Boomer and Millennial:
In Conflict or Partnership
Part Two: Review of a Blog by Kate Schell
Millennials and Adam’s Missing Rib
Written
by Dan McDonald
A few days ago I wrote a blog in response
to a blog written by Rachel Held Evans on why Millennials were leaving the church. My blog wasn’t a review and neither was it a
critique. I don’t know how to label the
genre of my response. I wrote in
response because I was a boomer who liked what she had to say. Also I was a boomer who needed to hear what
she had to say. I found that a lot of
the Millennial generation expressing why their generation was leaving the
church were connected to Evangelicalism.
I am an Evangelical. In recent
years I have moved theologically from being a Baptist to a few months within
Presbyterianism to the last several years within a conservative Anglican
parish, slightly more Anglo-Catholic than Evangelical, but a place where an
Evangelical can still call home. In the
process I have had to rethink a lot of things.
So when a young adult raised in Evangelicalism becomes an adult and has
to rethink a lot of things, I understand that we share a sense of doubt in the
things you doubt from an understanding one once had and hope that perhaps we
are in the process finding something better.
Is the new a better to be proscribed to every one? Or is the new something we feel like is the
answer for an individual but not something I am quite ready to commend to
all. Doubt and hope mix with
humility. Any soul that has doubted
after being firmly convinced in something has a residual pain from his or her
doubting. One cannot go through doubt,
or at least should not be able to do so and come out on the other side glib in
announcing, “I have just found the answer to my every theological problem.” I might sometimes feel that I have found some
of the answer but because I have doubted I am much less prone to declare that
now I have the answer that you need. We
boomers often approached faith with a slogan that said “God’s Word says
it. I believe it. That settles it.” We wanted certainty in what we believed. We generally believed that uncertainty meant
that somewhere we had failed to believe God’s Word and therefore we were
shrouded in uncertainty. If we doubted
we managed to press ourselves into believing and having it settled. Then the children of the boomer generation
grew up and a lot of them have said openly “I have doubts.” Every generation does have its doubts, but I
think many of us who were in Evangelical “Bible-based” churches tried to hide
our doubts. We struggled to believe in a
Bible-based way and we looked to what our fellow Bible-believing Christians
around us believed and kept our doubts to ourselves. So when I read a millennial speaking of their
difficulty with the church, especially that portion known as Evangelical I can
relate, even though I know that I will no more be able to think like a
millennial than I can think like some of my friends from a Hispanic background. We were shaped by different experiences,
mindsets, histories, etc. We share
though the common struggles of humanity that affect every generation, every
nation, every gender, every group mainstream or fringe.
In my blog in response to Rachel
Held Evans’ article I especially dealt with how the millennial generation has a
different point of perspective on the culture war issues. My generation was one which responded to our
nation giving less credence to the authority of Christianity than in many
previous generations. My generation felt
that removing ourselves from recognizing God’s authority over our nation would
lead to disastrous consequences. Maybe
it did or didn’t but the children of my generation recognizes the move away
from a recognized authority of Christianity is a done deal. Whether they are Christians personally or
not, their nation is a democracy where there is no special authority granted to
any church or religion. That is a done
deal and so the best thing for the Christian to do is to get over the culture
wars and start showing God’s love to men and women from every background and with
every lifestyle imaginable and accept that the days of Christianity being
instituted by legislation are over. Many
of the millennial generation would add to those days being over their hearty
Amen if they were of the sort to say “Amen” to truths they held dear.
I would like to interact with a blog
by Kate Schell in a similar manner as I did with Rachel Held Evans’ blog. I have read a few blogs by KS and have found
they give me much to think about. The
ones I have read have revealed someone who in some ways feels betrayed by the
tradition in which she grew up. The
first blogs I read by Kate were blogs that told how she was taught a dating
perspective that basically told women to guard their hearts in purity until
they met the right person. That purity
went far beyond a simple chaste life, but was basically a commitment to not
date anyone until you met that right one.
