Why I became a Creationist.

I mostly want to tell this because speaking with many who are not Creationists has shown a great many prejudices of me that simply are not true. Most believe all Creationists are anti-science and run around shouting "God dun it" to any question they are asked. Some believe Creationists are not curious about the universe and all things in it and do not seek answers to hard questions. In fact, it surprises some to learn that I believed fully in evolution until I was 17 years old.

The honest truth is though I was raised in the Bible Belt, I had never even heard of Creationism until late in my teens. I never even knew there was an alternative view other than evolution. I remember asking my mom in my tweens how evolution produced Adam and Eve. She was far from an apologist at the time and her unsure answer did not satisfy my curiosity.

Throughout my up bringing, I was always interested in the sciences. Astronomy was my strong suit and I always did really well in those classes, even getting an award in high school for highest academic performance in Astronomy my junior year. Star Trek fueled this.

Being a sci-fi geek always pushed me to study various sciences and certainly colored my beliefs in things such as extraterrestrial life and of course evolution. But at this time, I honestly did not even know it was a controversial topic. I just wanted to know more.

The more I dug into the sciences like Astronomy and Biology, the more I started seeing a pattern. The classes I took in these subjects skipped mountains of details. I started to learn how many questions science raised about evolution and how many things biologists disagreed on. How do you disagree on a scientific finding? Apparently, it is quite common.

I started learning that the closer you get to the details, the more questionable the science was. And it was then that I learned that scientists are human. There was no magic formula to display evolution. It was almost all educated guessing. The worst part is that it was educated guessing stacked on top of educated guessing. It was a giant house of cards and if any of these educated guesses were not true, the whole thing would come tumbling down. And then I learned that it already had.

There is no single point of evolution that all scientists agree on. Does that seem weird? I know of no scientist arguing for a different formula to calculate gravity, yet evolution is a flexible science such that scientists can disagree with each other on every single point.

So then I started looking at their track record. How many times have we discovered a living fossil and how many times did that living fossil confirm of deny their hypothesis about it? There are several cases of living fossils and someone can correct me on this if I am wrong, but I have yet to read about one that they accurately predicted things about these animals.

It was science that drove me away from evolution. It seemed that while science can do a great job of predicting the future, it seemed pretty poor at predicting the past. I really just stopped believing we could have a sure answer on the past using what science we know.

At this time, I was wandering around a Family Christian bookstore and saw a book called "Science and the Bible". I had never even thought of these two as something that could be put together so it intrigued me. I bought it and read it.

I would not have labeled myself a Creationist after reading that book, but it certainly confirmed a lot of my beliefs that science was not a good predictor of past events. The other hypothesis presented in the book were intriguing but like evolutionary science, it was little more than a hypothesis.

I find Creationist hypothesis fascinating and I love to read their scientific findings, but they honestly are not why I am a Creationist. They can no more prove Creationism than science can prove or disprove Evolution. Origin science simply is too plastic and too much guessing for anyone to say anything for certain using what science we know.

I am a Creationist because Jesus is. After finding out how unsure our science is, I decided to reference the man who sacrificed himself for his creation and I would take on his point of view.

“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female...'" -Matthew 19:4

I do not think anyone would argue that billions of years later is the beginning of anything. Jesus clearly believed the literal Genesis account of creation and since he knows more than me, I will trust him.

This is not anti-science. I am a big fan of science and I have studied this topic a great deal over the past 15 years or so and I have yet to find any solid science that contradicts the literal Genesis account. If you believe there is some, let me know, I am more than willing to have a dialog about the topic.

 

Can someone that does not know Jesus be saved?

In the Christian world, many times a question is asked among skeptics and believers both. The scenario usually goes along the lines of, what about the man who never hears about Jesus? Can he be saved? This can vary from being general to being more specific about a tribe on an island that no one has ever visited.

More realistically we can consider the few "uncontacted peoples" of the world. There are a few known tribes of people in the world who are "uncontacted" meaning no one outside of their tribe has ever spoken or met anyone in their tribe in possibly thousands of years.

There is no quick answer to this question and anyone who tries to give a quick answer, I question their studies.

But I do want to discuss the first quick answer that many Christians give as a default. Many will say one cannot be saved at all unless they believe in Jesus and possibly siting Acts 16:31, Romans 10:9, Mark 16:16, and John 12:46. All of these verses have a common theme and that is to describe that if you believe in Jesus, you will be saved.

