If I were to leave, these would be some of the “exit ramps” that I have been tempted to take.

1. Disappointment over prayer

Jesus says “And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.” [Matthew 21:22 ESV]

“Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.” [Matthew 18:19 ESV]

24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. [Mark 11:24 ESV]

9 And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. [Luke 11:9 ESV]

13 Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. [John 14:13-14 ESV]

It seems pretty clear.

Imagine my disappointment when my beloved brother-in-law Ken Brown came down with brain cancer right when he started retirement at 61. He had so much ahead of him. I prayed earnestly with my sister. We were “two or more” praying in one mind and heart for his healing. He was not healed and he died “right on time” scientifically according to the statistics on his diagnosis.

Imagine the hurt.

Now imagine the disgust I felt and still feel when Christians blame the surviving victims of lost loved ones for not “having enough faith” to heal their loved one. This is a sick way to use scripture to drive people from the church. Don’t do it!

Did it drive me from the church? (see answers below)

2. Three = One, wait. What?

The great Trinitarian Creed (Athanasian Creed) cuts to the chase:

“Whoever wishes to be saved must, above all, keep the Catholic faith. For unless a person keeps this faith whole and entire, he will undoubtedly be lost forever.”

It then goes into great detail showing how the Christian construction of God says that there are three persons that are “God and Lord” and yet there is only one “God and Lord”.

“Thus the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. However, there are not three gods, but one God. The Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, and the Holy Spirit is Lord. However, there are not three lords, but one Lord.”

This confusion and the lack of the Christian’s ability to explain the Trinity drives many from the Church. Did I leave? (see answers below)

3. Evolution Everywhere

Physicists have explained the evolution of the stars, galaxies, and the expansion of the whole universe without God.

Biologists have explained the evolution of the whole of biology from the simplest RNA world of replicating molecules to the present-day biodiversity…without God.

To require God in any of these mechanisms is to add something that is not needed.

There’s an old story that illustrates this.

The believer’s recipe for boiling water.

1. Place water in a pot on the stove.
2. Add a dash of magic.
3. Turn on the heat. And the water will boil at 212 °F.

A non-believer asks, “when will the water boil without the dash of magic?”

The believer has to answer, “212 °F”

Then the non-believer thinks, “why do I need the magic?”

Many see the universe the same way. If it progressed along as scientists describe it without God, then why is God needed to explain it? We can boil water without the magic.

Did this drive me away from belief? (see answers below)

---

Answers I found

Disappointment over prayer, revisited

God the Father told Jesus “no” too. I cannot possibly feel as abused by unanswered prayer as Jesus who literally begged for his own life and was told, “no”.

“And they went to a place called Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. And he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch.” And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. 36 And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” [Mark 14:32-36 ESV]

When we are disappointed by prayer, we need a hug not an accusation of not having enough faith. God is NOT our butler, and we cannot order Him around individually or en masse. He is sovereign and has the ability to work in our sufferings and disappointments.

Here are the blog posts I wrote in the midst of our care for Ken as he suffered with his cancer.

1. Double Bounce
2. Time, Distance, and Shielding
3. Diagnosis Grief is OK

Here are some scriptures that must be held in tension with the “ask whatever you will in my name” scriptures.

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. … Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. [Romans 8:18, 26-28 ESV]

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. [James 1:2-5 ESV]

Joy!?!? That’s extreme! But not when you realize two things:

1. Death is a door, and we will exist on the other side either in or away from God’s presence.
2. This side of the door, we have the opportunity to become more like Christ. This is called soul building, and it will produce an everlasting benefit when we can look Jesus in the face and say, “that hurt.” And he can take us in his arms and say, “I know. I suffered too.” We will share a bond with Jesus that no one and no thing can ever diminish.

The Bible preaches both ends of the spectrum – that God gives to those who ask and that God works through our disappointments. We must trust God to be good, and we must ask anyway.

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. [Matthew 6:25-34 ESV]

Three = One, wait. What?, revisited

My go-to resource for a short explanation of why the Trinity doctrine exists is Greg Koukl’s two-part letter:

The Trinity: A Solution, Not a Problem Part 1 (check it out)

The Trinity: A Solution, Not a Problem Part 2 (check it out)

Bottom line: We did not “invent” the doctrine of the Trinity because we pondered what God may be like. We came to the doctrine by reading Scripture carefully. The Bible clearly teaches that God is one. And the Bible clearly teaches that God the Father has all the God-only properties (omnipotence, omniscience, etc). It also teaches that the Son (Jesus) has these same properties (i.e. is God), and also that the Holy Spirit has these properties.

All analogies fail. For a humorous illustration of this see St. Patrick’s Bad Analogies of the Trinity.

The Athanasian Creed is clunky mainly because it is a catalog of what the Bible teaches without explanation. We leave it there.

It solves many problems we have theologically, which Greg Koukl describes in his two blog posts. Enjoy!

Evolution Everywhere, revisited

There are SO many problems with the argument I presented.

Physicists have NOT explained the first creation event. Here are several excellent videos that illustrate the need for “something” to cause the whole show in the first place.