She shared that in a car with a driver’s education teacher when she was
in high school. The driver’s education
teacher responded by saying that seemed wrong to her. That instead of not getting to know guys and
not going out on a date in high school, one should understand that if it is not
a time to get serious with some sort of marriage plans it was a time for
beginning to learn how to socialize guys with gals, etc. As she grew older, Kate Schell became
convinced that she had been taught a bogus view of purity that had in its
perspective that women couldn’t be trusted with relationships because they were
overly emotional and so they were simply to go from one father authority figure
to a husband authority figure, but by no means let them get to know someone
outside of those relationships. There
was a sense of betrayal. I found myself
appreciating that perspective having in my early days as a Christian learned to
associate the Biblical word “lust” with basically any feeling of attraction I
might have had towards a woman. One
reads about some of the hermits whose perspectives on women were anything but
normal. There is a vast difference from
seeing a woman as beautiful and then turning her into an object to view as a
mere accessory to one’s own sexual appetites.
There is a vast distinction between appreciating and recognizing a woman’s
attractiveness whether of a physical, intellectual, or spiritual nature and
lusting after her. I began my journey in
the faith as a kid moving from high school to college with an understanding of
lust and attraction being virtually indistinguishable. I did not experience the same exact
difficulties that Kate Schell faced due to the purity teaching she had been
taught, but this sort of hyper-teachings on purity and putting away lust
interfered with our normal development of relationships. When someone comes to their senses after
having their lives impacted by such teaching, there is a sense of felt
betrayal. I would hasten to add that in
my instance I was a young guy attracted to a sort of holier than thou
experience, so perhaps I was less a victim of others and more a victim of my
own tendencies towards fanaticism. I
really did not need a lot of help to be a basket case.
Her blogs on how she felt she had
been misguided on how best to achieve purity were the first blogs I read by
her. I found the things she had to say
to be worth considering. A lot of
Christian parents wanted to make sure their children grew up desiring to live
within the biblical guidelines for Christians in relationship to
sexuality. Then somehow the goal of
keeping pure became a goal separated from learning to have relationships and
friendships with a variety of human beings.
The goal of purity became misguided into an obsession with the danger of
sexuality. The goal of Christian parents
and Christian teachers should not be to have your kids obsessed with the
dangers of lust or sexuality, but to have them trained to desire good
relationships with others while honoring God in our so doing. That was how I first discovered that there
was something she had to say that resonated with me. But that is my introduction to Kate Schell
the blogger. It is another blog, written
by her, that I am considering in this blog.
It is her blog on Millenials and Adam’s Missing Rib by Kate Schell. You can read her blog and explore her blog
site if you wish. The only negative is
that after reading her blogs you may lose any interest you have in reading
mine.
Kate Schell describes in her blog
how the Bible describes how Adam was formed from the dust and then Eve was
formed from a rib that God took from Adam.
As she grew up she was taught that men have one less rib (or pair of
ribs) than women because God removed one from Adam when creating Eve. It was one of those things that struck a
child as sort of cool. It seemed in some
way to seemingly give proof of the Biblical creation account. I like Kate Schell’s showing how little that
would mean even if men had one less rib or pair of ribs than women. She says for that to prove anything about the
creation account would be similar to us reasoning, “Which is about as logical
as saying, “Look, there’s some dirt, just like Adam was made from! The Bible must be true, because dust!” But worse than that Kate discovered, or
realized, after she was out of college that men and women both have the same
amount of ribs. The story she had heard
in a sermon, or vacation bible school had not been true or factual at all. Someone taught it as true, and then
afterwards it was passed on along as true by countless people until it was
taught to a group of young people as a proof of creationism. Before she wrote her article about this she
began tweeting others to see if they had experienced such teaching in their
youth. She would have liked to have
believed that her situation was extraordinary.
But she heard back from Evangelicals, Catholics, and Pentecostals that
they had learned this growing up.
This sort of experience leads
someone to wonder how much or how little everything else taught regarding
science by one’s religious community was just as erroneous as this one mythical
lesser male rib.
A lot of millennial generation young
adults are struggling with how to square what they have learned about creation
from Christian sources from what is taught in science. If creationism is true then its truth is
obviously not in the long run well served by easily discoverable falsehoods
taught to children. One of the problems
with my generation is that very often we sought comfort in Christians setting
forth creationist proofs and did not care to do due diligence if the Christian
arguments for creationism were true to both Scriptural and scientific
scrutiny. Part of what Kate Schell
argues for is that when someone has doubts about such matters, don’t treat them
immediately as an apostate. Secondly
should churches be afraid to discuss some varied perspectives regarding how an
understanding of the world based on science and based on Scriptures is to be
interrelated. I suspect that for a large
number within my own generation, and I certainly was this way at times, it was
enough for us that we had a Scripture text that told us the Bible said this,
and we decided to believe it, and that settled it. But did we really want to have such sure
certified belief systems upset by testing whether or not these things were
so? Once we felt convinced in our
beliefs we wanted to do nothing that might upset the sort of certainty we had
obtained.
