as horrifyingly
> cruel predators or prey or both. Note that this lengthy record of
> violent animal life does not seem to fit well into the first chapter of
> Genesis, even if the "days" spoken of there might be considered very
> long, since the animals described in Genesis are explicitly declared
> (v. 29) to be noncarnivorous.
> • Here is a thought: this new and
> radically different 500-million-year period might have begun when an
> intermediate being, an archangel, in turning against his Creator in the
> "Fall of Satan" carried perhaps millions of equally rebellious angels
> with him, becoming what C. S. Lewis called "a hideous strength" or what
> Paul called the "god of this world."
> • If the long story of the
> earlier, progressive, creation of nonpredatory life had reflected God's
> infinite wisdom and goodness, now the pervasive distortion of that
> life, if not that of a Satanic foe, would seem clearly to reflect
> negatively on God's character. This negative reputation may be seen
> today in the very common attribution of tragedies not to Satan, but to
> "God's mysterious will." This absence of Satan in people's minds is
> what allows a book by the title of When God Doesn't Make Sense,' or a
> Harvard professor logically to remark that, "If the God of the
> Intelligent Design proponents exists, He must be a divine `sadist' who
> creates parasites that blind millions of people."' How can we reply to
> such thinking if we do not recognize (point out and fight) "the works
> of the devil (I John 3:8)"? Also, during the next 500 million years,
> many scientists believe, many asteroidal collisions blotted out life in
> various parts of the globe, as if in judgment my thinking--of the
> prevailing violence and destructive nature of gruesomely distorted life
> forms.
> • Forty-five of the resulting craters that have been found are
> fifteen miles across or larger. The largest, in the Antarctic, is 300
> miles in diameter. It is believed to have occurred 275 million years
> ago, and is estimated to have extinguished ninety-seven percent of all
> life on Earth. Another large crater, at the north end of Mexico's
> Yucatan peninsula, is believed to have occurred 65 million years ago,
> and is 100 miles across. It is the one understood to have ended the
> onehundred-million-year period of the characteristically violent
> dinosaurs.
>
> Many of these forty-five larger asteroids are understood to
> have been solid rock miles in diameter moving at the speed of a rifle
> bullet at the moment of impact.9 Following the extinction of the
> dinosaurs, many scientists believe, mammals came into their own,
> growing in size to tons of weight, existing virtually unchallenged
> until intelligent pre-humans began to drive them into extinction.
> Finally, evidence of distinctive and unprecedented intelligence
> appeared, reasonably (in my opinion) the first true humans (but
> Satanically distorted, carnivorous, violent, cannibals, not the Genesis
> 1 type).
>
> The evidence in this case is not fossil bones but indications
> of highly intelligent genetic breeding of both plants and animals, that
> is, 1) the selective breeding of virtually inedible plants, deriving
> corn, wheat, rice, and potatoes, etc., and 2) the selective breeding of
> animal life, for example, dangerous wolves into friendly dogs. Both
> types of genetic engineering, many paleo-historians and paleontologists
> believe, took place about 11,000 years ago'° (about five thousand years
> before the Genesis new beginning).
>
> However, despite this early evidence
> of sudden, unprecedented intelligence, all fossils of human life that
> far back clearly reflect cannibalism and violence, in other words,
> durable evidence of intentional, evil distortion" Act III: A New
> Beginning and the Fall of Man About 6,000 years ago, at the very
> beginning of the Jewish/Christian Bible, we find what may be a series
> of events which could possibly be the aftermath of a fairly small
> asteroidal collision in the Middle East The idea of an asteroid wiping
> out all life in a local region of the earth is conjectural but not
> unrealistic.