Everything that begins to exist must have a cause.

All contingencies go back to a single un-caused causer.

The universe is “suspiciously fine-tuned for life.

If the concept of God makes sense, then he MUST exist. (This one is fun!)

Likewise, biologists have NOT explained the Origin of Life. Their claims are WAY overstated.

RNA is susceptible to hydrolysis and is very short-lived. This wrecks the viability of the RNA world hypothesis.

For me, the nail in the coffin of undirected origin of life theories is homochirality. All proteins, carbohydrates, DNA, and RNA are homochiral – purely right-handed or purely left-handed. Producing molecules in pure right-handed or left-handed forms in the lab is VERY difficult and IMPOSSIBLE in nature.

Yes, it is rare for a scientist like me to say something is impossible, but there are no conditions on Earth at any time in Earth’s history that could produce, isolate, and maintain homochiral molecules without the constant intervention and care of an agent (like a chemist in the lab). The engineering of all ‘life molecules’ in this way, looks very much like a fingerprint of God’s involvement. Proposing an “extra-terrestrial” origin sounds a lot like a faith statement, so why not choose an agent with the guaranteed ability to produce homochiral molecules by “speaking them into existence” if he so chooses. (rather than an unknown and speculative extra-terrestrial physical being)

The molecules of life also have a non-chemical property – “information” or “aboutness”. They have a purpose that points “outside” of the chemical system. The information in DNA is true information, meaning it is independent of the medium. It can be translated into ACGT, into electrical signals, into 1’s and 0’s, back into molecular labels ACGT, and then back into molecules through DNA sequencing equipment. What traveled between the different systems in this scenario? The information.

This information also has a purpose. The central dogma of Biology is that genetic information flows from DNA to RNA to proteins. And this is process is circular because proteins in the ribosome turn the RNA codons into proteins, and proteins in the nucleus assist the DNA to RNA translation. Proteins also help with the DNA to DNA replication process. This three-fold dependency is an engineering marvel, which looks very much like a fingerprint of God’s engineering prowess.

In fact, the error correcting process that is built into this system was so impressive its discovery won a Nobel Prize (given to the researchers who discovered and described it.)

Finally, the traditional narrative in Biology is that Evolution has progressed gradually through time. Here are the agreed-upon definitions of biological evolution:

• Microevolution is defined as a change in gene frequency within a population. This change occurs as natural selection works on the variations in the offspring of a population. (organisms that share a gene pool)
• Macroevolution (on a grand scale) is what we see when we look at the over-arching history of life: stability, change, lineages arising, and extinction. It occurs when microevolution is given lots and lots of time.

In my opinion, one particular event that challenges the “gradualists” is the Cambrian Explosion.

The Cambrian Explosion, a dramatic event in life’s history (about 540 million years ago) occurred over an extremely narrow window of geological time, 2-3 million years or narrower. At the time of the Cambrian Explosion, nearly every animal phyla ever to exist on Earth (more than 70) suddenly appeared.2 Since that time, arguably no new animal phyla have arisen. Evolutionary biologists find the Cambrian Explosion one of biology’s greatest enigmas.3 (references within original article)

Ten of the many challenges the Cambrian explosion poses to evolutionary explanations for life are as follows: (source)

1. While evolutionary scenarios, as opposed to worked-out theories, exist for hypothesizing how new genera, new orders, and new families of animal life might appear, there is no rational evolutionary scenario for explaining how a new animal phylum might appear.
2. From 50 to 80 percent of the animal phyla known to have existed at any time in Earth’s history appeared within no more than a few million years of one another, as the Cambrian geological era began.
3. Of the 182 animal skeletal designs theoretically permitted by the laws of physics, 146 appear in the Cambrian explosion fossils.
4. The Cambrian explosion marks the first appearance of animals with skeletons, bilateral symmetry, appendages, brains, eyes, and digestive tracts that include mouths and anuses.
5. Virtually every eye design that has ever existed appears simultaneously in the Cambrian explosion.
6. The moment oxygen levels in Earth’s atmosphere and oceans permit the existence of Cambrian animals, they suddenly appear.
7. The Cambrian explosion occurs simultaneously with the drastic change in sea chemistry known as the Great Unconformity.
8. The Cambrian explosion includes the most advanced of the animal phyla, chordates, including vertebrate chordates.
9. Both bottom-dwellers and open ocean swimmers appear simultaneously in the Cambrian explosion.
10. Optimization of the ecological relationships among the Cambrian animals, including predator-prey relationships, occurred without any measurable delay.

All these new biological structures need new information, and our everyday experience shows that information comes from a mind. Engineered systems and relationships require an engineer, and God is not the “unnecessary magic” added to water to make it boil. He is the Master Engineer we recognize in the design of the cell and in the exquisite and interconnected ecology of nature.

Summary

There are many reasons to struggle with belief. This struggle makes us stronger. The key is not to storm off without exploring the answers to your problems. I hope this has made you think.

For more on what I believe and why, go here.

For more on faith, go here.

Love to you all,

Darren