I had gone through a process similar
to what Kate had gone through with the missing rib. I wasn’t raised in a particularly Christian
home. I was probably past ten before I
ever attended a religious service with the exception of a wedding. On Sunday mornings I went with my father to
the little greasy spoon diner while the people needing religion went to
church. After I became a Christian I
considered creationism and accepted it as fact.
I tried to convince others of creationism. I believed that it was the proverbial
slippery slope for anyone to imagine that the days in Genesis might have been
figurative days rather than literal twenty-four hour days. I had a similar experience to Kate Schell’s
learning that men and women have the same amount of ribs. I had read once that Hebrew during the time
of the writing of Genesis did not have a figurative use of days like when St.
Peter describes how a thousand years is as a day to God. (II Peter 3:8) The
creationist tried to make an argument that the people of Moses’ time did not
think of God and days in that way. I was
modern enough in my thinking that I thought of that sort of argument “Are you
sure?” Then one day I read the 90th
Psalm where the Psalmist prays to God and says “For a thousand years in thy
sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.” (Psalm 90:4)
This verse was likely the passage to which St. Peter had been referring
when he wrote to the early Christians in II Peter. There was one more astounding thing about the
90th Psalm. It was not one of
David’s Psalms. The Scripture texts
describe the 90th Psalm as “a prayer of Moses, the man of God.” So either the writer declaring that the
Hebrews did not have a figurative sense of understanding for day in the time of
Moses was wrong, or the Scriptures were wrong to present Moses as the man
praying this Psalm.
I began to wonder if perhaps it
would be within the scope of possible understandings of the Scripture that God’s
days in the creation of the world were figurative rather than literal
days. I can’t say one way or the
other. I will not say that God didn’t
create the universe in six literal twenty-four hour days. He could have done a number of things that
the man or woman of science hasn’t calculated in their presuppositions about
the creation of the universe. I am not a
very well informed man when it comes to science, but it does seem to me to be
an incredible perspective to declare with a sense of certainty that the world
is exactly some 14 billion years old and we have it all figured out. Then there is the creationist who is saying
these had to be six twenty-four hour days, because primitive man was too
primitive to think of the days of creation as being figurative days
representing God’s days of creation rather than literal twenty-four hour
days. I then wonder, how can either of
you be sure? Then I read Job 38 and God
speaks to Job and his friends out of the whirlwind and asks them to tell God
how God created the heavens and the earth, asking them to explain the details
to him. I wait in vain for Job or his
friends to say, “I read in Genesis, that two page account of creation and now I
can tell you exactly how it was all done, you’ll be impressed God.” No, neither Job nor his friends give an
exhausting volume of information regarding how God created the universe. Instead they are silent. They know that the creation is a mystery. They know that the important thing to be
understood about God from the Bible’s creation account is that God has created
us therefore we have a responsibility to honor and give him thanks. The Bible’s creation account is not first and
foremost a description of the way in which God created the universe, but rather
a revelation by which we may draw near and come to know God. As the New Testament teaches, “By their fruit
you shall know them.” How do we know God? We know God first and foremost because he
created us and the entire universe. We
know him because through the creation he has made his invisible attributes to
be known for the creation is the fruit by which we first come to know God. It is a creation beyond our ability to fully
comprehend, understand, and explain. I
am convinced that whether creationist or evolutionist the one who sets out to
show a complete understanding of the phenomenon only shows himself to be either
naïve or arrogant to believe he has it all figured out.
I took some solace in discovering
that some of the church fathers taught a figurative rather than a twenty-four
hour day creation within Genesis. St.
