7.06.2011

Creationist, Evolutionist...Who Cares?

If you know anything about me, you know I'm a Christian. I grew up in the church my Dad's been the pastor at for the last 25 or so years. I go to church almost every Sunday and I go to all the youth events. My tagline even says I'm "Jesus-loving!" How more Jesus lovin' can you get?


I've noticed lately that people, Christians and non-Christians alike, sometimes substitute the word "Christian" with "creationist" and "atheist" with "evolutionist." I can only begin to explain how wrong this is. Those terms above are NOT mutually exclusive.


Although people (specifically people I go to church with or other Christians) are usually taken aback when it comes up in conversation that I don't believe in the story of Adam and Eve. Maybe I'm just a silly teenager that likes to be different than everybody else, (Though, quite honestly, as a teenager being a Christian already makes me different.) but hear me out.


Preston always says everything in the Bible is "God-breathed" and that although it was written by flawed humans, all of it is fact. "What kind of God of Love would confuse us with giving us a misleading holy book?" he says, and when he says it like that I really want to believe him. Honestly I'm starting to believe the majority of the Bible when I used to have the ideology that lots of teenagers have, "It's written by humans, it can't all be right." But the story of Adam and Eve sounds so much like an ancient Indian legend we read in elementary school outta those thick literature textbooks where it explains how the Grand Canyon was created or something. Seriously? "We're gonna punish you by making child birth painful?" Just no. But this isn't about my opinions.


Going back to the "everything in the Bible is God-breathed" ideology, I can understand what Preston means by that. But think about it: This was supposed to happen at the beginning of the entire universe. With the first two people on earth. Do you think there was a scribe writing this all down? Do you think Eve kept a diary? No. This story was probably passed down for a very very long time by word of mouth until someone thought, "Hey, maybe I should write this down!" As we all know from gossip, word of mouth can really screw up a story. I'm sure at the time there were hundreds if not thousands of variations. I believe that if Adam and Eve really happened, it was a whole lot different than the story we have today in our Bibles.


But "what kind of God of Love would confuse us with giving us a misleading holy book?" Just pause for a moment--does believing in Adam and Eve really determine our salvation at all? Pretty sure the Bible says, "If you declare with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Roman 10:9)" (That's my favorite Bible verse by the way.) So what else is there to do? Technically, nothing. Sure, there's baptism and communion and well, living like a Christian (though a lot of us seem to forget that part,) but I believe that if you believe you're saved you desire to do those things as a result of your security in your afterlife.


I know plenty of people that say they're Christian that either think they're going to hell or they're not sure where they're going. First of all, if you think you're going to hell, why in the world are you a Christian?! Honestly, that makes absolutely no sense at all! Secondly, if you believe God is a god of love, why would you think that he would ever send you to hell for, I don't know, doing something? What happened to forgiveness and all that? Humans seem to forget that God forgives us because we can't forgive ourselves--I know I've been guilty of that one on more than one occasion. The weird part about that verse? People don't even know it's there.


Like I said, that's my favorite verse in the whole Bible--because it's so simple. So simple. Like it's almost too easy. But having faith even when things are going really really bad and you almost can't take it? That's hard enough.


So the next thing people always say when I say I don't believe in the story of Adam and Eve is, "Well, then what do you believe?" And all I can say is, "I have no idea." And does that really matter? Just because I don't believe one story in the Bible happened exactly how it did as it was written doesn't mean God's sending me to hell. I'm not going to waste my time researching it to "find out what I believe" either because that would just be a waste of time, because who cares? My God sure doesn't.

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