These verses are certainly important for establishing that those who accept Jesus' sacrifice as their means of salvation are guaranteed 100% admission into Heaven. However, that is not the end of the story. We cannot believe all that is said about salvation can be summed up in those few sentences.

So then the question is raised, are all who believe in Jesus saved? To this, I will refer to Jesus:

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ -Matthew 7:21-23

Let's keep in mind who these people are. These people were able to drive out demons and perform miracles and prophesied. They certainly believed Jesus existed and believed in his power. But when Jesus sends them to Hell, they instantly point to their own deeds to save them. They wanted their own goodness to be worthy of Heaven. Even though they knew of Jesus and his authority, they missed something vital. What was it?

They were missing humility. Their first response should not have been "but we did all these good things!" It should have been, "but your grace was supposed to save us!" Their response shows they did not have faith in Jesus' sacrifice, they had faith in their own deeds.

I am sure some of you are wondering how this ties into the people who do not know Jesus at all, but stick with me.

This points to the very first criteria of salvation. I find it funny that it's kind of the first step in a 12 step program. The first step to fixing a problem is admitting that you have one. Similarly, the first step to salvation is admitting that we need it.

This is actually more widely known and accepted than most realize. While I am not an endorser of the sinner's prayer, the first line of it is "I know I am a sinner." This line is it. It is the prompting of the Holy Spirit to recognize we are bad people. We do not need the Bible to recognize we are bad. No one has to tell us how good God is for us to recognize how bad we are (though the second thing that happens when you do realize how good God is, is to recognize how bad we are).

Jesus seems to suggest this very thing when He is questioned by the pharisees.

When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” -Matthew 9:11-13

And again Jesus tells of a man justified when says:

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” Luke 18:9-14

Jesus says here about a tax collector who the only thing he did was confess he was a sinner, that he went home justified.

Jesus does not call the religious or the strong or the patriotic. He calls the down trodden, the poor, and the sinner. None of these things are specific to ethnicity or religion or creed. Jesus does not care about your background, He cares that you know you need Him.

So let us dig a little further. Can a person be saved without knowing Jesus? While a knee jerk response to say "no", no Christian truly believes that. I know because all Christians believe Abraham and Moses are in Heaven (because Jesus says so). They did not know Jesus. Had they known his name, they would have surely recorded it. Had they known exactly what He would do, they would have told us more specifically. But they did not. They knew they would be saved and that faith was credited to them as righteousness, not their deeds (Romans 4).

So now we know that people can be saved who did not know Jesus. So how do we know these people know God? It is from the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit came, he prompts people (everyone in the world without discretion) to do the following things:

When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because people do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned. - John 16:8-11

When a person (anyone at all regardless of their ethnicity or religion) is convicted of their sin or wrong doing and humbles themselves to admit they are a bad person, they are following the prompting of the Holy Spirit, of God himself. To over simplify it, they are listening to God.

I believe anyone who listens to this prompting and truly understands that they are not worthy of any kind of reward and deserve punishment for their wrong doing, will find Jesus' grace.

Do not in anyway misunderstand what I am saying. We cannot and will not be saved without Jesus' grace but I do not believe you need to know Jesus' name to receive his grace.

So then the question usually follows, what is the point of evangelism if people who do not know Jesus can be saved? However, hopefully it is pretty obvious by now what that answer is.

What a miserable existence it would be to follow the prompting of the Holy Spirit and recognize how sinful and wretched we are and never get beyond that. How horrible to live one's whole life knowing he has done wrong and live in guilt his entire life without knowing God has sent his own Son to save him. And that is why we evangelize. That is why we bring the Good News to the world!

Jesus' message has always been to the poor in spirit and the down trodden and the sinner. The arrogant and righteous have always opposed Jesus and will continue to. Some have even tried to use Jesus' name to prove their own righteous deeds. I'm usually reminded of those who spend their time pointing out other people's sins without ever acknowledging their own.

I believe their are Muslims who believe they are sinners and unworthy. Despite the fact that Muslims teach a salvation based on works, there are many who know they cannot and will not live up to such standards and there are many who would never acknowledge such a failing. For those who do acknowledge they cannot earn their salvation and are miserable and unrighteous I believe that Jesus will comfort them at the end of their lives as He has been calling them the whole time. To them who do believe they are worthy, Jesus is more than willing to let them try. But so far the track record of people who have worked their way into Heaven is not good.