Augustine and St. Clement of Alexandria were among those who understood the days of Genesis one figuratively. These were both considered great men of the
faith within Christian history. That
doesn’t mean necessarily that they were right, but others in the ancient church
did not treat them as heretics for their opinions on Genesis. In American history, one of the most
important writers to establish the idea of the inerrancy of Scripture was the
nineteenth century Princeton University theologian B.B. Warfield. Warfield believed in the creation account of
Genesis but felt that evolution could be treated as something which happened
within the six days of creation, within a Christian understanding of creation. These
were the sort of men who were regarded as men who loved the Scriptures, who
desired to have their minds, hearts, and souls guided by Scripture, and
were not to be accused of taking the Scriptures too lightly. Yet, each of these Christian men in their own
way accepted the possibility of a figurative use of the “days” found in the
Genesis account of creation.
I find my own experience resonating
with what Kate Schell describes in her blog.
I do not have the answer as to whether the creation account described in
Genesis is the description of six twenty-four hour days of creation; or if this
creation account may well describe something which were God’s six days of
creation, rather than necessarily man’s understanding of days. If God asks me to choose one and confess it
before the world, I will simply reply. “You know O’ Lord, and in that I am
confident, in my own answers I am not confident.” It does seem to me that those involved in the
debate between “Science” and “the Bible” are seldom willing to have their
positions questioned or perhaps modified.
The evolutionist arguing for his billions of years surely is not willing
to say that he has proven every hypothesis and every assumption and every
presupposition involved in his perspective.
In light of God’s asking of Job to describe how God created the world, I
must ask my fellow Christians if they really believe that from two pages of
Scripture they can deduce the exact manner of how God literally created the
universe in six twenty-four hour days.
Do we really believe that there is no room for discussion of such
things? Can there be no room for
attempts to reintegrate faith and science in a meaningful world view?
The Bible gives us truth expressed
as the Book of Hebrews says in many ways and forms, once for all time. We cannot change what is written, but the man
and woman of faith cannot ever imagine exhausting it as a source of wisdom for
dealing with the understanding of life whether in matters of simplicity of
complexity. In our understanding of the
Scriptures we recognize that at times the Bible is speaking very literally and
at times it is pointing to realities that man can never fully comprehend and is
giving us more a sense of such realities rather than a scientific description
of these realities. Science on the other
hand, has never given humanity once and for all time answers. Scientific explanations are at their best,
the best attempted constructed description of how the universe works or can be
explained based on the evidence understood by us in a singular moment of time. For example we may look at Darwin today and
acknowledge that much of the world as science understands it was built on
understandings expressed by Darwin. But
we may well ask if his view, which in part was built on the simplicity of the
single cell, must be explained in a whole new way when a molecular biologist
sees the forms of DNA expressed not in a single simplistic cell, but in a
single cell of nearly infinite complexity.
Would a modern Darwin take a view of the simple cell and determine that
everything evolved from the simplicity of cells mutating, or would a modern
Darwin faced with a mechanistic world view that explained everything there is
to explain without any Deity, look upon the complexity of a single cell and say
with an astonished soul, “I will praise thee for I am fearfully and wonderfully
made: marvelous are thy works and that my soul knows right well.” (Psalm
139:14)
The great confession of Christendom
is that Christ Jesus became a human being that he might redeem humanity and
bring man to God, Christ himself being fully God as well as fully man. The way we answer how religion and science is
to relate to one another will create a course for us in how we determine what
it is to be human beings. Are we to squelch
the sense of faith and the searching of the Scriptures each time a scientific
study shows reason to doubt a phrase of Holy Scripture? Are we to use the Scriptures to squelch our
human observation of the creation, our inquisitive natures that want to know
how, why, and to what end? I suspect
that we are at a crossroads, almost always, in every generation. If we squelch the Scriptures and they are
truly the word of God that points us to mankind’s redeemer then to what end
will our lives flounder? Yet also, if a
human being has an inquisitive mind, yearns to understand the ways of the
universe and is kept by a minimalistic view of the Scriptures from following
the inquisitiveness of his own mind in seeking to observe and understand nature
then what part of his humanity has been lost to a restrictive Christianity that
seeks safety rather than the exploration of creation? In the end I suspect it is more necessary
than ever when a human being fears that his study of nature will upset his
understanding of faith, for that person to pray diligently and say “Lord teach
me thy way, but I cannot let fear of the unknown dissuade me from believing
that when I go into the unknown thou wilt be there.” To such a soul seeking to go forward into
uncharted territories we ought to offer our blessings, to covenant to uphold
them in our prayers, and to assure them that we as well as the Lord are for
them and not against them, and yet we would be amiss if we did not also urge
them to go forward in caution and carefulness for there are truly dangers in
the unknown so move forward only as you can and must.