>
> However, the idea of Genesis describing a new beginning
> following a major catastrophe has been fairly widely thought of by
> people such as C.I. Scofield, editor of the most widely used reference
> Bible of all time, the Scofield Reference Bible; by Merrill Unger, as
> mentioned earlier, a Dallas Seminary professor and editor of the
> 500,000-in-print Unger's Bible Handbook, published by Moody Press, and
> perhaps even John Eldredge (Wild at Heart, and The Epic). The book last
> mentioned speaks of events "prior to Genesis" on page 19. On page 18
> Eldredge says, speaking of Genesis 1:1, An important passage it is, to
> be sure. But to grasp this Epic, you cannot start there. That is way
> into the story.
>
> That is Act Three. It is a beginning, but it is the
> beginning of the human story, the story of life here on earth. As
> Hebrew scholar Robert Alter says, a better rendering of the Hebrew goes
> "When God began to create heaven and earth." When God began to create
> the life we know. And before this? There are events that have preceded
> this chapter, events we must know. If you want to look back into the
> once upon a time before all time, well, then you have to start with
> another passage, from the Gospel of John (1: 1). (Underlining mine)
>
> Genesis 1:2 is the rest of the sentence, describing what God had to
> contend with in this particular new beginning. The English translation
> "formless and void" is today widely understood not to be a good
> translation of the Hebrew idiom, tohu wabohu, which more often in the
> Bible means "destroyed and desolate."', The result might then actually
> be "When God began to put things back together, to reclaim the heavens
> and the earth, the (regional) situation appears to have been destroyed
> and desolate." The subsequent verses describe the initial total
> darkness surrounding the entire planet, but, then, with light peeking
> through as the dust settled.
>
> • Note well that it is typical of even the
> smaller of these major asteroidal impacts to kick enough dust into the
> atmosphere to block out all light for a time around the entire planet.
> Gradually, however, as the dust settles, dim light becomes noticeable
> once a day. Eventually the direct rays of the Sun penetrate the
> remaining dust and the Sun becomes visible. Later, the Moon. Later, the
> stars" These verses surely seem to be a "restoration sequence" rather
> than a "creation sequence." If they are viewed as a creation series of
> events many scholars have wondered how the dim light of day would have
> been created before the sun appeared. The word creation is not even
> used. The text simply says "Let there be light."
> • Obviously those
> humans wiped out in this regional impact would not have been able to
> report this sequence. On the other hand, surviving humans scattered
> elsewhere around the globe would certainly have been actual eye
> witnesses of the darkness and the gradual reappearance of light, the
> sun, etc.. Egyptian scholars then could have retained a record of such
> observations so as to be the source of information Moses employed in
> Genesis.
> • Many Bible expos itors are either unaware of, or do not go
> along with, the fairly recent search for impact craters on the earth's
> surface. This search began in earnest only in 1970 after the first Moon
> landing unexpectedly revealed that the hundreds of pock marks on the
> Moon were not, as had been assumed, volcanic craters but were impact
> craters"
> • Beginning in 1812 hundreds of thousands of fossil bones of
> violent animals have been dug up which belong to thousands of now
> extinct forms of life. Since these animals cannot be the ones described
> in Genesis 1, where both animals and man are clearly described as non
> carnivorous ,'S they must have either come before Genesis or we must
> assume they were distorted into their violence and carnivorous nature
> after the Fall of man.
>
> The latter possibility would force enormous
> complexity into the last 6,000 years, including much extinction. Bones
> have been discovered for a thousand times as many animal species as
> survive today. It would seem to be easier to believe, following Unger,
> that all of that violent life preceded Genesis, and that, then, Genesis
> is describing a new creation of non-distorted life in the "known world"
> of the writers. In fact, it may be unfair to the Bible to make it speak
> of a planet since at that time people did not know of such a thing.
> Indeed, most of the Old Testament is written by (KJV) "holy men of God
> who spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.""' A key word here is
> "men." Unlike the Qur'an and the Book of Mormon (which are said to have
> been dictated by God) the Bible normally contains what these holy
> writers, guided by God, understood and their hearers understood.
> Reading later knowledge into earlier documents is a common mistake
> called anachronism.
