A Lot Of Smotin' Going On

In one of my college philosophy courses the professor told us that the God of the Old Testament was a different one than the God of the New Testament. After all, he had pointed out, in the old books there was an awful lot of smotin' going on. Plagues were being unleashed, cities were being destroyed and the curious risked being turned into pillars of salt.

But in the New Testament sinners were forgiven, people were fed and the lame made to walk. And if your wine supply ran a bit low maybe the son of one of your guests could lend a hand. It was a book of hope. God had learned to smile.

But I think the old God, the Creator, had a sense of humor, people just didn't have the tools recognize it.

In this latest round of creationism vs. evolution we're back to arguing about when and how the earth was formed. Where things get really muddy is when faith and fact clash. Faith is demonstrated by those who accept that everything written in the Bible is fact. Evolution, on the other hand, is accepted as fact based on physical evidence found in our natural surroundings.

One clash between the two concepts surfaces when the discussion of dinosaurs is brought up: If the earth was created around 10,000 years ago, as some contend, where did all the fossils come from? Could it be that these remnants of past eons are actually a manifestation of divine wit? Could the Creator have made fossils as a test of our faith? Sadly, we humans with our finite intelligence will never be able to comprehend the workings of an infinite intelligence.

If It's All The Same To You

Apparently the Lord lost his humor at Babel when He scattered His people upon the face of all the earth and confounded their languages so they couldn't understand one another. But what will be the makeup of the peoples of the earth a thousand years from now or less? Considering the "shrinking" of the world because of communications and travel and the assimilation of races and cultures, and if Hollywood has its way, all peoples of the earth will someday all be rather similar. And if Wal-Mart and the enablers have their way they will all speak the same language. Isn't that called evolution - the ability of a species to adapt to their environment?

Personally I have always been of the opinion, and I devoted a column to the subject a couple of years ago, that the two concepts need not be mutually exclusive. In that column I asked, "Why is it so difficult to accept that living, breathing things here on earth evolved over the solar cycles into bipedal, warm-blooded animals with opposing fingers and capable of making tools, like cell phones, to make their existence easier? And capable of arguing the reason for their very existence.

"Why too is it so difficult to believe that at some time during this animal's evolution the Creator who caused the Big Bang decided to give the most highly evolved animal, one we call a human, and its tribe, a soul?

"Were we created?" I postulated, "Of course we were."

"Did we evolve? Of course we did."

Or is all the physical evidence supporting the concept that humans might have evolved from the ape simply evidence that God has an overwhelming sense of humor?

We live in a world of gray that we continually try to define in terms of black and white.

We live on an insignificant world tucked away in the remote corner of an unfathomably and nearly infinite universe that we continue in a vain attempt to define with our limited resources and mental capabilities. Let us not allow our faiths to blind us to alternative options. Let us not allow the facts to intrude upon our faiths.

Due Respects

In case you missed it: last Tuesday was Charles Darwin's birthday. He was born on Feb. 12, 1809. Next year will be the 200th anniversary of his birth. He died April 19, 1882. Coincidentally, Darwin and Abe Lincoln share the same birth date.