In the early 1980’s there was a
movie by a Christian writer and director, the name of the movie was “Mosquito Coast.”
It told the story of a family headed by a man of reason and science,
played by Harrison Ford who was in his own way as foolish of a fanatic as ever
lived. He proved obstinate in his way
forward and each time his way was blocked he seemed to pull in the safety net
of his faith in science and reason a little tighter until his entire family
suffered in the little world remaining after his trust in science and reason
faltered against the stresses of life. He became a tyrant. He declared that the world as they had once known
it was now gone. He alone could guide
them with his science and reason. He was
crushing his family with each new decision but always he moved in one
direction, saying blindly and obstinately, “We must go upstream,
fighting all the way.” It has been quite
a while since I saw the movie. That is
how I recall him commanding his family’s venture. Finally wounded and dying and then dead the
family let their raft float downstream into the sea until a broad horizon stood open for them to see. The vast ocean before them seemed filled with hope
and opportunities, that the narrow perspective had earlier denied to them. It was no longer a world
restricted and constricted by a man’s understanding, logic, and self-limiting
propositions. It was a world where the
ocean was vast, the shoreline filled with beauty, the sun shining brightly; a
world to be explored. That is the world
we must set before our newest Christian adults.
It is a world filled with mystery, understood in bits and pieces, never
in the whole. If a millennial feels they
have questions are we not to say, “of course you do, what sort of mind would
live in this universe and not have questions?”
If I have a vision to share with
those of my younger brothers and sisters in Christ in the millennium generation
it is to ask you to forgive us where our weaknesses have hindered you. We have made our share of errors and sins to
be sure. You will do well to forgive us
for those failures and even beyond forgiving us, humor us by sharing with us
your journey in the faith for a short time.
We are growing old, we have failed much, we have been faithful a little,
and soon it will be our time to go the way of men into the ages. Humor us a bit as we journey together. We will tell some old stories, some of which
you will quickly tire and others which you will save to tell your own
children. Forgive us that we sometimes
don’t understand the world into which you are now entering as adults. That is why we don’t understand the questions
you are asking. But I ponder this, my
young millennial brother and sister. God
is giving you the questions to ask in your times of struggle and trial and
temptation because he is preparing you for the generation for which you have
been made to live and fill a space in time in the great plan of redemption
being worked out through Christ in the church, the living redeemed bride of Christ. That is the church from which you have fled
and to which you have returned; which bruised you because of mistakes by men
and women in her midst, and heals you because there is in this church a
Savior and a Comforter and a Father who have loved you from before the foundation
of the world. It is you who will receive
the baton and carry out the word to a world filled with people needing what you
have to give. Are you up to that
calling? Of course not, but it is the
weakness of human flesh that he uses to accomplish his purposes. While you are licking your wounds wondering
how the church ever got into the shambles in which it is now; I am rejoicing because
you are being given the questions to ponder so as to find some of the answers which
will prepare you to give to the men and women of your generation the very
answers they need to hear. You are being
prepared for your work in your day. It is thus not so bad for me in my old age to know I am soon to depart for I know another generation is here, being prepared to
carry on. You see when I was young I
asked questions like you do today, only they were the questions my generation
were asking. My questions were for my
generation, your questions are for your generation, but we are part of a humanity and a history of redemption that spans the ages from one generation to another to eternity. If you have suffered and despaired, perhaps it
has been to bring you to ask the questions for the generation among whom you
are meant to shine. Just remember this as you struggle in the darkness sometimes despairing, the day and night are both alike to him, and as you venture into the world you explore there is nowhere to be found where he is not to be found and discovered. For long ago, in the far country where the prodigal had gone, came the Son to find and seek that which had been lost. So now however far you find yourself to have gone from home, your eldest brother has come to find you and stand with you. You may have become at some point the prodigal, but unlike the story in Luke 15 our elder brother is one who has sought you like the lost lamb, the lost coin, the lost brother or sister. Remember in your doubts, the strange reality of mercy that reaches out to you no matter how deep your despair and troubled soul may momentarily imagine your plight to be.
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