>
> • Similarly, the later judgment of the flood would
> reasonably be in "the known world." The table of nations in Genesis 11,
> the children of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, are nations which Bible maps
> locate in the Middle East. There are no Incas or Eskimos. This would
> certainly be fair to the Bible. Some of the faculty at Wheaton College
> have believed and taught a regional flood for fifty years.
> • Thus,
> Genesis may be regional, and, if so, the Edenic events would thus not
> be the first or only "new beginning." The flood is another "new
> beginning." The selection of Abraham is another "new beginning." Isaac
> instead of Ishmael is another "new beginning." The selection of
> Jacob/Israel instead of Esau is another "new beginning." The Exodus is
> another "new beginning."
>
> The return from Babylon is another "new
> beginning." The coming of Christ and the breakthrough to the Gentiles
> in the NT is another "new beginning." The Reformation is another new
> beginning, and so on and so forth. In any case, the vast majority of
> all scientists today, if we continue to tell them that the Bible
> teaches that all forms of life are no more than 6,000 years old, will
> continue to feel forced to believe that the Bible cannot be trusted.
> Luther and Calvin interpreted Psalm 19 to mean that the Sun revolved
> around the earth, as against Copernicus' view that the earth revolved
> around the Sun.
>
> Unfortunately, people later on did not say Luther and
> Calvin misinterpreted the Bible. They said the Bible must be wrong.
> However, science in that case did not contradict the Bible. Science
> contradicted a misinterpretation of the Bible!
>
> • Thus, it is not to
> criticize the Bible, but to defend it, if we recognize that the phrase
> "to the ends of the earth" in Isaiah 49:6 only refers to the flat plain
> of earth leading up to the mountains of Eastern Iran and Turkey. Only
> fairly recently in European languages has the word earth (soil) meant
> the Earth (a planet), and it still is not usually used that way.
> Genesis 1 may then present the non-carnivorous type of life, animal and
> human, which we see again at the end of time in Isaiah 6 and 11 (the
> lion lying down with a lamb).
>
> Once Adam and Eve are seduced by Satan
> and turned out of Eden, the "sons of God" (the new type of humans
> created in Eden in the image of God?) marry the "daughters of
> men" (previously distorted and depraved humans beginning 11,000 years
> ago?). In that case we can understand why the life spans of the Edenic
> humans gradually shorten. Further, it would seem reasonable that the
> Edenic type of. noncarnivorous human and animal life, by interbreeding
> with the distorted, carnivorous life outside of Eden, would gradually
> revert to the life-destroying carnivorous behavior of the pre-Edenic,
> preGenesis 1:1, distorted life.
>
> Eventually the non-carnivorous Edenic
> version of human and animal life would have had virtually disappeared
> into the genetically distorted earlier gene pools. This may be one way
> of understanding original sin as something we cannot wish away easily,
> it being inherited genetically-something illuminating Romans 3:23, "All
> have sinned and come short of the glory of God." This also would enable
> us to understand why being "born again" does not change all our inborn
> wayward traits even though it allies us with our Father in Heaven
> against hardwired genetic evil within which we still must fight-the
> sort of conflict we read about in Romans 7.
>
> Act IV: Wartime Far more
> important is the fact that this scenario describes a great length of
> time Satan has been at work distorting God's creation, producing the
> incredible vastness of his corrupting work of which we are mostly
> unaware. As one theologian put it, "The greatest achievement of Satan
> is to cover his tracks.'17 The cruc ial facts would thus be that 1) we
> underestimate what Satan has done and is doing, and 2) we do not
> consider it our mission to fight it, and for that reason 3) we very
> often attribute the works of Satan to God.
>
> Remember the Harvard
> professor mentioned earlier who quite logically remarked that "If the
> God of the Intelligent Design proponents exists He must be a divine
> `sadist' who creates parasites that blind millions of people." I cannot
> forget that damaging statement, even though it is alarmingly
> misinformed. (Why can't the Intelligent Design people admit that some
> of what they see in nature is evil design, not to be blamed on a
> supreme being?)
