Tyler Johnson, MDiv
Tyler is a pastor and a former NASA engineer. He loves to explore truth through God’s word and God’s works. He lives in Iowa with his wife and four children and spends what little free-time he has pondering the mysteries of light.
One of my enduring frustrations with the age we live in is the way words and language are used. We are sloppy speakers and highly reactive hearers. It isn’t a good combination. Take, for instance, the way we might converse about the relationship between evolution and Christianity. The litmus test for Christianity is something along the lines of, “I believe in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ his Son, and in the Holy Spirit.” That would be a basic statement of Christian faith. When evolution is brought up, someone might ask, “Do you believe in evolution?” The affirmative answer is fraught with difficulties to the Christian. The problem is that I mean rather different things when I say, “I believe in God…,” as compared to when I say, “I believe in evolution.” Even though I mean them both as true statements.
When I say that I believe in evolution, I am speaking of a belief that is a subset of a larger system. What I really mean is that I affirm the general outline of the theory of evolution that scientists have developed to make sense of the vast amount of biological and genetic data that they have been collecting over years. I am not a biologist, or a geneticist but I have read enough about evolution to believe that species do indeed change over time. There are genetic anomalies which are sometimes a benefit to specific animal and sometimes a detriment to them. The animals that tend to survive and spread their genetic code to others are those that have the more beneficial anomalies in their genes. This is not offensive to me or my faith. Furthermore, I was already in agreement with the long history of the earth and the universe from what I have learned in physics. To add a 4.5 billion year evolution of life to a 13.7 billion year old universe was not a hard shift for me.
When I say that I believe in God, or recite the Apostles’ Creed, I mean something quite different than simply an affirmation of a theory of history. When I say that I believe in God I say that in a personal way. I mean that I trust God, that I affirm His faithfulness, and that I willingly place myself under His Lordship. My belief in God is rooted in who God is and what God has done, specifically in and through Jesus Christ. It is not a subset of a larger belief system; it is rather the framework in which I seek to understand all my other beliefs. And I have yet to find a reason why believing in evolution and believing in God are mutually exclusive.
Sure, I’ve read some experts talk about the theory of evolution in ways that I think are rather nonsensical. Yes, it has a history of interpretation that has led to some ugly eras in human history. But I could make the same statements about God, and Christianity.
But that gets us into a larger discussion which I’ll save for further blog posts.
Stay tuned.