>
> If Satan exists and opposes God in every way possible,
> we might then expect two things to happen: physical distortions and
> intellectual delusions. Diabolical Distortions Obviously, if the time
> of the Cambrian Explosion were to mark the point when Satan turned
> against God, it would mean that Satan began distorting the larger forms
> of life genetically a very long period of time before the events in
> Genesis even begin. It also seems logical that he would have been
> twisting bacteria into dangerous germs, creating destructive viruses,
> and inventing extremely clever and deadly parasites like malaria. Are
> we supposed to fight germs? Is that part of the verse "The Son of God
> appeared for this purpose, that He might destroy the works of the devil
> (1 John 3:8)"?
>
> Is this what Jesus meant when He taught us to pray "Thy
> Kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven"? Augustine
> and Calvin were unaware of germs, yet even our theologians or TV
> preachers today do not speak of deadly germs being the work of Satan,
> to be destroyed as an intentional mission of Christ and of those who
> follow Him-not wanting to blame disease on God. But if you identify and
> recognize the enormous global impact of disease-induced suffering as a
> sphere of diabolical distortion, then both the great violence
> introduced by the fall of Satan and the fall of Adam become a major
> reality.
>
> In that case, Satan becomes the enemy and the Christian life
> and mission must be seen as part of an all-out war, a war to be fought
> not "in addition to winning souls to Christ" but as a means of
> glorifying God and thus empowering our evangelism. Disassociating God
> from the works of the Devil becomes then both the means and the end of
> winning souls to Christ.
>
> Diabolical Delusions A second dimension of
> Satanic evil to become aware of and to be fought as a Christian mission
> is what could be called diabolic delusions. Millions of people suffer
> horribly and die prematurely not only because of disease, but because
> of misunderstandings about the origins of disease. The whole history of
> medicine has been, in one sense, the mysteriously delayed understanding
> of the real causes of disease. Just three of actually hundreds of
> examples of this mysterious delay are the fact that the common cold,
> tuberculosis, and duodenal ulcers were thought for many centuries not
> to be the direct result of destructive germs but rather to be the
> result of, respectively, 1) getting cold, 2) sleeping in damp, cold
> places and 3) being subject to stress. There are many other types of
> diabolical delusions.
>
> Here are merely four of them:
> • Down through
> history in India thousands and thousands of widows have been burned on
> their husbands funeral pyres because of the delusion that they would
> thereby be reincarnated at a higher level.
> • Thousands of young women
> have contracted AIDS in South Africa due to the widespread delusion
> that a man with AIDS can be cured by having intercourse with a virgin.
> • We are deluded if we think that the world's largest business-the
> American medical/pharmaceutical industry--is tracking down the primary
> sources of disease. Why are we deluded? Because all of its money comes
> from people who are already sick and are paying to be healed. However,
> treating the sick and eradicating pathogenic sources of illnesses are
> usually very different activities. For the latter the available money
> is microscopic.
> • In Africa, due to mistaken delusions, 140 million
> women have undergone "female genitalmutilation," which often leads to
> ruptured bladders (at the time of childbirth) and a resulting life of
> being social outcasts. These are some of the destructive delusions
> which need to be fought in the Name of Christ. Evangelical Fatalism?
> However, Evangelicals, instead of fighting to destroy the "works of the
> devil" have gotten accustomed to a plainly fatalistic understanding of
> them as "the mysterious will of God." This is the relentless message of
> the book already mentioned, When God Doesn't Make Sense (by no less
> than James Dobson).
>
> In other words, if there is no Satan, much of life
> really "does not make sense," and our concept of the Christian life and
> mission becomes diabolically reduced What to Do? Many may think, "What
> can I as an individual do? What should I do differently? Isn't it still
> important to win people to the Lordship of Christ even if I can't
> explain to them how their lives can make a difference in the
> identification and destruction of the works of Satan?" Yes, winning
> people to Christ is still bedrock.
>
> But two other things are also true.
> 1. More and more people can't even be won to Christ because they are
> deeply confused by the "good news" of a loving God who would seem to
> have created a world of suffering, or to have at least been unwilling
> or unable, in general, to rescue us from earthly horrors of evil and
> pain until the next world.
> 2. People who are won to Christ rarely understand that they have been
> recruited to become soldiers in an all-out war. Of course we know that
> individuals on their own can't "win a war." To win a war you need a
> whole lot of things. The United States during the Second World War
> would be an example. Swarms of "servicemen" (including women) swirled
> about on planes, trains, and buses, heading off to ports of departure
> for the various "theaters of war" around the world. Eleven million were
> sprayed out across the globe in the Army, Air Corps, and the Navy. But
> 200 million "civilians" staying behind were equally occupied by the
> war. As millions of men disappeared from their jobs women took their
> places.
>
> A largely women's workforce ("Rosie the Riveter") built entire
> ships one every fourteen days, medium bombers one every hour. Nylon was
> needed for parachute cords no more stockings. No more coffee, incoming
> ships had no room for such trivialities because more crucial goods took
> their place. Any idle moments or unused material were instantly
> challenged by "Don't you know there is a war on?" You could get a huge
> fine for unnecessary drivingdriving unrelated to the war, like, yes, a
> family outing on Sunday!
>
> Gasoline had other more crucial uses. Today,
> when Evangelical believers get together they don't compare notes on how
> to win the war against the "works of the devil." They compare prices on
> home furnishings, vacations, adult toys. Truly, they don't know there
> is a war on! We act like we don't live in a wartime economy but in a
> time of peace. Organize, Organize, Organize Obviously, individuals need
> to organize. Do we need dozens of new specialized mission agencies?
> Note that there is not one Christian institution in the world dedicated
> to eradication of disease pathogens. Our entire, mammoth
> medical/pharmaceutical industry is ninety-nine percent focused on the
> needs of people who are already sick, rather than on ways of
> eradicating the disease origins.
>
> Our pastors tend to define "Christian
> service" as activity in and for and through the local church, not the
> labors of the forty-hour week. If, as Rick Warren says, he wants to
> transform his "audience into an army," and other pastors by the
> thousands would follow him, a veritable revolution might occur. But his
> Purpose Driven Life book contains not a single line about the
> forty-hour week, much less does it recognize that the forty-hour week
> is exactly where, in a major way, we can best actually fight evil,
> corruption and disease, efforts crucial to restoring glory to God and
> credibility to our evangelism. (In a conversation about this he told me
> he is going to write another book.)
>
> This sphere is nowadays being
> called "Public Theology." However, although we hear of pastors around
> the world losing their lives because of their faith, it is not often we
> hear of laymen in the USA even losing their jobs because of, say, being
> honest or opposing deception. Basically, the incredible violence we
> must fight against in the Name of Christ constitutes an all-out war.
> Neither laity nor clergy are well aware of that war. Thus, all true
> believers, not just "full time workers," must be willing to organize
> against evil, to be creative, and to measure every vocation not by its
> pay scale, but by its contribution to that war. It seems very clear
> that we must recruit people for this war as well as for heaven. If we
> can't do both we will ultimately fail at both.
>
> This is why the
> Christian mission is far more complex and demanding than we thought. I
> would hope existing mission agencies could lead the way in the
> discovery and the defeat of both 1) Satanic indirectly-inspired human
> evil such as war, and such as the corruption that guts almost every
> secular type of humanitarian aid, and 2) direct Satanic evil such as
> genetic distortions of man and animal, the creation of disease germs
> and diabolical delusions. This means seeing mission in very much larger
> terms. It also gives a much larger role to laymen than check-book
> missions or "after hours Christianity" centering on work in and for the
> church.
>
>
>
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-- 
-- 
Steve Martin (CSCA)
http://evanevodialogue.blogspot.com
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